Question

Difficulty: MediumContainer-Based Workloads

A healthcare provider is designing a container-based claims processing application on Azure. The application has the following design requirements:

* A REST API microservice must receive claims and scale out rapidly during peak business hours, and scale down to zero instances during periods of inactivity.
* A background reporting workload must execute containerized jobs that process large datasets on a scheduled basis, with each job taking up to 45 minutes to complete.
* The overall solution must minimize administrative and infrastructure management overhead.

Which two Azure container hosting solutions should you recommend to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

  1. Azure Container Apps to host the REST API microserviceAnswer
  2. Azure Container Apps jobs to host the background reporting workloadAnswer
  3. C
    Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to host both the REST API and the background reporting workload
  4. D
    Azure Container Instances (ACI) to host the REST API microservice

Answer

Azure Container Apps to host the REST API microservice, and Azure Container Apps jobs to host the background reporting workload.
Azure Container Apps is the optimal solution for both requirements. For the REST API microservice, Azure Container Apps provides serverless HTTP-based scaling, including scaling to zero when there is no traffic, while minimizing management overhead. For the background reporting workload, Azure Container Apps jobs are designed specifically for executing run-to-completion tasks that can run for up to 24 hours, meeting the 45-minute requirement without infrastructure management overhead.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Evaluate the administrative overhead requirement.
Identify that Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) introduces significant infrastructure management and platform overhead, making serverless options like Azure Container Apps more appropriate when Kubernetes API access is not explicitly required.
The scenario requires minimizing administrative and infrastructure management overhead.
2
Analyze the scaling and traffic patterns of the REST API microservice.
Determine that the REST API requires dynamic scaling based on HTTP requests, including scaling to zero. Azure Container Apps supports this natively out of the box.
Azure Container Instances does not offer built-in HTTP autoscaling to zero without external components.
3
Analyze the runtime requirements of the background reporting workload.
Identify that the background task is a containerized run-to-completion job that runs for up to 45 minutes. Azure Container Apps jobs support tasks running for up to 24 hours.
Azure Container Apps jobs are optimized for run-to-completion tasks, whereas standard Azure Container Apps are meant for continuously running services.

Key Concept

Selecting Azure container hosting solutions based on operational overhead, execution duration, and scaling requirements.
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