AZ-900 - Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Cost Management and Governance Questions and Answers 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A company is planning to migrate its on-premises data center to Azure. They need a tool to estimate the potential cost savings by comparing their current on-premises infrastructure costs with the projected costs of running the same workloads in Azure. Which Azure tool is specifically designed for this purpose?
- Azure Pricing Calculator
- Azure Cost Management
- Azure Advisor
- Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator
The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator is designed to help you compare the costs of running your workloads on-premises versus in Azure to estimate potential savings. The Pricing Calculator is used for estimating the cost of specific Azure services you plan to use, while Azure Cost Management helps monitor and control spending, and Azure Advisor provides optimization recommendations.
Question 2: An IT administrator needs to enforce a rule that prevents the creation of any new virtual machines outside of the 'West US 3' and 'East US' regions to comply with company policy. Which Azure service should be used to implement this requirement?
- Azure Resource Locks
- Azure Policy (Correct answer)
- Azure Blueprints
- Azure Cost Management
Correct answer: Azure Policy
Azure Policy is the service used to create, assign, and manage policies that enforce rules and effects over your resources to ensure they stay compliant with corporate standards and service-level agreements. A policy can be created to restrict the allowed locations for resource deployment. Resource Locks prevent deletion or modification, Blueprints deploy a set of resources, and Cost Management is for monitoring spending.
Question 3: A project manager is concerned that a critical production database, hosted on an Azure SQL Database instance, might be accidentally deleted by a junior administrator. What is the most effective way to protect this specific resource from accidental deletion?
- Apply a 'CanNotDelete' resource lock to the database. (Correct answer)
- Assign a 'Reader' role to all junior administrators.
- Create a budget alert in Azure Cost Management.
- Use resource tags to mark the database as 'critical'.
Correct answer: Apply a 'CanNotDelete' resource lock to the database.
Azure Resource Locks are used to protect resources from accidental deletion or modification. The 'CanNotDelete' lock level specifically prevents the resource from being deleted, even by users with owner permissions, without first removing the lock. While assigning a 'Reader' role would also prevent deletion, it would be too restrictive for administrators who may need to perform other management tasks. Budgets and tags do not prevent deletion.
Question 4: A team lead wants to receive an email notification when their development team's monthly spending on a specific resource group is forecasted to exceed $500. Which Azure feature should they configure?
- Azure Monitor alerts
- Azure Advisor recommendations
- Budgets in Azure Cost Management (Correct answer)
- Azure Policy assignments
Correct answer: Budgets in Azure Cost Management
Budgets within Azure Cost Management allow you to set spending thresholds for a specific scope (like a subscription or resource group) and trigger notifications when spending approaches or exceeds the defined amount. These alerts can be based on actual or forecasted costs. Azure Monitor is for performance and health, Advisor provides recommendations, and Policy enforces rules.
Question 5: Which of the following is a primary factor that directly influences the cost of an Azure Virtual Machine?
- The number of resource tags applied
- The virtual machine size (CPU, RAM) (Correct answer)
- The number of resource locks applied
- The Azure AD tenant the VM is associated with
Correct answer: The virtual machine size (CPU, RAM)
The size of the virtual machine, which includes the number of CPUs and the amount of RAM, is a primary driver of its cost. Other key factors include the region, operating system, and storage disks. Resource tags and locks are free governance features, and the Azure AD tenant does not directly impact the VM's price.
Question 6: How do resource tags primarily assist with cost management and governance in Azure?
- By automatically encrypting resource data
- By preventing resources from being deployed in certain regions
- By enforcing network security rules
- By allowing costs to be grouped and allocated to specific departments or projects (Correct answer)
Correct answer: By allowing costs to be grouped and allocated to specific departments or projects
Resource tags are key-value pairs that act as metadata to organize resources. For cost management, they are crucial for grouping billing data, allowing you to filter and analyze costs by categories such as department, project, or environment. This enables cost allocation and showback/chargeback within an organization. Tags do not provide encryption, location restrictions, or network security.
A company is planning to migrate its on-premises data center to Azure.
They need a tool to estimate the potential cost savings by comparing their current on-premises infrastructure costs with the projected costs of running the same workloads in Azure.
Which Azure tool is specifically designed for this purpose?