Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate Practice Test (AZ-104)

AzCopy is a command-line tool that allows for efficient data transfer to and from Azure Storage accounts. It supports scripting and automation, making it ideal for transferring large datasets. Azure Storage Explorer is a graphical tool better suited for manual operations and smaller data transfers. The Azure Import/Export service involves shipping physical disks to Microsoft data centers, which is unnecessary given the reliable internet connection. The Azure Portal is not designed for transferring large amounts of data or for automation through scripts.

By configuring Azure Monitor to collect data from your backups and using a Log Analytics workspace for reporting, you can centralize backup data from multiple environments and regions into a single location. This setup enables unified and comprehensive reporting with rich visualization and analytics capabilities for your backup data.

Using the built-in monitoring capabilities of each backup vault limits reporting to individual vaults and doesn't provide a unified view across environments or regions.

Implementing Azure Policy helps in auditing and enforcing backup configurations but doesn't offer detailed operational reports on backup jobs and restore activities.

Azure Advisor provides recommendations for optimizing resources but doesn't supply detailed backup reporting.

Organizing resources into separate resource groups for each department allows for effective management of access control, policy application, and cost tracking at the resource group level. This approach simplifies administration by grouping resources logically according to departmental needs. Using tags (Option B) aids in metadata management but does not inherently provide structured access control or policy enforcement. Placing all resources in one group (Option C) complicates department-specific management. Allocating separate subscriptions (Option D) may be excessive unless departments require complete isolation and can introduce additional complexity in subscription management.

Azure Blob Lifecycle Management enables administrators to define rules that automate moving blobs between access tiers (Hot, Cool, Archive) based on conditions like age or last modification date. It also allows for automatic deletion of blobs when they meet specified criteria. This helps optimize storage costs by efficiently managing the data lifecycle without manual intervention.

Azure Blob Versioning maintains previous versions of blobs but doesn't automate tiering or deletion based on rules. Azure Blob Soft Delete protects blobs from accidental deletion but doesn't move blobs between tiers or delete them automatically after a period. Azure Blob Snapshots create read-only versions of blobs at a point in time but don't offer automated management based on lifecycle policies.

Implementing a policy that denies the creation of virtual machines in specified regions is the most effective method. Azure Policy allows you to define and enforce rules that govern resource properties during deployment and for already existing resources. This ensures compliance by automatically preventing non-compliant resources from being created. Removing user permissions may not be practical or efficient, as it requires managing permissions for each user. Setting up resource locks does not prevent deployment but rather protects resources from accidental deletion or modification. Relying on users to comply without enforcement does not guarantee adherence to compliance requirements.

Azure Private DNS zones allow you to manage and resolve domain names within a virtual network without exposing the records to the public internet. This ensures secure internal communication using domain names. Azure Public DNS zones publish DNS records to the internet, which is not suitable in this scenario. Azure Traffic Manager is a traffic load balancer and does not provide internal name resolution. Azure ExpressRoute provides private connections between Azure and on-premises networks but does not address internal name resolution.

Application Security Groups (ASGs) allow you to group virtual machines based on application or workload, enabling the creation of network security rules that reference these groups. By associating the VMs with an ASG, administrators can apply and manage network access policies more efficiently through Network Security Groups (NSGs) that target the ASG. Resource Groups are used for organizing Azure resources but cannot have network policies applied directly to them. Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) facilitate deployment and management of identical VMs but are not intended for grouping VMs for network access rule management. Tags are metadata labels for categorizing resources and cannot be directly referenced in network security rules.

Joining the devices to your organization's cloud directory allows users to sign in with their organizational accounts and enables centralized management and policy enforcement through Microsoft Intune. This approach ensures that devices are properly managed and secured. Registering devices is typically used for personal or bring-your-own-device (BYOD) scenarios and does not provide the same level of management control. Joining devices to a local Active Directory domain does not meet the requirement for cloud-based sign-in and management. Enrolling devices in Mobile Device Management for Office 365 offers limited management capabilities compared to Microsoft Intune.

To enable the web frontend and background service to communicate over localhost, they must be deployed within the same container group in Azure Container Instances (ACI). A container group allows multiple containers to share the same network namespace and local IP address, facilitating inter-container communication via localhost. Deploying them in separate container groups or using different services would not allow localhost communication.

To configure backups for Azure virtual machines, you need to create a Recovery Services vault. A Recovery Services vault is an Azure resource that stores backup data and recovery points, and provides the interface to manage backups and restores. A Storage Account is used for general-purpose storage but is not designed specifically for backups. A Backup Policy defines the schedule and retention of backups but does not store the backup data itself. A Resource Group is a container used to manage multiple Azure resources but does not store backup data.

Azure Backup's File Recovery feature allows administrators to browse and recover individual files and folders from an Azure VM backup without restoring the entire VM. This is useful when only specific files need to be restored. The other options either do not support file-level recovery or are used for different purposes, such as whole VM snapshots or disaster recovery.

To use your own encryption keys for encrypting data at rest in an Azure Storage account, you need to configure customer-managed keys stored in Azure Key Vault. This approach lets you control and manage the encryption keys, enhancing security compliance. Microsoft-managed keys are managed by Azure and do not allow the use of your own keys. Client-side encryption involves encryption performed by the client application and is not configured at the storage account level. Azure Active Directory does not store encryption keys for storage account encryption.

When virtual network peering is established, traffic between the peered networks is routed directly and privately over the Microsoft Azure backbone. It does not traverse the public internet, which provides significant security and performance benefits. A VPN Gateway is a different component used for other connectivity scenarios, like site-to-site connections or VNet-to-VNet connections that require encryption, but it is not part of the standard VNet peering path. Traffic is not sent over the public internet. An Azure Load Balancer is used to distribute traffic to a set of backend resources, not to route traffic between distinct virtual networks.

To collect and analyze performance data from Azure virtual machines using Azure Monitor Logs, you need to create a Log Analytics workspace and configure the virtual machines to send their logs to it. The Log Analytics workspace acts as a centralized repository for log data, allowing you to run queries, perform detailed analysis, and set up alerts based on specific conditions.

Enabling Azure Monitor metrics collects performance data but does not provide the ability to run detailed queries on log data or create custom alerts based on those logs. Configuring virtual machines to send logs to a Storage Account stores the data but does not offer built-in analysis or querying capabilities within Azure Monitor. Enabling Azure Advisor provides best practice recommendations but does not facilitate the collection or analysis of logs from virtual machines.

Using Shared Access Signatures (SAS) allows you to grant limited and specific access to storage account resources without exposing the account keys. SAS provides fine-grained control over permissions and duration of access, reducing the risk associated with key exposure and following security best practices. Storing account keys in Azure Key Vault and retrieving them in applications still involves using the account keys directly, which can increase risk if an application is compromised. Regularly regenerating keys and distributing them to applications can cause disruptions and does not eliminate the risk of key exposure. Disabling one of the keys reduces redundancy and can make key rotation difficult without addressing the underlying issue of key exposure.

To reduce storage costs for infrequently accessed blobs, you should change their access tier to Archive. The Archive tier offers the lowest storage costs but higher access costs and latency, making it suitable for data that is rarely accessed. Enabling blob versioning or soft delete helps with data protection and recovery but does not reduce storage costs. Configuring a CDN (Content Delivery Network) is used for reducing latency and improving content delivery performance, not for reducing storage costs.

Creating a custom backup policy with multiple retention ranges for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly backups allows the organization to meet their complex retention requirements within a single policy. This approach minimizes administrative overhead by automating backups and retention without the need to manage multiple policies. Using the default backup policy would not meet the specific retention needs. Configuring separate backup policies increases administrative effort, contrary to the requirement of minimal overhead. Azure Site Recovery is designed for disaster recovery, not for meeting specific backup retention policies.

Azure Files provides fully managed shared storage accessible via the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol, allowing multiple clients to read and write files simultaneously. Azure Blob Storage is optimized for storing unstructured object data and does not support SMB access. Azure Queue Storage is used for messaging between services, and Azure Table Storage is for storing structured NoSQL data. Therefore, Azure Files is the appropriate service for creating a network file share accessible via SMB.

To achieve this, you should set the storage account's firewall settings to permit access from the required external sources. This involves configuring the firewall to allow traffic only from the specific public IP addresses associated with your on-premises locations. This approach effectively blocks all other network traffic over the Internet. Integrating the storage account with a virtual network in Azure won't help because on-premises networks aren't part of Azure's virtual networks. Enabling private endpoints restricts access to within Azure virtual networks or through private connections, not over the Internet from specific external locations. Activating Azure Active Directory authentication manages identity-based access but doesn't control network-level access based on source addresses.

To allow internet users to access VM1 over port 80 without assigning a public address directly to the VM, you should set up an Azure Load Balancer with a public frontend. The load balancer forwards incoming traffic on port 80 to VM1's private address, complying with the security policy. Assigning a public address to a subnet is not possible and does not enable inbound traffic to the VM. A NAT gateway provides outbound connectivity for VMs without public addresses but does not support inbound connections. Azure Traffic Manager is used for DNS-based traffic load balancing across multiple endpoints and does not facilitate direct inbound access to a single VM.