Question

Difficulty: HardCompute Virtualization Solutions

A healthcare analytics company is designing the Azure compute and storage infrastructure for a new real-time patient health tracking application. The architecture must satisfy the following requirements:
- The analytics engine runs steady-state, 24/7, and processes highly sensitive health records. It must protect data in use via hardware-based memory encryption.
- The compute layer must automatically scale out to handle peak loads.
- The compute infrastructure must achieve a 99.99% availability Service Level Agreement (SLA).
- The database engine stores transaction logs that require high IOPS and sub-millisecond write latency.

Which virtual machine configuration and storage architecture should you recommend?

  1. A Virtual Machine Scale Set utilizing DCasv5-series Virtual Machines deployed across three Availability Zones, with Premium SSD v2 disks for database transaction logs.Answer
  2. B
    A Virtual Machine Scale Set utilizing Azure Spot DCasv5-series Virtual Machines deployed across three Availability Zones, with Premium SSD v2 disks for database transaction logs.
  3. C
    A Virtual Machine Scale Set utilizing DCasv5-series Virtual Machines deployed within a single Availability Zone, with Premium SSD v2 disks for database transaction logs.
  4. D
    A Virtual Machine Scale Set utilizing DCasv5-series Virtual Machines deployed across three Availability Zones, with Standard HDD disks for database transaction logs.

Answer

A Virtual Machine Scale Set utilizing DCasv5-series Virtual Machines deployed across three Availability Zones, with Premium SSD v2 disks for database transaction logs.
The correct option combines a Virtual Machine Scale Set (VMSS) with confidential computing (DCasv5-series) for hardware-based memory encryption. Distributing these VMs across three Availability Zones ensures a 99.99% SLA. Utilizing Premium SSD v2 satisfies the sub-millisecond write latency and high IOPS required for database transaction logs.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze security requirements for memory encryption.
Identify that confidential computing (DC-series, such as DCasv5) is required to provide hardware-based virtualization and memory encryption for sensitive data in use.
Standard virtual machines do not encrypt data in memory during processing.
2
Analyze availability requirements for SLA.
Select a multi-zone deployment strategy across at least two (ideally three) Availability Zones to qualify for the 99.99% Virtual Machine SLA.
Single Availability Zone deployments only guarantee up to a 99.9% SLA.
3
Determine compute orchestration and scaling requirements.
Select Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) to support automatic scaling rules.
Individual virtual machines require manual scaling configuration and do not group instances uniformly out-of-the-box.
4
Select storage tier for database transaction logs.
Choose Premium SSD v2 to achieve sub-millisecond write latency and support high IOPS.
Standard HDD disks are slow, high-latency, and unsuitable for database write-intensive workloads.

Key Concept

Designing high-availability confidential compute virtualization solutions with high-performance storage in Azure.
Estimated Time:2m 0s
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