MICROSOFT CERTIFICATION
AZ-204 Azure Developer Associate Practice Exam
Exam Number: 3106 | Last updated 16-Apr-26 | 997+ questions across 5 vendor-aligned objectives
The AZ-204 Azure Developer Associate certification validates the skills of developers who design, build, test, and maintain cloud applications and services on Azure. This exam measures your ability to work with Azure App Service, Azure Functions, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Blob Storage, Azure Container Apps, Microsoft Entra ID, demonstrating both conceptual understanding and practical implementation skills required in today’s enterprise environments.
The heaviest exam domains include Develop Azure Compute Solutions (25–30%), Implement Azure Security (20–25%), and Develop for Azure Storage (15–20%). These areas collectively represent the majority of exam content and require focused preparation across their respective subtopics.
Additional domains tested include Monitor, Troubleshoot, and Optimize Azure Solutions (15–20%), and Connect to and Consume Azure Services and Third-Party Services (15–20%). Together, these areas round out the full exam blueprint and ensure candidates possess well-rounded expertise across the certification scope.
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Question #1 - Develop Azure Compute Solutions
A SaaS company needs to run background image processing tasks triggered by new blob uploads. Tasks take 2-10 minutes and traffic is sporadic.
Which compute service is most cost-effective?
A) Azure Virtual Machine running continuously
B) Azure Batch with dedicated pool
C) Azure Functions with Blob trigger on Consumption plan
D) Azure App Service Always On
Show solution
Correct answers: C – Explanation:
Azure Functions on the Consumption plan charges only during execution, and Blob triggers automatically fire on uploads. App Service Always On incurs continuous cost. A running VM is wasteful for sporadic loads. Batch with dedicated pool maintains compute resources constantly. Source: Check Source
Question #2 - Develop Azure Compute Solutions
A SaaS company needs to run background image processing tasks triggered by new blob uploads. Tasks take 2-10 minutes and traffic is sporadic.
Which compute service is most cost-effective?
A) A continuously running Azure Virtual Machine with a polling service checking for blobs
B) Azure App Service on an Always On Standard plan running a background worker process
C) Azure Functions with a Blob Storage trigger deployed on the Consumption billing plan
D) Azure Batch with a dedicated persistent pool of compute nodes awaiting processing jobs
Show solution
Correct answers: C – Explanation:
Azure Functions on the Consumption plan charges only during execution with zero idle cost, and Blob triggers automatically fire on uploads. App Service Always On incurs continuous charges regardless of activity. A running VM is wasteful for sporadic loads with long idle periods. Batch with a dedicated pool maintains compute resources constantly even when no jobs are queued. Source: Check Source
Question #3 - Develop Azure Compute Solutions
A team deploys a containerized microservice needing HTTPS ingress, HTTP-based autoscaling, and no cluster management.
Which Azure service should they use?
A) Azure Container Apps providing serverless containers with built-in ingress and scaling
B) Azure App Service for Containers hosting a single container on a managed app plan
C) Azure Kubernetes Service with a managed cluster requiring node pool configuration
D) Azure Container Instances running individual container groups without orchestration
Show solution
Correct answers: A – Explanation:
Container Apps provides managed HTTPS ingress, HTTP-based autoscaling including scale-to-zero, and serverless hosting without cluster management. AKS requires node pool and cluster configuration management. ACI lacks built-in autoscaling and managed ingress controllers. App Service for Containers supports single containers but has less flexible microservice scaling patterns. Source: Check Source
Question #4 - Develop Azure Compute Solutions
An e-learning platform needs a web API that scales to zero during off-hours and handles sudden enrollment spikes of 10,000 concurrent users.
Which Azure App Service plan configuration best fits?
A) Basic tier with single-instance deployment and manual scaling through the portal
B) Premium v3 tier with autoscale rules supporting scale-to-zero and rapid scale-out
C) Free tier with Always On disabled and limited to the maximum shared resource allocation
D) Standard tier with a fixed instance count of 20 servers running throughout the year
Show solution
Correct answers: B – Explanation:
Premium v3 supports autoscale rules that can scale to zero when idle and rapidly scale out during demand spikes. Basic tier has limited scaling capabilities and no scale-to-zero. Free tier does not support custom autoscale rules or sufficient capacity. A fixed 20-instance count wastes resources during idle periods and may be insufficient during sudden enrollment spikes. Source: Check Source
Question #5 - Implement Azure Security
A fintech application authenticates users against Entra ID and needs tokens for downstream APIs without managing credentials in code.
Which authentication approach should the developer implement?
A) Use a system-assigned managed identity on the App Service with MSAL for token handling
B) Store a client secret string in the application configuration settings for token acquisition
C) Use anonymous access to the API with IP address restriction rules for authorization
D) Implement HTTP Basic authentication with username and password transmitted per request
Show solution
Correct answers: A – Explanation:
Managed identity eliminates credential management while MSAL handles token acquisition, caching, and renewal for downstream APIs. Client secrets in configuration settings still require rotating and securing the secret value. Basic authentication transmits credentials in each request and is considered insecure for modern applications. Anonymous access with IP restrictions provides no identity verification or token-based authorization. Source: Check Source
Question #6 - Implement Azure Security
A healthcare app stores encryption keys for patient data. Keys must be in FIPS 140-2 Level 2 validated hardware accessible only to authorized services.
Which Azure service meets these requirements?
A) Azure Key Vault Standard tier using software-protected keys stored in the service backend
B) Azure Confidential Computing with secure enclaves protecting data during active processing
C) Azure Storage service-side encryption using platform-managed Microsoft-controlled keys
D) Azure Key Vault Premium tier with keys backed by FIPS 140-2 Level 2 validated HSM modules
Show solution
Correct answers: D – Explanation:
Key Vault Premium stores keys in FIPS 140-2 Level 2 validated HSMs with RBAC for authorized access control. Standard tier uses software-protected keys that do not meet the hardware-level FIPS requirement. Microsoft-managed keys do not allow customer control over key lifecycle or access. Confidential Computing protects data during processing but addresses a different requirement than key storage. Source: Check Source
Question #7 - Develop for Azure Storage
A document management system stores millions of PDFs with metadata like author and department that must be queryable without a separate database.
Which Azure Storage feature enables queryable metadata alongside blob storage?
A) Custom blob metadata headers stored as name-value pairs in the HTTP response headers only
B) Blob index tags providing native key-value attributes that are queryable via the storage API
C) Azure SQL Database provisioned specifically to store and query document metadata records
D) Azure Table Storage deployed as a separate companion service for all metadata lookups
Show solution
Correct answers: B – Explanation:
Blob index tags are native key-value attributes on blobs that can be filtered and queried using the Azure Storage API without a separate service. Custom metadata headers exist on blobs but are not natively queryable through filter operations at the service level. Table Storage works for metadata but requires deploying and managing a separate service alongside blob storage. SQL Database adds significant complexity and cost for simple tag-based metadata queries. Source: Check Source
Question #8 - Monitor, Troubleshoot, and Optimize Azure Solutions
A travel booking API intermittently returns 500 errors under load. The team needs to identify which dependency calls are failing and their response times.
Which tool should the developer configure?
A) Azure Network Watcher packet capture analyzing raw network traffic between services
B) Azure Monitor Activity Log capturing management-plane resource provisioning operations
C) Azure Advisor performance recommendations based on periodic resource utilization review
D) Application Insights with automatic dependency tracking for outbound service calls
Show solution
Correct answers: D – Explanation:
Application Insights dependency tracking automatically captures outbound calls to databases, APIs, and services, showing failure rates, latencies, and correlation to parent requests. Activity Log records management operations like resource creation, not runtime errors. Network Watcher captures raw packets requiring manual protocol analysis. Advisor provides optimization recommendations, not real-time dependency debugging. Source: Check Source
Question #9 - Monitor, Troubleshoot, and Optimize Azure Solutions
A content delivery app needs to reduce API response times. Profiling shows 80% of requests serve identical data that changes only hourly.
Which caching strategy should be implemented?
A) Azure Cache for Redis with a one-hour TTL providing a distributed in-memory data store
B) Database query result caching at the SQL Server level using the built-in plan cache
C) Azure CDN edge caching configured at global points of presence for the API endpoint
D) Local in-process memory cache running independently within each application instance
Show solution
Correct answers: A – Explanation:
Azure Cache for Redis provides a distributed, low-latency cache shared across application instances with configurable TTL, ideal for data that changes hourly. CDN caches content at edge locations but is less suited for dynamic API responses requiring TTL precision. Local in-process cache works per instance but does not share cached data across scaled-out instances. SQL plan cache improves query execution but does not reduce the overhead of application-to-database round trips. Source: Check Source
Question #10 - Connect to and Consume Azure Services and Third-Party Services
A logistics app needs reliable order event processing even when the processor is temporarily down. Events must be ordered within each customer partition.
Which messaging service should be used?
A) Azure Queue Storage providing simple FIFO message queuing for basic decoupled workloads
B) Azure Event Hubs with partition keys optimized for high-throughput real-time streaming
C) Azure Service Bus queues with sessions guaranteeing ordered delivery per session group
D) Azure Event Grid with webhook subscription delivery using at-least-once push semantics
Show solution
Correct answers: C – Explanation:
Service Bus queues with sessions guarantee FIFO ordering within a session (customer partition) and provide reliable delivery with dead-lettering for failed processing. Queue Storage provides basic queuing without session-based ordering guarantees. Event Hubs optimizes for high-throughput streaming analytics rather than transactional message processing. Event Grid delivers events via webhooks with at-least-once semantics but lacks session-based ordered delivery. Source: Check Source
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Exam mode & learn mode · Score by objective · Updated 16-Apr-26
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What the AZ-204 Azure Developer Associate exam measures
- Develop Azure Compute Solutions (25–30%) — Evaluate your ability to implement and manage tasks within this domain, including real-world job skills and scenario-based problem solving.
- Develop for Azure Storage (15–20%) — Evaluate your ability to implement and manage tasks within this domain, including real-world job skills and scenario-based problem solving.
- Implement Azure Security (20–25%) — Evaluate your ability to implement and manage tasks within this domain, including real-world job skills and scenario-based problem solving.
- Monitor, Troubleshoot, and Optimize Azure Solutions (15–20%) — Evaluate your ability to implement and manage tasks within this domain, including real-world job skills and scenario-based problem solving.
- Connect to and Consume Azure Services and Third-Party Services (15–20%) — Evaluate your ability to implement and manage tasks within this domain, including real-world job skills and scenario-based problem solving.
How to prepare for this exam
- Review the official exam guide to understand every objective and domain weight before you begin studying
- Complete the relevant Microsoft Learn learning path to build a structured foundation across all exam topics
- Get hands-on practice in an Azure free-tier sandbox or trial environment to reinforce what you have studied with real configurations
- Apply your knowledge through real-world project experience — whether at work, in volunteer roles, or contributing to open-source initiatives
- Master one objective at a time, starting with the highest-weighted domain to maximize your score potential early
- Use PowerKram learn mode to study by individual objective and review detailed explanations for every question
- Switch to PowerKram exam mode to simulate the real test experience with randomized questions and timed conditions
Career paths and salary outlook
Earning this certification can open doors to several in-demand roles:
- Azure Developer: $110,000–$150,000 per year (based on Glassdoor and ZipRecruiter data)
- Cloud Application Developer: $105,000–$145,000 per year (based on Glassdoor and ZipRecruiter data)
- Full-Stack Cloud Engineer: $115,000–$155,000 per year (based on Glassdoor and ZipRecruiter data)
Official resources
Microsoft provides comprehensive free training to prepare for the AZ-204 Azure Developer Associate exam. Start with the official Microsoft Learn learning path for structured, self-paced modules covering every exam domain. Review the exam study guide for the complete skills outline and recent updates.