Mixed Deck — All AZ-200 Topics Flashcards

What kind of storage does the Azure App Service file system provide, and what is its main limitation?

Answer: Ephemeral local storage that is lost on restarts for apps without persistent storage configured

The App Service local file system is ephemeral for free/shared tiers and is shared Azure Files storage for Standard+, meaning local writes may not persist across instances.

To enable meaningful analysis of user interactions with a mobile app, you must utilize the Azure Mobile Apps SDK to implement Application Insights instrumentation features. To use Application Insights' Usage Analytics feature, you must first collect the necessary data. What information should you collect? Each accurate response reveals a piece of the solution.

Answer: Events

Explanation: After your app has been onboarded to App Center, it must be changed to transmit custom event telemetry using the App Center SDK. Custom events are the only sort of telemetry that can be sent using the App Center SDK. Telemetry from the App Center that is sent to Application Insights.

Which Application Insights telemetry type captures unhandled exceptions and manually logged errors?

Answer: Exception telemetry

Exception telemetry in Application Insights captures unhandled exceptions and exceptions explicitly tracked with TrackException(), including stack traces.

Which HTTP authorization level requires callers to include a function-specific API key in the request?

Answer: Function

The Function authorization level requires a function key (or higher) to be passed with each request, limiting access to authorized callers.

What is the maximum number of instances the Consumption Plan will scale a single function app to by default?

Answer: 200 instances

On the Consumption Plan, Azure Functions scales out to a default maximum of 200 instances per function app.

What is the purpose of a stored procedure in Azure Cosmos DB?

Answer: To execute atomic, transactional operations on items within a single partition

Stored procedures in Cosmos DB run server-side JavaScript and execute atomically within a single logical partition, supporting ACID transactions.

What is the purpose of using a synthetic partition key in Azure Cosmos DB?

Answer: To combine multiple properties into a single high-cardinality partition key

A synthetic partition key concatenates or hashes multiple fields to create a high-cardinality key, ensuring even data distribution across partitions.

Which consistency level in Azure Cosmos DB guarantees that reads always return the most recently written value?

Answer: Strong

Strong consistency guarantees that reads always reflect the latest committed write, providing linearizability at the cost of higher latency.

What is the purpose of the Azure Monitor Workbooks feature?

Answer: Creating interactive, shareable dashboards that combine metrics, logs, and visualizations

Azure Monitor Workbooks provide interactive, parameterized dashboards combining metrics, KQL log queries, and visualizations that can be shared across teams.

Which deployment method packages the function app into a ZIP file and mounts it read-only, improving startup performance?

Answer: Run-from-package (WEBSITE_RUN_FROM_PACKAGE=1)

Setting WEBSITE_RUN_FROM_PACKAGE=1 causes the host to mount the deployment ZIP read-only, reducing I/O overhead and improving cold start times.

What is the key difference between Azure Service Bus queues and Azure Storage queues?

Answer: Service Bus supports advanced features like sessions, dead-lettering, and duplicate detection; Storage queues are simpler and cheaper

Azure Service Bus provides enterprise messaging features like message sessions, dead-letter queues, duplicate detection, and transactions, while Storage queues are simpler and cost-effective.

What is the purpose of adaptive sampling in Application Insights?

Answer: Reduces telemetry volume by sending a statistical sample of requests while preserving data accuracy

Adaptive sampling dynamically adjusts the fraction of telemetry sent to Application Insights to stay within data volume limits while preserving statistical accuracy.

Using Azure Service Fabric, you're creating a dependable stateless service. In Azure, the service will run in a five-node cluster. During peak periods, you configure auto-scale rules to scale out the cluster. Every legitimate node in the Azure Service Fabric cluster must run the service. The service must be updated. What are your options?

Answer: Set the value of the InstanceCount property to -1

Explanation: The upper limit for scaling is defined by the Maximum Instance Count. The service will not be scaled out if the number of instances of the partition surpasses this limit, regardless of the load. By supplying a value of -1, this limit can be ignored, and the service can be scaled out as much as possible (the limit is the number of nodes that are available in the cluster).

Which Cosmos DB SDK method is used to perform an efficient point read by specifying both the item ID and partition key?

Answer: container.ReadItemAsync(id, partitionKey)

ReadItemAsync performs a single-partition lookup using both the item ID and partition key, consuming the minimum possible RUs for a read.

Which conflict resolution policy in Cosmos DB multi-master automatically picks the winning write based on the highest timestamp?

Answer: Last-Write-Wins (LWW) using _ts

Last-Write-Wins uses the _ts (timestamp) property by default to automatically resolve write conflicts by selecting the item with the highest timestamp.

What is the purpose of the WEBSITE_RUN_FROM_PACKAGE app setting in Azure App Service?

Answer: Runs the app directly from a ZIP package without extracting files

WEBSITE_RUN_FROM_PACKAGE allows Azure App Service to run the application directly from a ZIP archive, improving deployment reliability.

When deploying Azure Functions in a container, which environment variable must be set to instruct the host not to install extensions?

Answer: FUNCTIONS_EXTENSION_VERSION

FUNCTIONS_EXTENSION_VERSION should be set to ~4 (or the appropriate major version) in containerized deployments so the host uses the bundled extensions rather than downloading them.

Which Azure service provides centralized secrets management with HSM-backed key storage and audit logging?

Answer: Azure Key Vault

Azure Key Vault provides a centralized, cloud-hosted vault for secrets, keys, and certificates with optional HSM backing, RBAC, and full audit logging via Azure Monitor.

Which Durable Functions pattern is best suited for running multiple independent tasks in parallel and aggregating their results?

Answer: Fan-out/fan-in

The fan-out/fan-in pattern starts multiple activity functions simultaneously and waits for all of them to complete before aggregating results.

What is the maximum default timeout for an Azure Function running on the Consumption Plan?

Answer: 10 minutes

On the Consumption Plan the default timeout is 5 minutes and the maximum allowed is 10 minutes.