Microsoft Azure Certifications (e.g. AZ-104, AZ-900) Deploy and Manage Azure Compute Resources (AZ-104) Flashcards

24 sample cards from the Deploy and Manage Azure Compute Resources (AZ-104) deck

Sampled from the end of the deck, so these are different cards from the ones shown on the syllabus page.

1. Given a scale set scaling rule, if average CPU exceeds the threshold, what action typically occurs? Express a sample autoscale condition.

   It scales out by adding instances. For example, a rule might be: if $\overline{\text{CPU}} > 70\%$ over 10 minutes, increase instance count by 1, up to the configured maximum.

2. What are the main ways to connect to and manage an Azure VM remotely?

   RDP (port 3389) for Windows, SSH (port 22) for Linux, Azure Bastion for browser-based secure access without public IPs, and the Serial Console for OS-level troubleshooting.

3. What is Azure Bastion and what problem does it solve?

   Azure Bastion is a managed PaaS service that provides secure RDP/SSH connectivity to VMs directly through the Azure portal over TLS, eliminating the need for public IP addresses on the VMs and reducing exposure to the internet.

4. What is the purpose of a Network Security Group (NSG) for VM connectivity?

   An NSG contains security rules that allow or deny inbound and outbound network traffic to/from Azure resources (NICs or subnets) based on source/destination IP, port, and protocol.

5. How are NSG rules evaluated, and what role does priority play?

   Rules are processed in order of priority (lower number = higher priority, range 100-4096). The first matching rule is applied and evaluation stops. Default rules (lowest priority) handle traffic not matched by custom rules.

6. What VM extension or service is used to run custom scripts/configuration after a VM is provisioned?

   The Custom Script Extension (or cloud-init for Linux) downloads and runs scripts to configure the VM post-deployment. The Desired State Configuration (DSC) extension can enforce ongoing configuration state.

7. What is Azure Container Instances (ACI) and its primary use case?

   ACI is a serverless service to run individual containers without managing VMs or orchestrators. It is ideal for short-lived, burst, batch, or simple single-container workloads with fast startup and per-second billing.

8. What is a container group in Azure Container Instances?

   A container group is a collection of containers scheduled on the same host machine, sharing lifecycle, network (IP and ports), and storage volumes - analogous to a Kubernetes pod.

9. What is Azure Container Registry (ACR) used for?

   ACR is a managed, private Docker registry for storing and managing container images and OCI artifacts, integrated with Azure services for secure image deployment.

10. What are the three service tiers (SKUs) of Azure Container Registry?

    Basic, Standard, and Premium. Premium adds features like geo-replication, private endpoints, content trust, and higher storage and throughput.

11. Which ACR feature lets you build container images in the cloud without a local Docker daemon?

    ACR Tasks (e.g., az acr build), which can build, run, and automate image builds in Azure, including on a schedule or triggered by source/base-image updates.

12. Which ACR tier supports geo-replication, and what does it provide?

    The Premium tier. Geo-replication keeps a single registry synchronized across multiple regions for network-close, fast image pulls and regional resilience.

13. What is Azure Container Apps and what does it abstract away?

    Azure Container Apps is a serverless container platform built on Kubernetes and KEDA/Dapr/Envoy that runs microservices and containerized apps without requiring you to manage the underlying Kubernetes infrastructure.

14. What scaling technology underpins Azure Container Apps, and what unique capability does it allow?

    KEDA (Kubernetes Event-Driven Autoscaling), which allows scaling based on HTTP traffic, events, or queue depth - including scaling to zero replicas when there is no demand.

15. In Azure Container Apps, what is a revision?

    A revision is an immutable snapshot of a container app version. New revisions are created on configuration/image changes, enabling traffic splitting, blue-green deployments, and rollback.

16. How does Azure Container Apps support traffic splitting between revisions?

    By assigning percentage weights to active revisions (e.g., 80% to one revision and 20% to another), enabling A/B testing and gradual blue-green rollouts.

17. What is Azure App Service?

    Azure App Service is a fully managed PaaS for building, hosting, and scaling web apps, REST APIs, and mobile backends in multiple languages, without managing the underlying infrastructure.

18. What is an App Service Plan and what does it define?

    An App Service Plan defines the compute resources (region, VM size/SKU, instance count, and pricing tier) on which one or more App Service apps run. All apps in the same plan share its resources.

19. Name the main App Service Plan pricing tiers from lowest to highest capability.

    Free and Shared (no SLA, shared infra), Basic, Standard, Premium (PremiumV2/V3), and Isolated (App Service Environment for network isolation and highest scale).

20. What is a deployment slot in Azure App Service and what is its key benefit?

    A deployment slot is a live app with its own hostname running in the same plan (e.g., a staging slot). You can deploy and warm up to staging, then swap with production for zero-downtime releases and easy rollback.

21. What happens during an App Service slot swap?

    The configuration and content of the source and target slots are exchanged. Slot-specific (sticky) settings stay with the slot, and the swapped-in instances are pre-warmed to achieve zero downtime.

22. What are the two scaling options in Azure App Service, and how do they differ?

    Scale up changes the pricing tier/VM size for more resources per instance (vertical). Scale out increases the number of instances running the app (horizontal), optionally via autoscale rules.

23. Compare ACI, Azure Container Apps, and AKS in terms of management overhead and use case.

    ACI: simplest, single/burst containers, no orchestration. Container Apps: serverless microservices with built-in autoscaling (KEDA/Dapr), no cluster management. AKS: full managed Kubernetes giving maximum control and configurability but the most operational overhead.

24. What is the difference between a spot (low-priority) VM and a regular pay-as-you-go VM?

    Spot VMs use Azure's spare capacity at a large discount but can be evicted with little notice when capacity is needed, making them suitable for interruptible, fault-tolerant workloads, not for high-availability production VMs.

What this deck covers

Deploy and Manage Azure Compute Resources (AZ-104) flashcards FAQ