Microsoft AZ-305 Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions Exam Dumps and Practice Test Questions Set 9 Q161-180

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Question 161

A company wants to deploy a multi-region web application with global load balancing, automatic scaling, and secure user authentication. Which services should they use?

Answer

A) Azure Front Door, Azure App Service with Auto Scale, and Azure AD B2C
B) Azure Load Balancer, Azure VMs, and SQL Server
C) Azure Application Gateway, AKS, and PostgreSQL single instance
D) Azure CDN and Table Storage

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure Front Door, Azure App Service with Auto Scale, and Azure AD B2C.

Secure User Authentication

Azure AD B2C provides secure authentication for external users, supporting social logins, multi-factor authentication, and enterprise compliance standards. It enables seamless access control while meeting regulatory and corporate security requirements.

Comparison with Alternatives

Option B lacks global routing and requires manual scaling.

Option C is regionally constrained and does not provide low-latency routing.

Option D is limited to static content delivery without dynamic application logic or secure authentication.

Question 162

A company wants a serverless workflow to process events from HTTP requests, storage events, and queues with automatic scaling and minimal operational overhead. Which service is optimal?

Answer

A) Azure Functions
B) Azure Virtual Machines
C) Azure Kubernetes Service
D) Azure App Service Plan (Dedicated)

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure Functions.

Azure Functions is a serverless compute platform that reacts to events such as HTTP requests, Blob Storage changes, and queue messages. This is ideal for event-driven architectures, where workloads are unpredictable and require automatic scaling.

Automatic Scaling

Functions scale out automatically in response to demand, handling millions of events without manual provisioning. This reduces infrastructure management overhead and ensures that applications remain responsive during peak periods.

Integration with Azure Services

Functions integrate with Event Grid, Service Bus, and Blob Storage, enabling real-time processing pipelines. For example, IoT telemetry data can be processed, enriched, and stored in databases such as Cosmos DB or SQL Database.

Comparison with Alternatives

VMs require manual scaling and management.

AKS adds unnecessary complexity for lightweight serverless workflows.

Dedicated App Service lacks true elasticity for event-driven workloads.

AZ-305 Alignment

Azure Functions aligns with AZ-305 objectives by providing:

Automatic, cost-efficient scaling for unpredictable workloads.

Event-driven processing with low operational overhead.

Secure integration with Key Vault and managed identities.

Observability and orchestration for complex workflows.

Question 163

A company wants a globally distributed NoSQL database for real-time telemetry data, supporting low-latency reads, multi-region writes, and elastic scaling. Which service is optimal?

Answer

A) Azure Cosmos DB
B) Azure SQL Database
C) Azure Database for PostgreSQL
D) Azure Table Storage

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure Cosmos DB.

Cosmos DB is designed for globally distributed, high-throughput, low-latency workloads, making it ideal for IoT telemetry and real-time analytics.

Global Distribution and Multi-Region Writes

Cosmos DB supports multi-region writes, enabling devices or users from different regions to write data locally, reducing latency. Conflict resolution is handled automatically, ensuring consistency across regions.

Consistency Models

Five consistency levels—strong, bounded staleness, session, consistent prefix, eventual—allow developers to balance latency, performance, and data correctness. This flexibility is critical for telemetry workloads where some events require strong consistency, while others can tolerate eventual consistency.

Comparison with Alternatives

SQL Database lacks multi-region writes.

PostgreSQL single instance cannot scale globally.

Table Storage lacks rich query support and high throughput.

AZ-305 Alignment

Cosmos DB demonstrates highly available, resilient, globally distributed data solutions, addressing AZ-305 objectives:

Low-latency, multi-region writes for real-time processing.

Elastic throughput for unpredictable workloads.

Integration with event-driven pipelines.

Secure and compliant data storage.

Question 164

A company wants to implement a multi-tier application with high availability, automatic scaling, and secure secrets management. Which services are optimal?

Answer

A) Azure App Service, Key Vault, Azure SQL Database zone-redundant
B) Azure VMs, SQL Server, Storage Account
C) AKS with PostgreSQL single instance
D) Azure Functions with Cosmos DB

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure App Service, Key Vault, Azure SQL Database zone-redundant.

Application Tier: Azure App Service

App Service is fully managed PaaS, supporting automatic scaling, deployment slots, and monitoring. It eliminates infrastructure management overhead and provides high availability with built-in load balancing.

Database Tier: Azure SQL Database zone-redundant

Zone redundancy ensures resilience against availability zone failures, providing continuous uptime. Automatic backups and geo-replication enhance disaster recovery capabilities.

Secrets Management: Key Vault

Key Vault securely stores API keys, connection strings, and certificates, providing RBAC and integration with managed identities. Automated key rotation further enhances security.

Integration

Private endpoints ensure secure communication between tiers.

Application Insights monitors performance across all layers.

Comparison with Alternatives

VMs require manual patching, scaling, and DR setup.

AKS introduces unnecessary complexity for simple multi-tier apps.

Functions + Cosmos DB is stateless and unsuitable for relational applications.

AZ-305 Alignment

This architecture demonstrates:

High availability and disaster recovery.

Auto-scaling for variable workloads.

Secure secret management.

Reduced operational overhead through managed services.

Question 165

A company needs to implement a globally distributed e-commerce platform with low-latency reads, high availability, and secure authentication. Which services should they use?

Answer

A) Azure Front Door, Azure SQL Database with geo-replication, and Azure AD B2C
B) Azure Load Balancer, SQL Server on VMs, and VPN Gateway
C) Azure Application Gateway, Bastion, and PostgreSQL single instance
D) Azure CDN and Table Storage

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure Front Door, Azure SQL Database with geo-replication, and Azure AD B2C. For globally distributed e-commerce applications, performance, availability, and security are critical. Azure Front Door provides global HTTP/HTTPS load balancing, automatic failover, and routing users to the nearest healthy backend, ensuring low latency for users worldwide. By implementing Azure SQL Database with geo-replication, the company can maintain a high level of availability and disaster recovery. Geo-replication ensures that if one region goes offline, traffic can fail over to a secondary region with minimal downtime. Secure authentication is achieved through Azure AD B2C, which supports social logins, multi-factor authentication, and enterprise compliance standards. Compared to alternatives, using VMs with Load Balancer would require manual scaling and does not support global low-latency access. Application Gateway and Bastion are regionally constrained and do not provide global failover, while Azure CDN and Table Storage are only suitable for static content. This architecture aligns with AZ-305 objectives by providing a resilient, globally distributed, and secure application with optimized performance, high availability, and minimal operational overhead.

Question 166

A company wants a serverless workflow to process millions of events per day from HTTP requests, storage events, and queues with automatic scaling. Which service is appropriate?

Answer

A) Azure Functions
B) Azure Virtual Machines
C) Azure Kubernetes Service
D) Azure App Service Plan (Dedicated)

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure Functions. Azure Functions provides a serverless, event-driven platform that automatically scales in response to workload, which is ideal for processing millions of events without provisioning infrastructure. It can respond to triggers from HTTP requests, Blob Storage, Service Bus, and Event Grid, making it flexible for a wide range of event-driven scenarios. Security is enhanced through integration with Key Vault and managed identities, ensuring sensitive credentials are never hardcoded. Observability is provided via Application Insights, allowing monitoring of execution performance, error rates, and latency. Durable Functions extend this capability by orchestrating complex, long-running workflows with fan-out/fan-in patterns and sequential processing, ensuring reliable and scalable operations. Unlike VMs, AKS, or dedicated App Service Plans, Azure Functions reduces operational overhead while maintaining high performance and scalability, aligning with AZ-305 design objectives for resilient and efficient serverless architectures.

The most appropriate service for implementing a serverless workflow capable of processing millions of events per day from HTTP requests, storage events, and queues is Azure Functions. Azure Functions provides a fully managed, serverless, event-driven compute platform where code executes in response to events without requiring developers to manage infrastructure. Its automatic scaling feature allows the service to handle massive workloads efficiently, scaling out to process a high volume of events and scaling back down when demand decreases, ensuring cost efficiency and operational simplicity.

Azure Functions supports a wide variety of triggers, making it highly flexible for event-driven architectures. HTTP triggers allow the creation of serverless APIs that respond to web and mobile requests. Blob Storage triggers enable automated processing of files as they are uploaded or modified, supporting use cases such as ETL workflows, image processing, and data transformation pipelines. Queue triggers, including Service Bus and Storage Queues, allow reliable asynchronous message processing, decoupling application components and enabling scalable background processing. Event Grid triggers extend this capability further by enabling reactive event-driven workflows across Azure services and external systems.

Security and observability are integral to Azure Functions. Integration with Azure Key Vault ensures that secrets, certificates, and encryption keys are securely managed, eliminating the need to store credentials in code. Managed identities allow seamless authentication to other Azure services. Application Insights provides detailed monitoring and logging, allowing developers to track performance metrics, latency, error rates, and overall execution health. Durable Functions enhance Azure Functions by orchestrating complex workflows, including sequential processing, fan-out/fan-in patterns, and long-running operations, ensuring reliable and efficient task execution.

Alternative options are less suitable for this scenario. Virtual Machines require manual provisioning, scaling, and maintenance, which increases operational overhead. Azure Kubernetes Service provides container orchestration and scaling but introduces unnecessary complexity for simple serverless, event-driven workloads. Dedicated App Service Plans cannot scale dynamically based on events and lack true serverless elasticity.

By using Azure Functions, organizations can implement a highly available, scalable, and cost-efficient serverless workflow capable of processing millions of events per day. This aligns with AZ-305 best practices for resilient, secure, and efficient event-driven architectures, minimizing operational overhead while ensuring performance and reliability.

Question 167

A company needs a hybrid networking solution connecting on-premises data centers to Azure, requiring high throughput, low latency, and automatic failover. Which service is optimal?

Answer

A) Azure ExpressRoute with active-active configuration
B) VPN Gateway
C) Azure Load Balancer
D) Azure Application Gateway

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure ExpressRoute with active-active configuration. ExpressRoute provides dedicated private connections between on-premises networks and Azure, bypassing the public internet to ensure low-latency and high-throughput communication. An active-active setup ensures automatic failover in case one circuit fails, guaranteeing uninterrupted connectivity for mission-critical applications. ExpressRoute also supports high bandwidth, making it suitable for bulk data transfers, real-time analytics, and ERP applications that demand predictable network performance. Unlike VPN Gateway, which relies on public internet connections and is subject to variable latency, ExpressRoute offers consistent, SLA-backed throughput. Azure Load Balancer and Application Gateway only operate within Azure and cannot provide hybrid connectivity. This solution aligns with AZ-305 objectives for designing resilient and high-performing hybrid networks, addressing both performance and business continuity requirements.

The optimal service for a hybrid networking solution that connects on-premises data centers to Azure while ensuring high throughput, low latency, and automatic failover is Azure ExpressRoute configured in an active-active setup. ExpressRoute provides dedicated private connections between on-premises networks and Azure, bypassing the public internet entirely. This guarantees predictable network performance with low latency and high throughput, making it ideal for mission-critical applications, real-time analytics, and large-scale data transfers. By avoiding the public internet, ExpressRoute ensures that traffic is not subject to congestion, jitter, or variable latency, providing a reliable and consistent connection for enterprise workloads.

An active-active configuration of ExpressRoute further enhances availability by providing automatic failover between circuits. If one circuit experiences an outage, the other remains active, maintaining uninterrupted connectivity to Azure resources. This redundancy is essential for business continuity, particularly for applications that require continuous access to cloud services, such as ERP systems, financial platforms, or operational dashboards that depend on real-time data. ExpressRoute also supports high bandwidth connections up to multiple tens of gigabits per second, which is critical for hybrid workloads that involve large-scale data replication, backups, or media streaming between on-premises and cloud environments.

Alternative options are less suitable for this scenario. VPN Gateway relies on encrypted connections over the public internet, which is subject to variable latency and throughput limitations, making it less predictable for high-performance workloads. Azure Load Balancer and Application Gateway provide traffic distribution and application delivery capabilities within Azure but cannot extend connectivity to on-premises networks, meaning they cannot address the hybrid connectivity requirement.

By implementing Azure ExpressRoute with an active-active configuration, organizations gain a highly available, resilient, and high-performing hybrid networking solution. This design aligns with AZ-305 best practices for hybrid cloud architectures, ensuring secure, reliable, and low-latency connections between on-premises environments and Azure. It provides enterprises with the performance, predictability, and failover capabilities required for critical workloads while maintaining business continuity and operational efficiency.

Question 168

A company wants a multi-tier web application with high availability, automatic scaling, and secure credential management. Which services should they deploy?

Answer

A) Azure App Service, Azure SQL Database zone-redundant, Key Vault
B) Azure VMs, SQL Server, Storage Account
C) AKS with PostgreSQL single instance
D) Azure Functions with Cosmos DB

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure App Service, Azure SQL Database zone-redundant, Key Vault. Multi-tier applications require separation of web, application, and database layers, each optimized for availability, scalability, and security. App Service provides fully managed hosting for the web and application tier, supporting automatic scaling based on metrics, zero-downtime deployments via slots, and integrated monitoring. SQL Database zone-redundant deployment ensures high availability across availability zones, minimizing the risk of downtime. Key Vault securely stores and manages secrets, certificates, and API keys, accessible via managed identities to eliminate hard-coded credentials. This combination reduces operational overhead compared to manually managed VMs or AKS, while providing enterprise-grade resiliency and security, fully aligned with AZ-305 exam principles for designing secure and scalable multi-tier architectures.

Question 169

A company wants a globally distributed database for real-time IoT telemetry, supporting multi-region writes, low-latency access, and elastic scaling. Which service is optimal?

Answer

A) Azure Cosmos DB
B) Azure SQL Database
C) Azure Database for PostgreSQL
D) Azure Table Storage

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure Cosmos DB. Cosmos DB is a NoSQL database designed for globally distributed, high-throughput workloads, perfect for IoT telemetry or event-driven applications. It supports multi-region writes, allowing users to ingest data in their local region, reducing latency while maintaining data consistency with automatic conflict resolution. Cosmos DB provides five consistency levels, enabling developers to choose the balance between latency and data correctness depending on application requirements. Horizontal partitioning and elastic scaling via Request Units (RU/s) allow the system to handle millions of events per second without performance degradation. Cosmos DB integrates seamlessly with Azure Functions, Event Grid, and Stream Analytics, forming real-time event-processing pipelines. Security is enforced via encryption at rest and in transit, RBAC, private endpoints, and Key Vault integration, ensuring compliance with enterprise and regulatory standards. Compared to SQL Database, PostgreSQL, or Table Storage, Cosmos DB is uniquely suited for globally distributed, low-latency, real-time applications, aligning with AZ-305 objectives for resilient, high-performing database architectures.

The optimal service for a globally distributed database that supports real-time IoT telemetry, multi-region writes, low-latency access, and elastic scaling is Azure Cosmos DB. Cosmos DB is a fully managed, NoSQL database service designed to handle high-throughput, low-latency workloads across the globe. Its ability to replicate data across multiple regions allows users to write and read data in the closest geographic region, significantly reducing latency and improving the performance of real-time applications such as IoT telemetry platforms, gaming backends, and social media services. Multi-region write capabilities ensure that updates can occur in any region while maintaining consistency using automatic conflict resolution mechanisms.

Cosmos DB provides five well-defined consistency models—strong, bounded staleness, session, consistent prefix, and eventual consistency—enabling developers to balance latency and data correctness according to the specific requirements of their applications. The database is partitioned horizontally, and elastic scaling via Request Units per second allows it to handle millions of requests per second without impacting performance. This makes Cosmos DB suitable for scenarios with unpredictable workloads or bursts in data ingestion, such as real-time sensor telemetry from IoT devices.

Security and compliance are built into Cosmos DB. It supports encryption at rest and in transit, integration with Azure Key Vault for secure secret management, role-based access control, and private endpoints, ensuring that sensitive telemetry data is protected and regulatory requirements are met. Cosmos DB integrates seamlessly with Azure Functions, Event Grid, and Stream Analytics, enabling real-time event-driven pipelines and analytics on incoming data streams.

Alternative options are less suitable for this scenario. Azure SQL Database provides high availability and geo-replication but does not support multi-region writes or global low-latency distribution. Azure Database for PostgreSQL is region-specific and lacks native global distribution. Azure Table Storage is a simple NoSQL key-value store that cannot provide multi-region writes or guaranteed low-latency access globally.

By implementing Azure Cosmos DB, organizations can achieve a globally distributed, resilient, and high-performing database architecture that meets AZ-305 best practices for modern, real-time, event-driven applications. Its scalability, consistency options, and global reach make it uniquely suited for IoT telemetry and other latency-sensitive workloads.

Question 170

A company wants to implement a serverless workflow to process storage events, HTTP requests, and queue messages, scaling automatically. Which service is appropriate?

Answer

A) Azure Functions
B) Azure VMs
C) Azure Kubernetes Service
D) Azure App Service Plan (Dedicated)

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure Functions. Azure Functions provides a fully managed, serverless environment that can handle event-driven workloads with automatic scaling, eliminating the need for provisioning servers or managing infrastructure. It can respond to triggers from HTTP requests, Blob storage events, and queue messages, making it ideal for IoT data ingestion, order processing, and real-time analytics workflows. Security is enhanced through Key Vault integration and managed identities, ensuring credentials are never exposed. Observability is provided through Application Insights, capturing execution metrics, latency, and error rates. Durable Functions allow orchestration of complex workflows with retry logic and sequential execution, supporting high-volume, enterprise-scale operations. Compared to VMs, AKS, or dedicated App Service plans, Azure Functions offers dynamic scaling, minimal operational overhead, and high availability, making it fully aligned with AZ-305 objectives for resilient serverless architecture.

Question 171

A company wants to implement a multi-region, high-availability application that handles global traffic with low latency and provides automatic failover in case of regional outages. Which services should they deploy?

Answer

A) Azure Front Door, Azure App Service with Auto Scale, and Azure SQL Database with geo-replication
B) Azure Load Balancer, Azure VMs, and SQL Server
C) Azure Application Gateway, AKS, and PostgreSQL single instance
D) Azure CDN and Table Storage

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure Front Door, Azure App Service with Auto Scale, and Azure SQL Database with geo-replication. For globally distributed applications, low-latency performance and high availability are critical. Azure Front Door provides global HTTP/HTTPS load balancing, automatically routing users to the nearest healthy region, ensuring minimal latency and continuous availability. Azure App Service with Auto Scale adjusts instance counts dynamically based on traffic metrics, eliminating the need for manual intervention and enabling applications to handle sudden spikes in demand, which is essential for enterprise-grade applications such as e-commerce platforms or streaming services. SQL Database geo-replication ensures data is replicated across multiple regions, supporting failover in case a region becomes unavailable, while maintaining transactional consistency. Compared to using VMs with Load Balancer, which require manual scaling and are regionally constrained, or AKS with PostgreSQL single instance, which lacks global failover, this architecture provides fully managed services, automatic resilience, and low-latency global access. Azure CDN and Table Storage only handle static content and are not suitable for dynamic, transactional multi-region applications. This solution aligns with AZ-305 objectives for designing globally distributed, resilient, and high-performing applications.

Question 172

A company wants a serverless, event-driven architecture that can process IoT telemetry and queue messages with automatic scaling and secure access to secrets. Which service should they implement?

Answer

A) Azure Functions
B) Azure Virtual Machines
C) Azure Kubernetes Service
D) Azure App Service Plan (Dedicated)

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure Functions. Azure Functions provides a fully managed, event-driven platform that automatically scales based on incoming events, which is essential for workloads that fluctuate or require rapid response times. Functions can be triggered by HTTP requests, Blob storage changes, Service Bus queues, and Event Grid events, making it ideal for IoT telemetry ingestion, processing, and downstream analytics. Security is enhanced through Key Vault integration and managed identities, allowing sensitive credentials like connection strings and API keys to be retrieved securely at runtime without embedding them in code. Observability is provided by Application Insights, enabling monitoring of execution metrics, performance, and error detection, which is critical for high-volume, enterprise-scale operations. Durable Functions allow orchestration of complex, long-running workflows, including fan-out/fan-in patterns, sequential execution, and retries, ensuring reliability and resiliency. Compared to VMs, which require manual scaling, AKS, which introduces unnecessary complexity, and dedicated App Service Plans, Azure Functions offers automatic scaling, minimal operational overhead, and high availability, fully aligning with AZ-305 objectives for resilient serverless architectures.

Question 173

A company needs a globally distributed NoSQL database for real-time telemetry processing, with support for low-latency reads, multi-region writes, and elastic scaling. Which service should they deploy?

Answer

A) Azure Cosmos DB
B) Azure SQL Database
C) Azure Database for PostgreSQL
D) Azure Table Storage

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure Cosmos DB. Cosmos DB is designed for high-throughput, globally distributed workloads, making it ideal for IoT telemetry or event-driven pipelines that require real-time processing. It supports multi-region writes, allowing data to be ingested in the user’s local region, reducing latency while maintaining consistency across regions through automated conflict resolution. Cosmos DB provides five consistency levels—strong, bounded staleness, session, consistent prefix, and eventual—enabling developers to balance performance and data correctness according to application needs. Elastic scaling is achieved through horizontal partitioning and Request Units per second (RU/s), allowing applications to handle millions of events per second without degradation. Integration with Azure Functions, Event Grid, and Stream Analytics enables real-time pipelines for processing, enriching, and storing telemetry data. Security is enforced via encryption at rest and in transit, private endpoints, role-based access control, and Key Vault integration, ensuring compliance with enterprise standards such as HIPAA and ISO 27001. Compared to SQL Database, PostgreSQL, or Table Storage, Cosmos DB uniquely supports low-latency, globally distributed, multi-region writes with elastic throughput, fully aligning with AZ-305 objectives for resilient, high-performance database architectures.

Question 174

A company wants to deploy a multi-tier application with high availability, automatic scaling, and secure secret management. Which services should they implement?

Answer

A) Azure App Service, Azure SQL Database zone-redundant, and Key Vault
B) Azure VMs, SQL Server, Storage Account
C) AKS with PostgreSQL single instance
D) Azure Functions with Cosmos DB

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure App Service, Azure SQL Database zone-redundant, and Key Vault. In a multi-tier application architecture, separation of layers ensures scalability, security, and reliability. Azure App Service hosts the web and application tiers in a fully managed environment, providing automatic scaling, built-in load balancing, deployment slots, and monitoring capabilities. The zone-redundant SQL Database ensures high availability across availability zones, protecting against failures in a single zone and providing disaster recovery capabilities. Key Vault securely stores API keys, connection strings, and certificates, accessible via managed identities, eliminating hard-coded credentials. This setup reduces operational overhead compared to manually managed VMs or AKS clusters, while providing enterprise-grade resiliency, security, and scalability. Compared to serverless architectures like Functions with Cosmos DB, this solution maintains relational consistency and transactional integrity, aligning with AZ-305 objectives for secure, scalable, and highly available multi-tier architectures.

Question 175

A company wants to deploy a highly available, globally distributed e-commerce platform with low-latency access, automatic failover, and secure authentication. Which services are optimal?

Answer

A) Azure Front Door, Azure SQL Database with geo-replication, and Azure AD B2C
B) Azure Load Balancer, SQL Server on VMs, and VPN Gateway
C) Azure Application Gateway, Bastion, and PostgreSQL single instance
D) Azure CDN and Table Storage

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure Front Door, Azure SQL Database with geo-replication, and Azure AD B2C. For a globally distributed e-commerce platform, low-latency access and high availability are critical for both customer experience and business continuity. Azure Front Door provides global load balancing, SSL offload, and failover routing, ensuring requests are directed to the nearest healthy backend. SQL Database with geo-replication allows real-time data replication across regions, enabling failover and disaster recovery while maintaining transactional integrity. Azure AD B2C provides secure authentication, supporting social logins, multi-factor authentication, and regulatory compliance. Alternatives such as VMs or regional databases lack automatic global failover and scaling, while CDN and Table Storage only handle static content and cannot process dynamic e-commerce transactions. This architecture meets AZ-305 objectives for designing resilient, globally distributed, and secure web applications with operational efficiency and low-latency performance.

Question 176

A company wants a serverless event-processing workflow that can handle millions of messages daily with automatic scaling and integration with secure secrets. Which service should they deploy?

Answer

A) Azure Functions
B) Azure VMs
C) Azure Kubernetes Service
D) Azure App Service Plan (Dedicated)

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure Functions. Azure Functions enables serverless, event-driven processing, scaling automatically based on incoming events such as HTTP requests, blob storage changes, and queue messages. It is ideal for IoT telemetry, order processing, or real-time analytics pipelines. Security is enhanced through Key Vault integration and managed identities, allowing secure retrieval of credentials. Observability is provided by Application Insights, which captures execution metrics, error rates, and performance data. Durable Functions can orchestrate complex, long-running workflows, including sequential processing and fan-out/fan-in patterns, ensuring reliability for enterprise-scale workloads. Compared to VMs, AKS, or dedicated App Service Plans, Azure Functions reduces operational overhead, automatically scales, and provides high availability, aligning fully with AZ-305 objectives for resilient, scalable serverless architectures.

Question 177

A company needs a globally distributed NoSQL database for real-time telemetry, with low-latency reads, multi-region writes, and elastic throughput. Which service is optimal?

Answer

A) Azure Cosmos DB
B) Azure SQL Database
C) Azure Database for PostgreSQL
D) Azure Table Storage

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure Cosmos DB. Cosmos DB is purpose-built for high-throughput, globally distributed, low-latency workloads, such as IoT telemetry, gaming, or e-commerce. Multi-region writes allow users to ingest data in their local region, reducing latency while automatically handling data consistency across regions. Cosmos DB provides five consistency levels, allowing developers to balance performance and accuracy. Elastic scaling via Request Units per second (RU/s) and horizontal partitioning ensures the database can handle millions of events per second. Integration with Azure Functions and Event Grid enables real-time event pipelines, while encryption, RBAC, private endpoints, and Key Vault integration ensure security and compliance. Compared to relational databases or Table Storage, Cosmos DB is uniquely suited for low-latency, globally distributed, high-throughput workloads, aligning with AZ-305 objectives for resilient, high-performing database solutions.

The optimal service for a company requiring a globally distributed NoSQL database for real-time telemetry, with low-latency reads, multi-region writes, and elastic throughput, is Azure Cosmos DB. Azure Cosmos DB is a fully managed, purpose-built NoSQL database designed for high-throughput and low-latency workloads that are globally distributed. It is ideal for scenarios such as IoT telemetry ingestion, gaming backends, social media applications, and e-commerce platforms where data must be ingested and accessed quickly from multiple geographic regions. Multi-region writes enable users to write data in their nearest region, reducing latency for data ingestion while Cosmos DB automatically manages replication and consistency across all configured regions. This ensures that applications can deliver real-time performance to users around the world.

Cosmos DB offers five well-defined consistency levels—strong, bounded staleness, session, consistent prefix, and eventual consistency—allowing developers to select the appropriate balance between performance and data correctness based on application requirements. The database is horizontally partitioned, and elastic scaling through Request Units per second (RU/s) allows it to handle millions of requests per second without degradation in performance. This capability makes it highly suitable for large-scale telemetry systems that must process vast volumes of events reliably.

Integration with other Azure services enhances Cosmos DB’s utility in event-driven architectures. Azure Functions can process data in real time as it is ingested, while Event Grid can route events to multiple downstream applications for analytics or operational processing. Security is enforced through encryption at rest and in transit, role-based access control, private endpoints, and integration with Azure Key Vault for secure secret management, ensuring compliance with enterprise and regulatory standards.

Alternative options are less suitable. Azure SQL Database and PostgreSQL are relational databases that lack native multi-region write support and cannot provide the same low-latency global access for telemetry workloads. Azure Table Storage is a simple key-value store that does not offer elastic scaling, advanced consistency models, or multi-region write capabilities.

By implementing Azure Cosmos DB, organizations can achieve a globally distributed, resilient, and high-performing NoSQL database, capable of handling real-time telemetry at scale. This aligns with AZ-305 best practices for designing enterprise-grade, globally available, and highly scalable database solutions.

Question 178

A company wants a multi-tier application with high availability, automatic scaling, and secure credentials management. Which architecture is recommended?

Answer

A) Azure App Service, Azure SQL Database zone-redundant, and Key Vault
B) Azure VMs, SQL Server, Storage Account
C) AKS with PostgreSQL single instance
D) Azure Functions with Cosmos DB

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure App Service, Azure SQL Database zone-redundant, and Key Vault. In multi-tier applications, separating the web, application, and database layers ensures scalability, reliability, and security. Azure App Service manages the web and application tiers in a fully managed environment with automatic scaling, deployment slots, and integrated monitoring. Zone-redundant SQL Database ensures availability across multiple availability zones, protecting against single-zone failures, while Key Vault secures secrets and certificates, accessible through managed identities. This reduces operational overhead compared to manual VM management or AKS clusters while maintaining enterprise-grade security, availability, and scalability, fully aligning with AZ-305 exam objectives.

Question 179

A company needs a globally distributed e-commerce platform with low-latency reads, high availability, and secure authentication. Which services are optimal?

Answer

A) Azure Front Door, Azure SQL Database with geo-replication, and Azure AD B2C
B) Azure Load Balancer, SQL Server on VMs, and VPN Gateway
C) Azure Application Gateway, Bastion, and PostgreSQL single instance
D) Azure CDN and Table Storage

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure Front Door, Azure SQL Database with geo-replication, and Azure AD B2C. Global e-commerce platforms require low-latency access and high availability to maintain customer experience and revenue continuity. Azure Front Door provides global routing, failover, and SSL offload, while SQL Database geo-replication ensures data redundancy and failover across regions. Azure AD B2C enables secure authentication with social login and multi-factor authentication. Alternatives such as VMs or regional databases lack automatic failover and scaling, while CDN/Table Storage only handles static content. This solution aligns with AZ-305 objectives for resilient, secure, and globally distributed applications.

Question 180

A company wants a serverless event-driven workflow for millions of daily messages, with automatic scaling, secure secrets access, and observability. Which service is appropriate?

Answer

A) Azure Functions
B) Azure Virtual Machines
C) Azure Kubernetes Service
D) Azure App Service Plan (Dedicated)

Explanation

The correct answer is A) Azure Functions. Azure Functions provides serverless, event-driven processing with automatic scaling, ideal for handling high-volume workloads such as IoT telemetry, e-commerce order processing, or real-time analytics. It integrates with HTTP triggers, blob storage events, queues, and Event Grid for flexible event-driven workflows. Security is enhanced via Key Vault and managed identities, while observability is provided by Application Insights to monitor performance, errors, and latency. Durable Functions allow orchestration of complex workflows, including sequential processing and fan-out/fan-in patterns. Compared to VMs, AKS, or dedicated App Service Plans, Azure Functions reduces operational overhead, automatically scales, and provides high availability, fully meeting AZ-305 objectives for resilient serverless architectures.

The most appropriate service for a company seeking a serverless, event-driven workflow capable of processing millions of messages daily with automatic scaling, secure secrets access, and full observability is Azure Functions. Azure Functions provides a fully managed, serverless compute platform that allows code to execute in response to a wide variety of events. Its serverless nature removes the need for manual infrastructure management, enabling developers to focus entirely on application logic. Automatic scaling ensures that workloads are efficiently handled, dynamically allocating resources as demand increases or decreases, making it ideal for high-volume scenarios such as IoT telemetry processing, e-commerce order workflows, and real-time analytics pipelines.

Azure Functions supports multiple types of triggers to enable flexible event-driven architectures. HTTP triggers allow the creation of serverless APIs that respond to client requests. Blob storage triggers enable automatic processing when files are uploaded or modified, which is valuable for ETL tasks, image processing, or document workflows. Queue triggers, such as Azure Storage Queues or Service Bus, facilitate reliable asynchronous message processing, allowing different parts of the system to operate independently while maintaining high throughput. Event Grid triggers expand these capabilities further, enabling integration with other Azure services or external systems to create fully reactive pipelines. Durable Functions add orchestration capabilities for complex workflows, supporting sequential execution, fan-out/fan-in patterns, and state management across multiple function executions, which is essential for long-running or multi-step processes.

Security is built into the platform through integration with Azure Key Vault and managed identities. This allows functions to access sensitive credentials, secrets, or certificates securely without embedding them in code. Observability and monitoring are provided by Application Insights, offering detailed telemetry, performance metrics, and alerting for errors and latency.

Alternative options are less suitable. Virtual Machines require manual provisioning, patching, and scaling, increasing operational overhead. Azure Kubernetes Service introduces unnecessary complexity for event-driven workloads. Dedicated App Service Plans cannot automatically scale in response to event-driven workloads, reducing flexibility and cost efficiency.

By leveraging Azure Functions, organizations can build a secure, resilient, and fully managed serverless workflow that scales automatically and processes millions of events daily, aligning with AZ-305 best practices for scalable, high-performance, and operationally efficient event-driven architectures.