Azure Solutions Architect Expert · 32% of the exam

Design infrastructure solutions: free practice questions

5 sample questions from our 15-question bank for this domain — answers and explanations included. These are the same scenario-based style as the real Azure exam.

1. An architect must recommend a regional layer-7 load balancer that provides URL path-based routing, SSL offload, and a web application firewall for a web app hosted on Azure VMs/AKS. Which service fits BEST?

  • A. Azure Application Gateway (with WAF)✓ Correct
  • B. Azure Load Balancer (layer 4)
  • C. Azure Traffic Manager
  • D. Azure Bastion
Explanation

Azure Application Gateway is a regional layer-7 (HTTP/HTTPS) load balancer offering path-based routing, SSL offload, and integrated WAF. Load Balancer (B) is layer 4, Traffic Manager (C) is DNS-based global routing (no per-request layer-7 features or WAF), and Bastion (D) is VM access.

2. An application needs a centralized store for feature flags and configuration values shared across multiple services, with dynamic refresh. Which Azure service should the design use?

  • A. Azure App Configuration✓ Correct
  • B. Azure Key Vault only
  • C. Azure Blob Storage
  • D. Azure Cache for Redis as a config store with no management features
Explanation

Azure App Configuration centralizes application settings and feature flags with dynamic refresh and labeling across services. Key Vault (B) is for secrets specifically (often used alongside App Configuration), Blob storage (C) lacks config-management features, and Redis (D) is a cache, not a managed config service.

3. A design must ingest millions of telemetry events per second from IoT devices for real-time analytics. Which Azure service is purpose-built for high-throughput event streaming ingestion?

  • A. Azure Event Hubs✓ Correct
  • B. Azure Service Bus queues
  • C. Azure Files
  • D. Azure SQL Database
Explanation

Azure Event Hubs is a big-data streaming ingestion service handling millions of events per second for real-time pipelines. Service Bus queues (B) target enterprise messaging at lower throughput per entity, Azure Files (C) is a file share, and SQL Database (D) is relational — neither is a high-volume event stream ingestor.

4. A migration requires moving a large on-premises SQL Server database to Azure with minimal downtime and continuous data sync during cutover. Which tool should the architect recommend?

  • A. Azure Database Migration Service (online migration)✓ Correct
  • B. Manually copying MDF files once
  • C. Azure Site Recovery for the database only
  • D. Exporting to CSV and re-importing
Explanation

Azure Database Migration Service supports online migrations with continuous replication until cutover, minimizing downtime. A one-time MDF copy (B) requires extended downtime and risks drift, Site Recovery (C) targets VM/workload DR not database migration, and CSV export/import (D) is lossy and slow for large databases.

5. An event-driven design must decouple producers and consumers so that a burst of order messages is buffered and processed reliably, with each message handled once. Which Azure messaging service should the architect recommend?

  • A. Azure Service Bus queues✓ Correct
  • B. Azure Cache for Redis
  • C. Azure Front Door
  • D. Azure Policy
Explanation

Azure Service Bus provides enterprise messaging with queues (and topics) for reliable, decoupled, at-least-once/exactly-once-friendly processing of order messages. Redis (B) is a cache, Front Door (C) is global HTTP load balancing, and Policy (D) is governance — none is a reliable message broker.

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Design infrastructure solutions — Free Azure Solutions Architect Expert Practice Questions | DataCertPrep — Certification Prep