AZ-301 Data & Storage Architecture 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A data architect needs to design a solution for ingesting, storing, and analyzing large volumes of data from multiple sources with both batch and real-time processing capabilities. Which Azure service provides this unified analytics platform?
- Azure Data Factory
- Azure Databricks
- Azure Synapse Analytics (Correct answer)
- Azure HDInsight
Correct answer: Azure Synapse Analytics
Azure Synapse Analytics is a unified analytics platform that integrates big data and data warehousing with both batch processing and real-time analytics in a single service.
Question 2: An architect must design a solution where Azure Cosmos DB consistency needs to balance between strong consistency for reads and high write throughput globally. Which consistency level provides linearizability with lowest write latency tradeoff?
- Strong
- Bounded Staleness (Correct answer)
- Session
- Eventual
Correct answer: Bounded Staleness
Bounded Staleness guarantees reads lag writes by at most K versions or T time interval, providing strong ordering guarantees with better write throughput than Strong consistency.
Question 3: A company needs to implement a hot path and cold path architecture (lambda architecture) for IoT data on Azure. Which combination of services best represents this pattern?
- Event Hubs + Stream Analytics (hot) and Data Factory + Synapse (cold) (Correct answer)
- Service Bus + Functions (hot) and SQL Database (cold)
- Event Grid + Logic Apps (hot) and Blob Storage (cold)
- IoT Hub + Functions (hot) and Cosmos DB (cold)
Correct answer: Event Hubs + Stream Analytics (hot) and Data Factory + Synapse (cold)
Event Hubs with Stream Analytics handles the real-time hot path while Data Factory with Synapse Analytics processes historical batch data in the cold path of a lambda architecture.
Question 4: An architect needs to choose between Azure Blob Storage and Azure Files for a scenario where multiple Azure VMs running Windows need to access a shared file system via SMB protocol. Which service is appropriate?
- Azure Blob Storage
- Azure Files (Correct answer)
- Azure NetApp Files
- Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2
Correct answer: Azure Files
Azure Files provides fully managed file shares accessible via SMB and NFS protocols, suitable for shared file system access across multiple Azure VMs.
Question 5: A company wants to implement geo-redundant storage for their Azure SQL Database to ensure data is replicated to a paired region for disaster recovery with an RPO of less than 5 seconds. Which feature should be configured?
- Azure SQL Database geo-replication
- Azure SQL Database active geo-replication (Correct answer)
- Azure SQL Database auto-failover groups
- Azure SQL Database long-term retention
Correct answer: Azure SQL Database active geo-replication
Azure SQL Database active geo-replication creates up to 4 readable secondary replicas in paired or other regions with asynchronous replication achieving RPO typically under 5 seconds.
Question 6: An architect is designing a document storage solution for an application that requires schema flexibility, rich queries with indexing on all fields, and horizontal scaling. Which Azure NoSQL service best fits this requirement?
- Azure Table Storage
- Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL (SQL API) (Correct answer)
- Azure Cache for Redis
- Azure Cosmos DB for Cassandra
Correct answer: Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL (SQL API)
Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL (SQL API) provides schema-less document storage with automatic indexing on all fields and rich SQL query capabilities with global scaling.
AZ-301 Data & Storage Architecture 2
A data architect needs to design a solution for ingesting, storing, and analyzing large volumes of data from multiple sources with both batch and real-time processing capabilities.
Which Azure service provides this unified analytics platform?