AZ-301 Case Studies & Practical Application 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A financial services company needs to migrate a legacy on-premises SQL Server to Azure while ensuring zero data loss and minimal downtime during cutover. Which migration approach is most appropriate?
- Azure Database Migration Service in online mode (Correct answer)
- Backup and restore to Azure SQL Managed Instance
- Log shipping to Azure SQL Database
- Detach and attach database files via Azure Blob Storage
Correct answer: Azure Database Migration Service in online mode
Azure Database Migration Service in online mode enables continuous data sync and minimal-downtime cutover for SQL Server migrations.
Question 2: A retail company's e-commerce platform experiences traffic spikes of 10x normal load during holiday sales. The solution must auto-scale and minimize cost during off-peak hours. Which architecture best addresses this?
- Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets with a fixed instance count
- Azure App Service with auto-scale rules tied to CPU and HTTP queue length (Correct answer)
- A single large Azure VM with reserved pricing
- Azure Container Instances with manual scaling triggers
Correct answer: Azure App Service with auto-scale rules tied to CPU and HTTP queue length
Azure App Service auto-scale rules based on CPU and HTTP queue metrics allow elastic scaling that matches demand and reduces costs when idle.
Question 3: A healthcare organization must ensure patient data stored in Azure Blob Storage is encrypted with customer-managed keys and that key access can be revoked immediately if a breach is detected. What should the architect configure?
- Azure Storage Service Encryption with Microsoft-managed keys
- Azure Key Vault with customer-managed keys and soft-delete disabled
- Azure Key Vault with customer-managed keys, purge protection enabled, and storage account CMK integration (Correct answer)
- BitLocker encryption on the storage account
Correct answer: Azure Key Vault with customer-managed keys, purge protection enabled, and storage account CMK integration
CMK integration with purge protection ensures data becomes inaccessible upon key revocation while preventing accidental permanent key deletion.
Question 4: A global media company streams video content to users worldwide. Latency must be under 50ms for 95% of users. Which Azure service combination is most appropriate?
- Azure CDN with origin in a single Azure region
- Azure Front Door with Azure CDN and geo-distributed storage using Azure Media Services (Correct answer)
- Azure Traffic Manager with round-robin routing
- Azure Application Gateway with WAF enabled
Correct answer: Azure Front Door with Azure CDN and geo-distributed storage using Azure Media Services
Azure Front Door provides global load balancing and acceleration, while CDN edge nodes cache content close to users to minimize latency.
Question 5: An enterprise migrates a three-tier application to Azure. The web tier must be publicly accessible, but the application and database tiers must only communicate internally. Which design enforces this isolation?
- Deploy all tiers in a single VNet with a single subnet and use NSGs to control traffic
- Deploy web tier in a public subnet, app and DB tiers in private subnets within the same VNet, with NSGs restricting traffic between subnets (Correct answer)
- Use separate VNets for each tier with no peering
- Place all tiers behind Azure Application Gateway with WAF
Correct answer: Deploy web tier in a public subnet, app and DB tiers in private subnets within the same VNet, with NSGs restricting traffic between subnets
Using public and private subnets with NSGs in a single VNet enforces tier isolation while allowing controlled internal communication.
Question 6: A manufacturing company needs near-real-time analytics on IoT sensor data from 50,000 devices. The solution must handle millions of events per second and enable ad-hoc SQL queries. Which pipeline is correct?
- IoT Hub → Azure Stream Analytics → Azure Synapse Analytics (Correct answer)
- Event Grid → Azure Functions → Azure SQL Database
- IoT Hub → Azure Data Factory → Azure Blob Storage
- Event Hubs → Azure Logic Apps → Azure Cosmos DB
Correct answer: IoT Hub → Azure Stream Analytics → Azure Synapse Analytics
IoT Hub ingests device data, Stream Analytics processes events in real-time, and Synapse Analytics enables SQL-based analytics at scale.
Question 7: A company's DR plan requires an RTO of 15 minutes and an RPO of 5 minutes for a critical Azure SQL Database workload. Which configuration achieves this?
- Geo-replication with manual failover and hourly backups
- Active geo-replication with auto-failover groups configured (Correct answer)
- Point-in-time restore with a 6-hour backup frequency
- Azure SQL Database Business Critical tier with zone redundancy only
Correct answer: Active geo-replication with auto-failover groups configured
Active geo-replication with auto-failover groups provides automatic failover meeting a 15-minute RTO with continuous log shipping achieving near-zero RPO.
AZ-301 Case Studies & Practical Application 2
A financial services company needs to migrate a legacy on-premises SQL Server to Azure while ensuring zero data loss and minimal downtime during cutover.
Which migration approach is most appropriate?