Microsoft AZ-305 Exam Questions 2025

A. Yes: This is incorrect because Azure Load Balancer is a regional Layer 4 service and lacks the required global routing, regional failover, and native rate-limiting capabilities.

1. Azure Architecture Center - Load-balancing options. This document explicitly states, "For global routing, we recommend Azure Front Door." It also categorizes Azure Load Balancer as a Regional load balancer, contrasting it with Global options like Front Door and Traffic Manager, which are necessary for regional outage scenarios.

Source: Microsoft Learn, Azure Architecture Center. (2023). Load-balancing options. Section: "Azure load-balancing services".

2. Azure Load Balancer overview. This documentation confirms that "Azure Load Balancer operates at layer 4 of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model" and is a regional resource, which means it cannot route traffic between regions.

Source: Microsoft Learn. (2023). What is Azure Load Balancer?. Section: "Introduction".

3. Web Application Firewall (WAF) rate limiting. This document details how rate limiting is a feature of Azure Application Gateway WAF and Azure Front Door, not Azure Load Balancer. It states, "Rate limiting allows you to detect and block abnormally high levels of traffic from any client IP address."

Source: Microsoft Learn. (2023). Rate limiting on Azure Application Gateway. Section: "Overview".

A. Azure Data Lake is a scalable data storage and analytics service. It is designed for big data workloads, not for real-time, transactional messaging between services.

B. Azure Notification Hubs is a massively scalable mobile push notification engine. Its purpose is to send notifications to client applications on various platforms, not for backend service-to-service communication.

D. Azure Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform for building and deploying microservices. While you could build a messaging system on it, it is not the messaging service itself.

1. Microsoft Documentation, "What is Azure Queue Storage?": "Azure Queue Storage is a service for storing large numbers of messages. You access messages from anywhere in the world via authenticated calls using HTTP or HTTPS. A queue message can be up to 64 KB in size. A queue may contain millions of messages, up to the total capacity limit of a storage account. Queues are commonly used to create a backlog of work to process asynchronously."

Source: Microsoft Docs, Azure Storage Documentation, Queues.

2. Microsoft Documentation, "Storage queues and Service Bus queues - compared and contrasted": "Azure Queue Storage... provides a simple REST-based Get/Put/Peek interface, providing reliable, persistent messaging within and between services... Use Queue storage when you need to store over 80 gigabytes of messages in a queue [and] you want a simple, easy to use queue." This document highlights its use for decoupling application components for increased scalability and reliability.

Source: Microsoft Docs, Azure Architecture Center, Application integration.

3. Microsoft Documentation, "What is Azure Notification Hubs?": "Azure Notification Hubs provide an easy-to-use and scaled-out push engine that allows you to send notifications to any platform (iOS, Android, Windows, etc.) from any back-end (cloud or on-premises)."

Source: Microsoft Docs, Azure Notification Hubs Documentation, Overview.

4. Microsoft Documentation, "Introduction to Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2": "Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 is a set of capabilities dedicated to big data analytics, built on Azure Blob Storage."

Source: Microsoft Docs, Azure Storage Documentation, Data Lake Storage.

A. The Azure AD provisioning service automates creating and managing user identities in other applications; it does not configure an application's authentication audience.

C. Azure AD Privileged Identity Management (PIM) is used to manage, control, and monitor access to privileged roles, not to enable standard cross-tenant user authentication.

D. Azure AD pass-through authentication is a sign-in method for hybrid identity that validates user passwords against an on-premises Active Directory; it is not relevant for cross-tenant authentication.

1. Microsoft Documentation: How to: Sign in any Azure Active Directory user using the multi-tenant application pattern.

Reference: In the section "Update the registration to be multi-tenant," the document states: "If you have an existing application and you want to make it multi-tenant, you need to open the application registration in the Azure portal and update Supported account types to Accounts in any organizational directory." This directly supports the chosen answer.

2. Microsoft Documentation: Quickstart: Register an application with the Microsoft identity platform.

Reference: In the "Register an application" section, step 4, "Supported account types," explicitly defines the option "Accounts in any organizational directory (Any Azure AD directory - Multitenant)" as the method to allow users with a work or school account from any organization to sign into the application.

3. Microsoft Documentation: Tenancy in Azure Active Directory.

Reference: The "App-level considerations" section explains the difference between single-tenant and multi-tenant applications. It clarifies that a multi-tenant application is "available to users in both its home tenant and other tenants." This conceptual document underpins the need to change the application's tenancy model to meet the requirement.

B. Azure SQL Database Hyperscale: While it supports zone redundancy, this tier is designed for very large databases (VLDBs) and is not the most cost-effective option for general high-availability scenarios.

C. Azure SQL Database Basic: This tier does not support zone-redundant configurations and cannot meet the requirement to remain available during a zone outage.

D. Azure SQL Managed Instance Business Critical: This option meets the availability and data-loss requirements but is generally more expensive than Azure SQL Database Premium, failing the cost-minimization constraint.

1. Microsoft Documentation, "High availability for Azure SQL Database and SQL Managed Instance": Under the "Zone-redundant availability" section, it states, "Zone-redundant configuration is available for databases in the... Premium, Business Critical, and Hyperscale service tiers... When you provision a database or an elastic pool with zone redundancy, Azure SQL creates multiple synchronous secondary replicas in other availability zones." This confirms that Premium meets the zone outage and no data loss requirements.

2. Microsoft Documentation, "vCore purchasing model - Azure SQL Database": The "Premium service tier" section describes it as being designed for "I/O-intensive workloads that require high availability and low-latency I/O." The documentation confirms that zone redundancy is a configurable option for this tier.

3. Microsoft Documentation, "Service Tiers in the DTU-based purchase model": This document shows that the Basic tier has a "Basic availability" model with a single database file and is not designed for high availability or zone redundancy.

4. Microsoft Documentation, "Compare the vCore and DTU-based purchasing models of Azure SQL Database": This page highlights that the Premium tier (in both models) is designed for high performance and high availability, whereas Managed Instance is for "lift-and-shift of the largest number of SQL Server applications to the cloud with minimal changes," which often comes at a higher price point.

Azure Blob storage is the optimal choice for image storage. It's specifically designed to store massive amounts of unstructured data, such as images, videos, and documents. It easily accommodates files up to 50 MB and provides server-side encryption by default, satisfying both requirements. Storing large binary files directly in a database is generally inefficient and not recommended.

Azure SQL Database is the most suitable service for customer accounts. Customer account data is typically structured and relational (e.g., user ID, name, email, password). As a fully managed relational database-as-a-service, Azure SQL Database provides transactional consistency, data integrity, and robust querying capabilities, which are essential for managing user account information effectively.

Azure Blob Storage Documentation: Microsoft's official documentation states that Azure Blob storage is optimized for storing massive amounts of unstructured data. Common use cases include "Serving images or documents directly to a browser" and "Storing files for distributed access."

Source: Microsoft Docs, "Introduction to Azure Blob storage," Use cases section.

Azure SQL Database Documentation: The official documentation describes Azure SQL Database as a fully managed relational database service built for the cloud. It is ideal for applications that require a relational data model with transactional consistency and data integrity, making it a standard choice for storing structured data like user profiles and customer accounts.

Source: Microsoft Docs, "What is Azure SQL Database?," Overview section.

Comparison of Azure Storage Options: Microsoft's "Choose a data storage approach in Azure" guide recommends Blob storage for "images, videos, documents...large binary objects" and relational databases like Azure SQL Database for "transactional data" and data requiring a "high degree of integrity," such as customer information.

Source: Microsoft Azure Architecture Center, "Choose a data storage approach in Azure," Relational databases and Blob storage sections.

A. Azure Synapse Analytics is a large-scale data warehousing and big data analytics service, not designed for low-latency transactional application caching.

B. Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) is used to cache static web content (like images and scripts) at edge locations, not dynamic data from a database.

C. Azure Data Factory is a cloud-based data integration (ETL/ELT) service for orchestrating data movement and transformation, not for real-time application performance improvement.

1. Microsoft Documentation, Azure Cache for Redis. "What is Azure Cache for Redis?". Under the section "Common scenarios," the first listed scenario is "Data cache." It states, "It's a common technique to cache data in-memory... to improve the performance of an application. Caching with Azure Cache for Redis can increase performance by orders of magnitude."

2. Microsoft Documentation, Azure Architecture Center. "Cache-Aside pattern". This document describes the exact pattern for solving the problem in the question: "Load data on demand from a data store into a cache. This can improve performance and also helps to maintain consistency between data held in the cache and data in the underlying data store."

3. Microsoft Documentation, Azure Synapse Analytics. "What is Azure Synapse Analytics?". The overview clearly defines it as "a limitless analytics service that brings together data integration, enterprise data warehousing, and big data analytics." This is distinct from an application performance cache.

A. Azure SQL Database Standard: This service tier does not support zone-redundant configurations and cannot meet the requirement for availability during a zone outage.

C. Azure SQL Managed Instance General Purpose: This service tier does not support zone redundancy. Only the Business Critical tier for SQL Managed Instance offers this capability.

D. Azure SQL Database Premium: While this tier supports zone redundancy and ensures no data loss, it is more expensive than the Serverless/General Purpose tier, failing the cost minimization requirement.

1. Microsoft Learn | High availability for Azure SQL Database and SQL Managed Instance: Under the "Zone-redundant availability" section, it states, "Zone-redundant availability is available for databases in the General Purpose, Premium, Business Critical, and Hyperscale service tiers." It also explicitly states, "Zone redundancy for the serverless compute tier of the General Purpose service tier is generally available." This confirms that Serverless (B) and Premium (D) support zone redundancy, while Managed Instance General Purpose (C) does not.

2. Microsoft Learn | vCore purchasing model overview - Azure SQL Database: This document compares the service tiers. The "General Purpose service tier" section describes it as a "budget-oriented" option suitable for "most business workloads." The "Premium service tier" is described as being for "I/O-intensive production workloads." This supports the choice of a General Purpose-based option (Serverless) for cost minimization over Premium.

3. Microsoft Learn | Serverless compute tier for Azure SQL Database: This document details the cost model for Serverless, stating it "bills for the amount of compute used per second." This model is designed to optimize costs, particularly for workloads with intermittent usage patterns, reinforcing its position as the most cost-effective choice among the zone-redundant options.

A. SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA): SSMA is primarily for assessing and migrating from heterogeneous (non-SQL) database sources like Oracle or DB2 to SQL Server or Azure SQL, not for SQL-to-SQL migrations.

B. Azure Migrate: Azure Migrate is a central hub for discovery, assessment, and migration planning. For the actual database migration execution, it integrates with and uses Azure Database Migration Service (DMS).

C. Data Migration Assistant (DMA): DMA is primarily an assessment tool to identify compatibility issues. While it can perform small-scale migrations, it is not designed for orchestrating the migration of many databases, which would increase administrative effort.

1. Azure Database Migration Service Documentation: "Tutorial: Migrate SQL Server to Azure SQL Managed Instance offline using DMS". This official tutorial explicitly states, "You can use Azure Database Migration Service to migrate the databases from an on-premises SQL Server instance to an Azure SQL Managed Instance." It details the offline migration process using native backups, which is the scenario described.

Source: Microsoft Docs, "Tutorial: Migrate SQL Server to Azure SQL Managed Instance offline using DMS", Prerequisites section.

2. Azure Database Migration Service Overview: "Azure Database Migration Service is a fully managed service designed to enable seamless migrations from multiple database sources to Azure Data platforms with minimal downtime." This highlights its role as a managed, orchestrated service, which aligns with minimizing administrative effort.

Source: Microsoft Docs, "What is Azure Database Migration Service?", Overview section.

3. Data Migration Assistant (DMA) Documentation: "Data Migration Assistant (DMA) helps you upgrade to a modern data platform by detecting compatibility issues that can impact database functionality... After assessing, DMA helps you migrate your schema, data, and uncontained objects from your source server to your target server." This positions DMA as an assessment tool with migration capabilities, but not as the primary orchestration service for large-scale migrations like DMS.

Source: Microsoft Docs, "Overview of Data Migration Assistant", Introduction section.

Azure Event Hubs Capture automatically archives streaming data to a user-specified storage container. This feature supports either an Azure Blob Storage or an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account for storing the captured data. Therefore, Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 is a valid storage type to provision.

The data is always written in the Apache Avro format, which is a compact, fast, binary format that includes the schema inline. Consequently, any downstream reporting system consuming the data from the capture destination must be able to read and process files in the Avro format.

Microsoft Azure Documentation, "Overview of Event Hubs Capture."

Section: Introduction

Content: "Event Hubs Capture enables you to automatically deliver the streaming data in Event Hubs to an Azure Blob storage or Azure Data Lake Storage account of your choice... Captured data is written in Apache Avro format: a compact, fast, binary format that provides rich data structures with inline schema."

Microsoft Azure Documentation, "Capture streaming events using the Azure portal."

Section: Enable Event Hubs Capture

Content: "For Capture provider, select Azure Storage Account... Event Hubs writes the captured data in Apache Avro format." This section details the configuration where the user must select a compatible storage account type.

A. storage queues with a custom metadata setting: Azure Storage Queues are designed for high-throughput and do not guarantee FIFO ordering. Custom metadata is for annotating queues and does not influence message processing order.

C. Azure Service Bus queues with partitioning enabled: Partitioning is a feature for increasing throughput and availability by distributing the queue across multiple message brokers. It can disrupt strict ordering unless used in conjunction with sessions.

D. storage queues with a stored access policy: A stored access policy is a security mechanism for managing access permissions via Shared Access Signatures (SAS) and has no impact on the message delivery order.

---

1. Microsoft Azure Documentation, "Message sessions": "To realize a FIFO guarantee in Service Bus, use sessions. Message sessions enable joint and ordered handling of unbounded sequences of related messages." (Section: "Message sessions", Paragraph 1).

2. Microsoft Azure Documentation, "Storage queues and Service Bus queues - compared and contrasted": "Service Bus sessions enable you to process messages in a first-in, first-out (FIFO) manner... Azure Storage Queues don't natively support FIFO ordering." (Section: "Feature comparison", Table Row: "Ordering").

3. Microsoft Azure Documentation, "Partitioned messaging entities": "When a client sends a message to a partitioned queue or topic, Service Bus checks for the presence of a partition key. If it finds one, it selects the partition based on that key... If a partition key isn't specified but a session ID is, Service Bus uses the session ID as the partition key." This highlights that partitioning alone doesn't guarantee order; it's the session ID that ensures related messages land on the same partition to maintain order. (Section: "Use of partition keys").