Examkin

Question

Difficulty: MediumBlob, File, and Disk Storage Solutions

An organization is designing a shared storage solution for a financial reporting application hosted on Azure Virtual Machines. The application has the following requirements:
- Concurrent access from multiple VMs using the SMB protocol.
- High-throughput, sub-millisecond latencies for metadata operations.
- Maximum resilience against localized datacenter outages within the primary Azure region.
- Access to the storage must be secured using Shared Access Signatures (SAS) that can be instantly revoked if compromised, without rotating the storage account keys.

Which storage configuration should you recommend?

  1. Premium Azure Files share with Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS), secured using SAS tokens associated with a stored access policyAnswer
  2. B
    Premium Azure Files share with Locally Redundant Storage (LRS), secured using SAS tokens associated with a stored access policy
  3. C
    Standard Azure Files share with Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS), secured using ad-hoc SAS tokens with a five-year lifetime
  4. D
    Standard SSD Azure Managed Disks configured with Locally Redundant Storage (LRS) and shared using Azure Shared Disks

Answer

Premium Azure Files share with Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS), secured using SAS tokens associated with a stored access policy
The correct configuration uses Premium Azure Files with Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS) and SAS tokens tied to a stored access policy. Premium Azure Files guarantees sub-millisecond latency for metadata-heavy operations. ZRS replicates data across three availability zones within the primary region, providing high availability against datacenter failures. Stored access policies allow granular control and immediate revocation of SAS tokens without rotating the storage account keys.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Determine the storage type and protocol required.
Azure Files is selected because the application requires shared file storage with concurrent SMB protocol access from multiple virtual machines.
Azure Files natively supports SMB, whereas block storage like Azure Managed Disks requires a cluster manager to share volumes, and Azure Blob storage primarily uses REST/NFS.
2
Determine the performance tier and redundancy configuration.
Premium tier is chosen for sub-millisecond metadata latency. ZRS (Zone-Redundant Storage) is chosen to survive a localized datacenter (Availability Zone) outage.
Standard tier does not guarantee sub-millisecond metadata latency. LRS only replicates data within a single datacenter and cannot survive a zone failure.
3
Select the security configuration that allows instant revocation of access.
SAS tokens associated with a stored access policy are chosen.
Ad-hoc SAS tokens cannot be revoked individually; revoking them requires rotating the storage account keys, which would disrupt all other clients. A stored access policy can be deleted or modified to instantly revoke associated SAS tokens.

Key Concept

Selecting the correct Azure Files tier, redundancy model, and access security configuration to meet performance, high availability, and compliance requirements.
Rate this question

Topics

Blob, File, and Disk Storage Solutions

More questions from this topic