Azure Administrator Associate · 23% of the exam

Deploy and manage compute resources: free practice questions

5 sample questions from our 58-question bank for this domain — answers and explanations included. These are the same scenario-based style as the real Azure exam.

1. A development team is using Azure Container Instances (ACI) to run a containerized batch job. They notice that when the container group restarts, all files written inside the container's local filesystem are lost. They need the data to persist across container group restarts. What is the MOST appropriate solution?

  • A. Increase the CPU and memory allocated to the container group
  • B. Mount an Azure Files share as a volume in the container group✓ Correct
  • C. Enable a restart policy of 'Always' on the container group
  • D. Use a multi-container group and copy files between containers
Explanation

ACI container local filesystems are ephemeral and destroyed on restart. Mounting an Azure Files share as a volume provides persistent storage that survives container group restarts and can be shared across containers, which is the supported and recommended approach for ACI data persistence. — Increasing CPU and memory affects compute resources but has no effect on storage persistence. — Setting the restart policy to 'Always' ensures the container restarts on failure but does not change the fact that the local filesystem is wiped on each restart — data still won't persist. — Using a multi-container group to copy files between containers does not help because all containers in the group share the same ephemeral lifecycle; data is still lost when the group restarts.

2. An administrator needs to deploy Azure infrastructure using Bicep. After authoring the Bicep file, they want to validate that the template will not create or modify any existing resources before executing the actual deployment. Which command should they run?

  • A. az deployment group create --template-file main.bicep --mode Incremental
  • B. az deployment group validate --template-file main.bicep
  • C. az deployment group what-if --template-file main.bicep✓ Correct
  • D. az bicep build --file main.bicep
Explanation

The 'az deployment group what-if' command performs a what-if analysis that shows exactly which resources would be created, modified, or deleted without making any actual changes — this is the pre-deployment preview capability. — 'az deployment group create --mode Incremental' actually executes the deployment and creates/modifies real resources; Incremental mode means existing resources not in the template are left alone, but it still makes changes. — 'az deployment group validate' checks the template for syntactic and semantic correctness (schema validation, parameter types, etc.) but does not predict resource-level changes or show what would be created/modified. — 'az bicep build' transpiles the Bicep file into an ARM JSON template for inspection or other use, but does not interact with Azure or validate against existing resources.

3. A company needs to deploy a large number of Azure resources using an ARM template. The deployment fails partway through, and the administrator re-runs the template. After the second deployment, some resources that were created in the first run appear to be duplicated. Which ARM template deployment mode was most likely being used, and what change would prevent the duplication?

  • A. Incremental mode was used; switching to Complete mode would reconcile the resource state with the template✓ Correct
  • B. Complete mode was used; switching to Incremental mode would skip already-deployed resources
  • C. Incremental mode was used; adding a 'dependsOn' property to all resources would prevent duplication
  • D. Complete mode was used; enabling idempotent resource names with uniqueString() would prevent duplication
Explanation

Incremental mode (the default) only adds or updates resources defined in the template — it does not remove resources that exist in the resource group but are not in the template. If the first deployment created some resources and then failed, re-running in Incremental mode may attempt to create certain resources again (especially if they have dynamic naming or the failure left them in a partial state), potentially causing duplication. Complete mode deploys only what is in the template and deletes any resources in the resource group that are NOT in the template, ensuring the deployed state exactly matches the template. Switching to Complete mode would reconcile state. Adding 'dependsOn' controls deployment order and has no effect on duplication. Using uniqueString() for names addresses naming collisions but doesn't address the underlying mode issue causing state drift.

4. A company has a Standard_D8s_v5 Azure VM running a memory-intensive workload. The finance team requests a cost analysis. The administrator is asked to identify which disk configuration provides the HIGHEST IOPS per GB of storage cost for a 1 TB data disk attached to this VM. Which managed disk type should be recommended?

  • A. Standard HDD (S30)
  • B. Standard SSD (E30)
  • C. Premium SSD v1 (P30)✓ Correct
  • D. Ultra Disk (1 TB, 5000 IOPS)
Explanation

Premium SSD v1 (P30) provides 5,000 IOPS at a predictable, relatively low cost per GB for a 1 TB disk and is the most cost-effective option for high-IOPS workloads among the standard managed disk tiers. Option A (Standard HDD) offers very low IOPS (up to 500) making it cost-inefficient for IOPS-intensive workloads. Option B (Standard SSD E30) offers up to 500 IOPS — better than HDD for reliability but still significantly lower IOPS than Premium SSD at a not-proportionally-lower price for this use case. Option D (Ultra Disk) provides extremely high IOPS but at a much higher cost, and when analyzing IOPS per dollar for a standard 1 TB 5000-IOPS configuration, Premium SSD v1 P30 (which already delivers 5000 IOPS) is more cost-efficient than Ultra Disk for the same IOPS level.

5. A company is migrating a legacy on-premises application to Azure VMs. The application requires three tiers: web, application, and database. Each tier must be resilient to a single hardware failure, and the solution must minimize the number of VM instances required. The company does NOT require protection from an entire Azure datacenter failure. Which availability option should be used for the VMs in each tier?

  • A. Availability sets with fault domains set to 2 and update domains set to 5✓ Correct
  • B. Availability zones spanning at least two zones per tier
  • C. A Virtual Machine Scale Set with zone-redundant deployment
  • D. Azure Site Recovery with cross-region replication
Explanation

Availability sets protect against single hardware failures (single rack/server failures) within a single datacenter by distributing VMs across fault domains (separate power/network) and update domains (planned maintenance groups). They require a minimum of 2 VMs per tier, which minimizes instance count. The company explicitly does NOT need protection from a full datacenter failure, making availability zones unnecessary. Availability zones protect against full datacenter failures but require VMs across at least 2–3 zones, increasing the minimum instance count and cost per tier. A VMSS with zone-redundant deployment also implies zone-level protection and auto-scaling, which adds complexity beyond what's needed. Azure Site Recovery provides cross-region disaster recovery — it is designed for region-level failures, not hardware-level resilience, and involves significant additional cost and complexity.

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