AZ-400 Continuous Delivery & Release Management 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which strategy in Azure Pipelines deployments replaces instances in batches rather than all at once or one at a time?
- Canary
- Blue-green
- Rolling (Correct answer)
- Runonce
Correct answer: Rolling
The rolling strategy updates a subset of instances at a time, reducing downtime while gradually replacing the old version across all targets.
Question 2: What is the primary benefit of using environment approvals in Azure Pipelines YAML over classic release approvals?
- They support automated gate evaluation only
- They integrate natively with YAML pipelines and can be reused across multiple pipelines (Correct answer)
- They eliminate the need for service connections
- They automatically roll back failed deployments
Correct answer: They integrate natively with YAML pipelines and can be reused across multiple pipelines
Environment approvals in YAML pipelines are defined on the environment resource, making them reusable across any pipeline that targets that environment.
Question 3: A team uses Azure Container Registry (ACR) as a release artifact source. Which trigger type should they configure to start a release when a new image is pushed?
- Schedule-based trigger
- CD trigger on the ACR artifact (Correct answer)
- Pull request trigger
- Manual-only trigger
Correct answer: CD trigger on the ACR artifact
Configuring a continuous deployment (CD) trigger on the ACR artifact source automatically creates a new release when a matching container image is pushed.
Question 4: In Azure Pipelines, which variable scope takes the highest precedence when the same variable is defined at multiple levels?
- Pipeline-level variables
- Stage-level variables
- Job-level variables
- Queue-time variables (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Queue-time variables
Queue-time (run-time) variables set when manually triggering a pipeline override all other variable scopes including stage and job definitions.
Question 5: Which Azure Pipelines feature allows a single pipeline to produce artifacts consumed by a downstream release pipeline automatically?
- Pipeline chaining via build completion trigger (Correct answer)
- Deployment group agent
- Environment approvals
- Multi-stage YAML gates
Correct answer: Pipeline chaining via build completion trigger
Build completion triggers let a release pipeline start automatically when an upstream CI pipeline produces new artifacts, chaining CI and CD pipelines together.
Question 6: What does the 'maxParallel' property control in a rolling deployment strategy within Azure Pipelines?
- The maximum number of pipeline agents that can run simultaneously
- The number of deployment targets updated concurrently per rolling batch (Correct answer)
- The maximum number of retry attempts for a failed deployment
- The number of approval reviewers required in parallel
Correct answer: The number of deployment targets updated concurrently per rolling batch
maxParallel in a rolling strategy defines how many targets in the deployment group receive the update simultaneously in each batch.
Question 7: Which Azure DevOps feature provides a centralized view of all deployments across environments, including their current version and health status?
- Release summary dashboard
- Environments hub in Azure Pipelines (Correct answer)
- Deployment group health monitor
- Azure Monitor workbook
Correct answer: Environments hub in Azure Pipelines
The Environments hub in Azure Pipelines shows deployment history, resource health, and currently deployed versions across all tracked environments.
AZ-400 Continuous Delivery & Release Management 3
Which strategy in Azure Pipelines deployments replaces instances in batches rather than all at once or one at a time?