Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions (AZ-305) Practice Test
Frequently asked questions
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A full bank of original Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions (AZ-305) practice questions across the official content areas, weighted like the real exam, with explanations. Free, no signup.
What is the Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions (AZ-305) exam like?+
A multiple-choice exam, 120 minutes, and you need 700 / 1000% to pass. Practice by topic here, then take the full timed mock exam to gauge readiness.
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No. Every question is 100% original, written from public primary sources with explanations. We never copy real exam questions or paid prep material.
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PrepPass practice is in English, 中文 and Español. The official exam is in English — switch the question language to English any time to rehearse the exact terminology you'll see on test day.
Sample practice questions
A few real questions from this free bank, with full explanations. Use the practice tool above for the whole set.
- 1. Design Identity, Governance, and Monitoring
An application running on an Azure VM must call Azure Key Vault and Azure Storage without any credentials stored in code or configuration. What should the architect design?
- a.A shared access key embedded in app settings
- b.A service principal with a client secret in code
- c.A managed identity for the VM granted access to Key Vault and Storage
- d.A local administrator account on the VM
Answer: c
Explanation: A managed identity lets the VM authenticate to Entra ID-integrated services with no stored secrets, and you grant it least-privilege access via RBAC. Embedded keys or a client secret in code store credentials that can leak, and a local admin account does not authenticate to Azure services.
- 2. Design Identity, Governance, and Monitoring
An architect must enforce that all resources across many subscriptions are tagged with a cost center and can only use approved VM SKUs. Which design element enforces this at scale?
- a.Manual review in each subscription
- b.A single resource group
- c.RBAC role assignments only
- d.Azure Policy initiatives applied at the management group scope
Answer: d
Explanation: Azure Policy (grouped into initiatives) applied at a management group enforces and audits rules like required tags and allowed SKUs across all child subscriptions. Manual review does not scale, a resource group is too narrow, and RBAC controls who can act, not resource configuration.
- 3. Design Identity, Governance, and Monitoring
A retail company needs to manage sign-in and profiles for millions of external consumer customers of its app. Which identity design is appropriate?
- a.Azure AD B2C / Microsoft Entra External ID for customers
- b.Creating a member user in the corporate tenant for each customer
- c.A single shared guest account
- d.Local application accounts with plaintext passwords
Answer: a
Explanation: Azure AD B2C (Microsoft Entra External ID) is purpose-built for customer identity at scale, supporting social and local sign-in and custom flows. Creating internal member users per customer does not scale or isolate consumers, a shared account is insecure, and plaintext local accounts are unacceptable.
- 4. Design Data Storage Solutions
A workload requires near-full SQL Server compatibility, including SQL Agent and cross-database queries, for a lift-and-shift migration. Which Azure service best fits?
- a.Azure SQL Database single database
- b.Azure SQL Managed Instance
- c.Azure Cosmos DB
- d.Azure Table storage
Answer: b
Explanation: SQL Managed Instance provides near-100% SQL Server engine compatibility, including SQL Agent and cross-database queries, making it ideal for lift-and-shift. A single database lacks some instance-level features, and Cosmos DB and Table storage are non-relational.
- 5. Design Data Storage Solutions
To automatically move blob data to cooler, cheaper tiers as it ages and delete it after a retention period, what should the architect configure?
- a.Manual monthly tier changes
- b.A separate storage account per tier
- c.Geo-redundant storage only
- d.Blob lifecycle management policies
Answer: d
Explanation: Lifecycle management policies automatically transition blobs between hot, cool, cold, and archive tiers and delete them based on age rules, optimizing cost without manual work. Manual changes do not scale, separate accounts add overhead, and GRS controls redundancy, not tiering.
- 6. Design Business Continuity Solutions
A mission-critical application must resume in a second Azure region within an hour if the primary region fails, with orchestrated failover of multi-tier VMs. Which service should the architect design in?
- a.Azure Backup only
- b.Azure Site Recovery
- c.A single Availability Zone deployment
- d.Azure Policy
Answer: b
Explanation: Azure Site Recovery replicates VMs to a secondary region and orchestrates failover and failback with recovery plans, meeting a low RTO for regional outages. Backup restores data but is not fast orchestrated regional failover, a single zone does not survive a regional failure, and Policy governs configuration.
- 7. Design Business Continuity Solutions
A business states that after a failure it can lose at most five minutes of data. Which objective does this define, and what does it drive?
- a.RPO, which drives backup/replication frequency
- b.RTO, which drives datacenter location
- c.SLA, which drives support plan
- d.Latency, which drives region choice
Answer: a
Explanation: The maximum acceptable data loss is the recovery point objective (RPO); a five-minute RPO drives how frequently data must be backed up or replicated. RTO concerns downtime, an SLA is a service commitment, and latency is a performance measure.
- 8. Design Compute Infrastructure
A team is building a microservices application and wants managed Kubernetes orchestration with autoscaling and rolling updates. Which compute platform should the architect choose?
- a.A single large virtual machine
- b.Azure Functions consumption plan
- c.Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
- d.Azure Blob storage
Answer: c
Explanation: AKS provides managed Kubernetes with autoscaling, rolling updates, and integration with Azure identity and networking, fitting orchestrated microservices. A single VM lacks orchestration, Functions targets event-driven code rather than full microservice orchestration, and Blob storage is not compute.
- 9. Design Compute Infrastructure
A web application on Azure App Service must be released with zero downtime and the ability to quickly roll back. Which feature should the architect use?
- a.Editing files directly on the production instance
- b.A single production slot only
- c.Scaling up the plan during deployment
- d.Deployment slots with slot swap
Answer: d
Explanation: Deployment slots let you deploy and warm up a new version in a staging slot, then swap it into production instantly with the ability to swap back, achieving zero-downtime releases and fast rollback. Editing production directly, using one slot, or scaling up does not provide safe swap-based releases.
- 10. Design Network Infrastructure
An architect needs to provide private, high-bandwidth connectivity from an on-premises datacenter to Azure that does not traverse the public internet. Which service should be designed in?
- a.Azure ExpressRoute
- b.A site-to-site VPN over the internet
- c.Azure Front Door
- d.A public IP on each VM
Answer: a
Explanation: ExpressRoute provides a private, dedicated, high-bandwidth connection to Azure that bypasses the public internet, meeting reliability and throughput requirements. A site-to-site VPN traverses the internet, Front Door accelerates public HTTP traffic, and public IPs expose resources.