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Difficulty: HardAzure Storage Accounts, Blob, Disk, Files, and Storage Tiers

A company is planning to migrate an on-premises business application to Azure Virtual Machines. The application has two distinct storage requirements:

1. A shared file system that can be mounted concurrently by multiple virtual machines running Windows Server using the standard SMB protocol.
2. A long-term archiving solution for historical transaction logs that are rarely accessed (less than once a year), where minimizing storage cost is the primary priority and a retrieval latency of several hours is acceptable.

Which two of the following Azure Storage solutions should the company implement? (Select two.)

  1. Azure Files to provide the shared file system using the SMB protocolAnswer
  2. Azure Blob Storage using the Archive access tier for long-term log storageAnswer
  3. C
    Azure Disk Storage with shared disks to host the SMB share without additional virtual machine configuration
  4. D
    Azure Blob Storage using the Archive access tier configured for direct read-only query access

Answer

The company should implement Azure Files to provide the shared SMB file system and Azure Blob Storage using the Archive access tier for long-term log storage.
Azure Files provides a fully managed SMB file share that can be mounted concurrently by multiple virtual machines, satisfying the first requirement. Azure Blob Storage with the Archive access tier offers the most cost-effective solution for data stored for at least 180 days that is rarely accessed, satisfying the second requirement as it supports retrieval times of several hours through rehydration.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the first requirement: a shared file system supporting the standard SMB protocol that can be concurrently mounted by Windows Server VMs.
Identify that Azure Files is a fully managed cloud file share service that natively supports the SMB protocol, allowing concurrent mounts from multiple VMs without managing underlying cluster infrastructure.
This matches the criteria for a simple, managed shared SMB file share.
2
Analyze the second requirement: long-term archiving of rarely accessed logs with a focus on lowest cost and acceptance of multi-hour retrieval times.
Identify that the Archive access tier of Azure Blob Storage provides the lowest cost storage option for inactive data, with the trade-off that retrieving data requires rehydration taking several hours.
This matches the latency and cost optimization requirements of the second scenario.
3
Evaluate the distractors against the requirements and Azure constraints.
Determine that using shared Azure Disks for SMB requires complex IaaS clustering configuration and management by the customer, and that the Archive access tier does not allow direct read access.
This eliminates the incorrect options based on Azure architecture rules.

Key Concept

Azure Files provides managed SMB/NFS file shares, while Azure Blob Storage offers multiple access tiers including the low-cost, offline Archive tier for rarely accessed data that requires rehydration before use.
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Topics

Azure Storage Accounts, Blob, Disk, Files, and Storage Tiers

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