Practice Test
True or False: Availability Zones in Azure are the unique physical locations within a region.
Answer: True.
Explanation: Each Azure region consists of several datacenters spread out over a geographic area, also known as Availability Zones.
How many Availability Zones does Azure provide in each supported region?
- A. 1
- B. 3
- C. 5
- D. 7
Answer: B. 3
Explanation: Azure guarantees the availability of at least three separate zones in all enabled regions to ensure resiliency.
True or False: All Azure regions have Availability Zones.
Answer: False.
Explanation: While Azure always aims to provide Availability Zones in all regions, not all geographic regions currently have Availability Zones.
Availability Zones in Azure are basically:
- A. Different Regions
- B. Separate Datacenters
- C. Resource Groups
- D. Virtual Networks
Answer: B. Separate Datacenters
Explanation: Availability Zones in Azure refer to unique physical locations within a region, essentially different data centers.
True or False: Azure services that support Availability Zones fall into two categories; Zonal services and Zone-redundant services.
Answer: True.
Explanation: Some Azure services can be pinned to specific zones (Zonal services), whereas others can be replicated across zones (Zone-redundant services) for higher availability and resilience.
Which of the following is NOT a benefit of Azure Availability Zones?
- A. Increased availability
- B. High durability
- C. Lower costs
- D. Disaster recovery
Answer: C. Lower costs
Explanation: While Availability Zones provide higher availability, durability and support for disaster recovery, utilization of these zones may result in additional costs.
The failure of one Availability Zone means the whole Azure region will go down.
- A. True
- B. False
Answer: B. False
Explanation: Each Availability Zone is isolated and failure of one does not impact the other Zones within the same region.
Azure Availability Zones are interconnected with ____
- A. Firewalls
- B. Azure Private Links
- C. High-speed private links
- D. VPN Gateways
Answer: C. High-speed private links
Explanation: The Availability Zones within an Azure region are interconnected through high-speed, private links to provide low-latency network connection.
True or False: Within an Azure region, you cannot deploy an application spread across multiple Availability Zones.
Answer: False.
Explanation: It’s recommended to deploy applications across multiple Availability Zones within a region for high availability and fault tolerance.
Azure Availability Zones do not provide protection from ____
- A. Network failures
- B. Power failures
- C. Cooling failures
- D. Regional outages
Answer: D. Regional outages
Explanation: While Azure Availability Zones protect against failures within a single Zone (like hardware, power, cooling, or network failures), they do not protect against larger-scale, regional outages. For that level of protection Azure recommends using a multi-region architecture.
Interview Questions
What are Availability Zones in Microsoft Azure?
Availability Zones are unique physical locations within an Azure region. Each zone is made up of one or more data centres equipped with independent power, cooling, and networking.
What is the primary purpose of Availability Zones?
The primary purpose of Availability Zones is to protect applications and data from datacentre failures or complete zone level disasters by ensuring high availability and disaster recovery.
How many minimum availability zones are present in all enabled regions?
All enabled regions have a minimum of three separate zones to ensure resiliency.
How are Availability Zones identified?
Availability Zones are identified by numbers (1,2,3) within each Azure region.
What Azure service can we use to distribute traffic to the virtual machines in different availability zones?
Azure Load Balancer or Azure Traffic Manager service can be used to distribute network traffic to virtual machines in different availability zones.
Do Availability Zones provide isolation at the network layer?
Yes, Availability Zones are separate, physical locations and provide isolation at the physical, infrastructure, and network layer.
Can users choose the Availability Zones for their resources in Azure?
Yes, users can choose in which Availability Zone their resources are placed.
Can an Azure Virtual Machine (VM) span multiple Availability Zones?
No, an individual Azure Virtual Machine (VM) cannot span multiple Availability Zones. However, a VM scale set can span multiple zones.
Are Availability Zones related to Azure regions?
Yes, Availability Zones are part of Azure’s global infrastructure, and they reside within Azure regions.
How does Azure charges for outbound data transfer between Availability Zones?
Azure does charge for outbound data transfer between Availability Zones within the same region.
What distinguishes Availability Zones from update domains and fault domains in Azure?
Availability Zones are unique physical locations within a region. Each zone is made up of one or more data centers with independent power, cooling, and networking. Fault domains define the group of VMs that share a common power source and network switch. While update domains are logically grouped to coordinate updates.
Is there any latency between Availability Zones within the same region?
No, there is no noticeable latency. Azure guarantees a round-trip latency of less than 2 milliseconds between Availability Zones within the same region.
Can one Azure region have more than three Availability Zones?
Yes, although all enabled regions guarantees a minimum of three separate zones, some regions may have more than three Availability Zones.
Does using multiple Availability Zones increase overall cost?
Yes, deploying instances in multiple Availability Zones increases the overall cost.
When would you use an Availability Set instead of Availability Zones in Azure?
You might use Availability Sets instead of Availability Zones when your application isn’t distributed in nature or when cost is a main concern as deploying VMs across zones can be more expensive due to inter-zone data transfer costs. Availability Sets are a good choice when you want to eliminate single points of failure within a data center, but don’t need to protect against a complete data center failure.
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