Examkin

Question

Difficulty: MediumServerless and Web Application Hosting

An educational technology company is designing a serverless backend for a new exam preparation platform. The solution has the following workload requirements:

* A user-facing quiz API that serves questions and records user responses. The API experiences unpredictable traffic spikes but is completely idle during late-night hours. Responses must be returned within 22 seconds, and minimizing idle hosting costs is a priority.
* A background transcript processing service that runs whenever a new lecture video is uploaded. This service calls an external AI service to generate practice questions, which can take up to 1515 minutes to complete due to API throttling.

Which two hosting and processing options should you select to implement this architecture? (Select TWO.)

  1. Azure Functions on a Consumption plan to host the user-facing quiz APIAnswer
  2. Azure Container Apps Jobs to run the background transcript processing serviceAnswer
  3. C
    Azure Functions on a Consumption plan to run the background transcript processing service
  4. D
    Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to host both the quiz API and the background transcript processing service
  5. E
    Azure App Service on a Premium v3 plan to host the user-facing quiz API

Answer

To implement this architecture, you should select Azure Functions on a Consumption plan to host the user-facing quiz API, and Azure Container Apps Jobs to run the background transcript processing service.
Hosting the user-facing quiz API on Azure Functions on a Consumption plan is correct because it scales down to zero instances when idle, removing hosting costs during late-night hours, while maintaining the ability to quickly scale up to meet spikes. Running the background transcript processing service on Azure Container Apps Jobs is correct because it is designed for execution of short-lived, event-driven container tasks that can run for up to several hours, satisfying the 1515-minute execution requirement without incurring continuous VM costs.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the execution time constraints for the background transcript processing service.
The background transcript service takes up to 1515 minutes to complete.
Azure hosting choices have execution limits that must accommodate the maximum expected runtime.
2
Evaluate the background processing service options against the execution limits.
Azure Functions on a Consumption plan has a strict 1010-minute execution limit, which would cause timeouts. Azure Container Apps Jobs supports executions that run up to several hours, making it the appropriate serverless choice.
Using a serverless service that matches the runtime duration avoids execution failures due to timeouts.
3
Analyze the cost and scaling requirements for the user-facing quiz API.
The API requires low response times, has unpredictable spikes, and is idle at night. It must scale to zero to minimize idle hosting costs.
Selecting a hosting tier that supports scale-to-zero is critical for meeting the cost-minimization requirements.
4
Evaluate the quiz API hosting options against the cost and scaling requirements.
Azure Functions on a Consumption plan scales to zero when idle, resulting in zero hosting costs during off-peak hours, and handles rapid scaling during spikes. In contrast, Azure App Service (Premium v3) and Azure Kubernetes Service have continuous baseline costs and do not scale to zero.
Matching the API workload with the correct consumption model prevents waste and ensures rapid responsiveness.

Key Concept

Matching Azure serverless and containerized workloads to hosting options based on execution limits, scalability requirements, and cost-efficiency.
Estimated Time:2m 0s
Rate this question

Topics

Serverless and Web Application Hosting

More questions from this topic