Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate Practice Test (AZ-104)

Configuring Azure Entra ID authentication for the storage account enables users to access blobs using their corporate credentials. This approach integrates with your organization's existing identity management, enhancing security and simplifying access control. Using shared access signatures or distributing access keys would require managing and securing keys or tokens, which you aim to avoid. Enabling anonymous access would significantly reduce security and is not appropriate for sensitive data.

Using Azure Backup reports with a Log Analytics workspace is the appropriate solution. Azure Backup reports offer built-in monitoring and reporting capabilities by collecting data into a Log Analytics workspace. This allows you to analyze backup data across multiple subscriptions, vaults, and regions, providing detailed insights into backup jobs, alerts, and usage patterns.

Configuring Azure Monitor metrics (Option A) can track some aspects of backup status but lacks the depth and historical analysis required for comprehensive reporting. Creating custom Power BI reports (Option C) would involve extensive manual setup and may not capture all necessary backup details effectively. Implementing Azure Advisor recommendations (Option D) focuses on best practices and optimizations, not on generating detailed backup reports.

Using the bulk create users feature in the Azure portal allows you to import multiple user accounts at once by uploading a CSV file containing the user details. This method is efficient for creating a large number of users. Creating each user individually through the portal or scripting each account separately with PowerShell would be time-consuming. Microsoft Support does not offer a service to create user accounts on behalf of administrators.

The backup feature is available only on App Service plans in the dedicated compute tiers-Basic, Standard, Premium, or Isolated. If the app is running in the Free or Shared tier, the Backups blade is hidden until the plan is scaled up. Application Insights, Azure AD integration, and SSL certificates are optional features and are not required to turn on backups.

To minimize downtime, you should regenerate one of the access keys, update the applications to use the regenerated key, and then regenerate the second key. This method ensures that at any given time, one valid key is available for the applications to use, preventing service interruption. Regenerating both keys simultaneously would invalidate both keys, causing the applications to lose access immediately. Deleting and recreating the storage account is unnecessary and could result in data loss. Pausing the applications leads to downtime, which the goal is to avoid.

Application Security Groups (ASGs) allow you to group virtual machines based on their application roles, enabling you to apply network security group (NSG) rules to these groups rather than individual IP addresses or subnets. This approach simplifies the management of network security by providing a scalable method to control traffic flow for different workloads. Assigning the same NSG to all VMs does not provide the necessary granularity for different applications. Placing workloads in separate subnets with individual NSGs increases complexity and reduces flexibility. Implementing Azure Firewall is unnecessary for controlling traffic within a virtual network and adds unnecessary cost and complexity.

To restore individual files from a VM backup, you should use Azure Backup to initiate a file recovery. This process allows you to browse and restore files and folders from a recovery point without restoring the entire VM. Azure Backup mounts the recovery point as a disk on VM1, enabling you to access and copy the required files.

Restoring the entire VM to a new virtual machine is unnecessary when only a single file needs to be restored, and it is more time-consuming.

Creating a snapshot of VM1 does not help in this situation because the current VM is already corrupted, and snapshots only capture the current state.

Azure Storage Explorer cannot access Azure Backup recovery points directly; it is used to manage Azure Storage resources, not to retrieve files from VM backups.

Using Shared Access Signatures (SAS) allows the administrator to grant temporary, limited access to resources in the storage account without sharing the account keys or requiring standard authentication. SAS tokens can specify permissions, such as read access, and set an expiration time, providing secure and granular access control. Stored access policies are used with SAS to manage constraints for one or more shared access signatures but don't grant access on their own. Distributing account keys is insecure and provides full access to the storage account. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) requires clients to authenticate, which these clients cannot do.

To enable replication of Azure virtual machines to a secondary region using Azure Site Recovery, you must first create a Recovery Services vault. This vault holds the configuration and management settings for site recovery and orchestrates the replication process. The other options—Azure Container Registry, Traffic Manager profile, and Network Security Group—do not facilitate VM replication for disaster recovery.

Applying a CanNotDelete lock to the resource group ProdRG is the appropriate action. A CanNotDelete lock prevents users from deleting the resource group or any resources within it but allows modifications. This ensures that critical resources are protected from accidental deletion while remaining editable. Applying a Read-only lock would be too restrictive, as it prevents any modifications to the resources, which might hinder normal operations. Assigning the Owner role to yourself does not prevent others with sufficient permissions from deleting resources. Enabling soft delete is not a feature that applies universally to all resources within a resource group.

Standard (S1) is the appropriate App Service plan tier because it provides all the required features at the lowest cost tier that supports them. The Standard tier supports automatic scaling to multiple instances, custom domains and SSL certificates, and deployment slots for testing. The Basic tier does not support auto-scaling or deployment slots. The Shared tier lacks support for custom domains, SSL, and auto-scaling. The Premium tier also meets the requirements but is more expensive and includes additional features not necessary in this scenario.

To allow access only from specific internet-based clients, you should configure the storage account's firewall settings to permit those clients. The firewall allows you to specify which public network locations (such as IP addresses) are allowed to access the storage account. Network Security Groups (NSGs) are used to control traffic at the subnet or network interface level within Azure Virtual Networks and cannot be applied directly to storage accounts. Azure DDoS Protection helps mitigate distributed denial-of-service attacks but does not restrict access to specific clients. Virtual Network Service Endpoints secure access to storage accounts from within Azure Virtual Networks, not from external clients on the internet.

Assigning the 'Storage Blob Data Reader' role to the users at the storage account level enables them to authenticate by using their Microsoft Entra ID credentials and grants them read access to the data. Distributing a Shared Access Signature (SAS) token or access keys involves sharing sensitive secrets and does not leverage Microsoft Entra ID authentication. Enabling public access would expose the data to anonymous users, compromising security.

After installing the Azure Monitor Agent, you need to create data collection rules in Azure Monitor to specify which data to collect from the virtual machines. Data collection rules define the events and performance counters to be gathered and sent to a Log Analytics workspace for analysis. Configuring diagnostic settings on the virtual machines is used for collecting platform metrics and logs to destinations like storage accounts or event hubs, but it does not involve the Azure Monitor Agent. Enabling Boot Diagnostics collects boot logs for troubleshooting startup issues and does not help in collecting Windows event logs or performance counters. Installing the Azure Diagnostics Agent is deprecated; the Azure Monitor Agent is the recommended solution for data collection.

The administrator should use Azure Entra ID B2B collaboration to invite guest users. This feature allows external users to access resources using their existing identities without the need to create new credentials. Azure Entra ID B2B provides secure collaboration capabilities for external users in a business-to-business scenario.

Creating new user accounts for external users is inefficient and does not leverage guest account features. Azure Entra ID B2C (Business-to-Consumer) is intended for consumer-facing applications and is not suitable for internal collaboration. Implementing a custom authentication solution is unnecessary when Azure Entra ID provides built-in features for guest access.

Using Azure Backup to back up VM1 with a daily backup policy is the best solution because Azure Backup provides VM-level backups with the ability to restore individual files or folders (file-level recovery). It supports scheduling daily backups and allows you to recover data at the file level without restoring the entire virtual machine.

Using Azure Site Recovery is intended for disaster recovery and replicates entire virtual machines to another region. It does not provide a straightforward way to restore individual files.

Enabling disk snapshots captures the state of VM disks at a point in time but does not support restoring individual files easily. Restoring from snapshots typically involves replacing entire disks.

Configuring a custom script to copy VM1’s VHD files to Azure Blob storage is not efficient and does not provide capabilities for file-level recovery. It also lacks the management and automation features provided by Azure Backup.

Azure Network Watcher Connection Monitor provides end-to-end monitoring of connectivity between Azure and on-premises resources. It enables you to analyze communication, measure latency, and diagnose issues, making it the appropriate tool for troubleshooting connectivity problems in a hybrid environment.

Azure Monitor Metrics collects and visualizes numerical data from Azure resources but does not specifically monitor communication between on-premises and Azure.

Azure Advisor offers recommendations to optimize Azure deployments but does not assist in monitoring network connectivity.

Azure Log Analytics collects and analyzes log data but does not actively monitor real-time communication between on-premises networks and Azure resources.

Creating a private endpoint for the storage account is the correct solution. A private endpoint assigns the storage account a private IP address within the specified subnet, which brings the service into the virtual network. By disabling public network access on the storage account, you ensure it is only accessible via its private IP, which meets the requirement to prevent internet access. A service endpoint secures the connection from a subnet to an Azure service's public endpoint over the Azure backbone network. While you can use firewall rules to restrict access to only the subnet with the service endpoint, the public endpoint itself is not disabled. Configuring a network security group (NSG) controls traffic flow within a virtual network but cannot prevent access to the storage account's public endpoint from the internet. Virtual network peering connects virtual networks to each other and does not directly control access to a storage account.

To allow users on the internet to access 'app.contoso.com', you need to create an A record in the 'contoso.com' zone that maps 'app' to the public IP address of the virtual machine. An A record associates a domain name with an IPv4 address, enabling clients to resolve the domain name to the address of the web application. A CNAME record cannot point directly to an IP address; it aliases one domain name to another domain name. NS records are used to delegate a subdomain to different name servers, and MX records are used for email routing. Therefore, creating an A record is the appropriate action.

By configuring a Private Endpoint for the Storage Account, you assign it a private IP address within your virtual network. This allows on-premises servers to access the Storage Account over the ExpressRoute connection without the traffic traversing the internet. Service Endpoints do not extend to on-premises networks and still rely on public IP addresses for the service. Azure Traffic Manager provides DNS-based traffic routing and does not facilitate private connectivity. Enabling Azure DDoS Protection enhances security but does not address the requirement for private network access.