About these questions
These five questions are original. We wrote them in the style of the AZ-305 skills measured as of April 17, 2026, with the domains spread across the exam. They are not real exam questions, and the real exam will word things differently. Each one gives you a few requirements and asks for the design that meets all of them.
How to use these
Try each question without your notes, and choose an answer before you open the explanation. Then read the explanation even when you were right, because the reason the closest wrong option fails is where the learning is. If you slip in a domain, revisit it on the domains explained page.
Question 1 (Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions)
A hosting team runs 15 Azure Monitor alert rules for its production workloads. Every alert must send an SMS to the on-call engineers and an email to a shared mailbox. When the on-call phone numbers change, the team wants to update them in one place. What should you recommend?
- A. A diagnostic setting on each monitored resource
- B. One action group that all 15 alert rules use
- C. A separate action group created for each alert rule
- D. A data collection rule for each alert rule
Show the answer and explanation
Correct answer: B. An action group defines who is notified and how, such as SMS and email, and many alert rules can reference the same group. Changing a phone number once then updates every rule. Separate action groups for each rule are the closest wrong option. They would work, but you would have to edit fifteen copies, which fails the “update in one place” requirement. Diagnostic settings route platform logs and metrics to destinations and do not notify anyone, and data collection rules define which monitoring data is collected.
Question 2 (Design data storage solutions)
An application joins tables across two databases by using three-part names and runs nightly maintenance with SQL Server Agent jobs. The team is moving it to Azure and does not want to redesign these features. Which two options support both? Choose two.
- A. Azure SQL Database single database
- B. Azure SQL Database elastic pool
- C. SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines
- D. Azure SQL Managed Instance
- E. Azure SQL Database Hyperscale
Show the answer and explanation
Correct answers: C and D. SQL Server on a virtual machine runs the full engine, so it supports every instance-level feature. Azure SQL Managed Instance is built for high compatibility with SQL Server and supports SQL Server Agent and cross-database queries inside the instance. An elastic pool is the closest wrong option because it looks like a group of databases, but it only shares resources between databases and adds no instance-level features. Single databases and Hyperscale are database-level offerings and have the same gaps, with elastic jobs and elastic query as redesign paths rather than drop-in support.
Question 3 (Design business continuity solutions)
Staff at a design agency sometimes overwrite files stored as blobs in Azure Blob Storage. The agency must be able to restore the previous content of any overwritten blob, without anyone taking manual copies first. What should you enable?
- A. Blob versioning
- B. Manual blob snapshots
- C. Container soft delete
- D. Read-access geo-redundant storage
Show the answer and explanation
Correct answer: A. With versioning enabled, Blob Storage keeps the previous state of a blob as a version automatically each time it is overwritten, so you can restore an earlier version. Manual snapshots are the closest wrong option. A snapshot captures a blob only when someone creates it, which breaks the “no manual copies” requirement. Container soft delete helps recover a deleted container, not an overwritten blob. Geo-redundant storage copies the overwrite to the secondary region too, so it protects against a regional failure but not against user error.
Question 4 (Design infrastructure solutions)
A company wants three separate services to react within seconds whenever a new file is created in a storage account. None of the services should have to poll the account. What should you use?
- A. Azure Queue Storage
- B. Azure Event Hubs
- C. Azure Event Grid
- D. Azure Service Bus topics
Show the answer and explanation
Correct answer: C. Blob Storage publishes events such as blob created through Azure Event Grid, which pushes them to subscribers like Azure Functions, Logic Apps, or webhooks. Several subscribers can receive the same event. Service Bus topics are the closest wrong option. They fan out messages to multiple subscribers, but they carry brokered business messages that an application sends, not native storage events. Queue Storage would require each consumer to poll, and Event Hubs is a streaming service where consumers pull large volumes of telemetry.
Question 5 (Design infrastructure solutions)
Virtual machines in a subnet sit behind a public Standard Load Balancer and call many external web APIs. Some outbound connections fail because the load balancer runs out of SNAT ports. The team wants scalable outbound connectivity without manually allocating SNAT ports to each VM. What should you recommend?
- A. Add frontend IP addresses and configure outbound rules
- B. Assign a public IP address to every VM
- C. Add an Azure Application Gateway in front of the VMs
- D. Associate a NAT gateway with the subnet
Show the answer and explanation
Correct answer: D. A NAT gateway gives all outbound traffic from a subnet dynamic, scalable SNAT, without you planning port allocations per VM. Adding frontend IPs and outbound rules is the closest wrong option. It does add ports, but you still allocate them manually per backend instance, which the team wants to avoid. Public IPs on every VM add inbound exposure and management work. Application Gateway is a layer 7 load balancer for inbound web traffic and does not fix outbound port exhaustion.
More guides for AZ-305
- AZ-305 Exam Format, Scoring, and Retakes
- AZ-305 Study Plan: 4-Week and 8-Week
- Is AZ-305 Hard? An Honest Difficulty Check
- AZ-305 Prerequisites and Skills Check
- AZ-305 Renewal and Retakes Explained
- Is AZ-305 Worth It? An Honest Look
- AZ-305 Cheat Sheet: Key Facts to Review
- AZ-305 vs AZ-400: Which Exam First?
- AZ-104 vs AZ-305: Which First?
Next step
If you missed a question, jump to that domain in domains explained. To keep practicing, our AZ-305 practice tests have 500 original questions with an explanation for every answer option.