Question

Difficulty: MediumCompute Virtualization Solutions

A digital publishing company is migrating its content management and rendering platforms to Azure. The system requires two compute tiers:

1. Editorial Backend: A stateful web application that runs continuously, requires a 99.99%99.99\% availability SLA, and must be isolated on dedicated physical hardware due to compliance requirements.
2. Rendering Workers: A stateless batch video-rendering workload that can tolerate interruptions and must run at the absolute lowest cost.

Which compute virtualization solution should you recommend to meet these requirements?

  1. Azure Dedicated Hosts deployed across multiple Availability Zones for the Editorial Backend, and Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets using Spot Virtual Machines for the Rendering Workers.Answer
  2. B
    Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets using Spot Virtual Machines for the Editorial Backend, and Azure Dedicated Hosts for the Rendering Workers.
  3. C
    Azure Dedicated Hosts deployed in a single Availability Zone for the Editorial Backend, and Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets using Spot Virtual Machines for the Rendering Workers.
  4. D
    Azure Dedicated Hosts deployed across multiple Availability Zones for the Editorial Backend, and Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets using Spot Virtual Machines with Locally Redundant Storage (LRS) configured for regional disaster resilience for the Rendering Workers.

Answer

Azure Dedicated Hosts deployed across multiple Availability Zones for the Editorial Backend, and Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets using Spot Virtual Machines for the Rendering Workers.
The correct option configuration uses Azure Dedicated Hosts deployed across multiple Availability Zones for the Editorial Backend and Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets using Spot VMs for the Rendering Workers. Dedicated Hosts satisfy the regulatory requirement for physical isolation. Spreading them across multiple zones ensures that the virtual machines can meet the 99.99%99.99\% availability SLA. Using Spot VMs in a Virtual Machine Scale Set satisfies the requirement for running the stateless, interruptible batch video-rendering workload at the lowest possible cost.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the Editorial Backend requirements: continuous execution, 99.99%99.99\% availability SLA, and dedicated physical hardware isolation.
Identify that Azure Dedicated Hosts are required for physical isolation, and they must be deployed across multiple Availability Zones to meet the 99.99%99.99\% SLA.
Dedicated Hosts provide single-tenant physical servers, and multi-zone deployment ensures high availability against datacenter outages.
2
Analyze the Rendering Workers requirements: stateless batch video-rendering, interruptible, and lowest possible cost.
Identify that Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets using Spot VMs are the most suitable and cost-effective option.
Spot VMs offer significant discounts by utilizing unused Azure capacity, which matches the fault-tolerant and stateless nature of batch rendering.
3
Evaluate the combined choices to select the correct configuration.
Select the option specifying Dedicated Hosts across multiple zones for the Editorial Backend and Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Spot VMs for the Rendering Workers.
This is the only option that satisfies all technical, compliance, SLA, and cost constraints.

Key Concept

Selecting and configuring Azure compute virtualization solutions based on availability, isolation, and cost requirements.
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