AZ-301 Research & Evidence-Based Practice 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: An architect is researching Azure cost anomalies to build evidence for a budget overrun root-cause report. Which Azure Cost Management feature detects unexpected spending spikes automatically?
- Cost anomaly detection alerts in Azure Cost Management (Correct answer)
- Azure Advisor cost recommendations
- Azure Policy cost enforcement
- Azure Reservations utilization report
Correct answer: Cost anomaly detection alerts in Azure Cost Management
Azure Cost Management's anomaly detection uses machine learning to identify and alert on unexpected cost spikes, providing evidence for root-cause analysis.
Question 2: When designing a research pipeline that ingests large volumes of IoT sensor data into Azure for batch analysis, which service combination is most evidence-aligned for high-throughput ingestion followed by analytics?
- Azure Event Hubs for ingestion + Azure Synapse Analytics for batch processing (Correct answer)
- Azure Service Bus + Azure SQL Database
- Azure Notification Hubs + Azure Blob Storage
- Azure API Management + Azure Table Storage
Correct answer: Azure Event Hubs for ingestion + Azure Synapse Analytics for batch processing
Event Hubs is purpose-built for millions of events per second, and Synapse Analytics provides distributed batch analytics at petabyte scale for IoT research workloads.
Question 3: A research team wants to track experiment results and model metrics for Azure Machine Learning runs to compare hypothesis outcomes over time. Which AML feature provides this capability?
- Azure ML Experiments and Run History with MLflow tracking (Correct answer)
- Azure Monitor custom metrics
- Azure DevOps pipeline artifacts
- Azure Data Factory pipeline monitoring
Correct answer: Azure ML Experiments and Run History with MLflow tracking
Azure ML integrates MLflow experiment tracking, storing metrics, parameters, and artifacts per run so researchers can compare hypothesis outcomes across experiments.
Question 4: An architect needs evidence of data lineage and transformation accuracy across an Azure Data Factory pipeline for a compliance audit. Which ADF feature captures this information?
- ADF Monitor pipeline run details with activity input/output logging (Correct answer)
- Azure Policy audit mode
- Azure Cost Management export
- Azure Purview glossary terms
Correct answer: ADF Monitor pipeline run details with activity input/output logging
ADF's monitoring pane records each activity's input/output payload, duration, and status, providing auditable evidence of data lineage through the pipeline.
Question 5: To build evidence for a security posture report, an architect must aggregate security findings across 15 Azure subscriptions. Which service is designed for this multi-subscription aggregation?
- Microsoft Defender for Cloud with management group scope (Correct answer)
- Azure Policy initiative compliance dashboard per subscription
- Azure Monitor cross-workspace queries
- Azure Security Center per-subscription secure score
Correct answer: Microsoft Defender for Cloud with management group scope
Defender for Cloud can be scoped to management groups, aggregating secure scores and security findings across all child subscriptions into a unified report.
Question 6: A governance team is researching which Azure resources lack required tags for chargeback evidence. Which approach efficiently identifies all non-compliant resources across subscriptions?
- Azure Policy with a 'require tag' initiative assigned at management group scope, reviewed via the Compliance dashboard
- Manual Azure Portal resource group review
- Azure Advisor operational excellence recommendations
- Azure Resource Graph Explorer with a tag-presence filter query (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Azure Resource Graph Explorer with a tag-presence filter query
Azure Resource Graph Explorer runs KQL queries across all subscriptions instantly, making it the fastest way to enumerate resources missing specific tags as compliance evidence.
Question 7: Researchers need immutable audit evidence that Azure Blob Storage objects were not altered after upload for a regulatory investigation. Which feature provides cryptographically verifiable immutability?
- Azure Blob Storage immutability policies (WORM) with time-based retention locks (Correct answer)
- Azure Backup soft delete
- Azure Storage versioning
- Azure Key Vault secret rotation
Correct answer: Azure Blob Storage immutability policies (WORM) with time-based retention locks
Blob immutability policies with locked time-based retention enforce WORM compliance, and the locked state itself serves as cryptographically verifiable evidence of non-tampering.
AZ-301 Research & Evidence-Based Practice 3
An architect is researching Azure cost anomalies to build evidence for a budget overrun root-cause report.
Which Azure Cost Management feature detects unexpected spending spikes automatically?