AZ-305 practice test: 1652 questions with full explanations

Questions on the exam

about 50 — vendor indicates, no fixed count published

Time allowed

100 minutes format →

Passing score

700 of 1000 — vendor, checked September 4, 2026 detail →

Exam fee

$165 — vendor, checked September 5, 2026 detail →

1652 practice test questions for Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect Expert AZ-305, grouped by exam domain. Every question below shows all four options, which one is correct, and why each of the other three is not — the wrong answers are where most candidates lose marks.

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Questions by domain

• Design infrastructure solutions — 572 questions →
• Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions — 470 questions →
• Design data storage solutions — 340 questions →
• Design business continuity solutions — 270 questions →

Sample questions

M-series with local NVMe SSDs: Which VM SKU family should the architect recommend?

1. M-series (memory optimized) with local NVMe SSDs, providing up to 12 TB RAM and fast local scratch for large in-memory analytics ✓

   Correct. M-series VMs offer up to 12 TB RAM with local NVMe storage, purpose-built for in-memory databases and analytics that need massive memory plus fast local scratch space.
2. E-series (memory optimized), giving a strong memory-to-vCPU ratio but capping near 672 GB RAM, well short of the 2 TB in-memory requirement here

   Incorrect. E-series supports up to roughly 672 GB RAM, which is far below the 2 TB in-memory requirement. The M-series is designed for the largest in-memory workloads.
3. L-series (storage optimized), delivering high local NVMe IOPS but only up to 384 GB RAM, far below the 2 TB in-memory need

   Incorrect. L-series is optimized for disk throughput and IOPS but offers only up to about 384 GB RAM, insufficient for a 2 TB in-memory dataset.
4. N-series (GPU optimized), accelerating ML and rendering but offering RAM that cannot hold a 2 TB in-memory workload

   Incorrect. N-series provides GPU acceleration for ML and rendering, not large in-memory analytics. GPU capacity does not substitute for the RAM needed to hold 2 TB in memory.

All 572 Design infrastructure solutions questions →

Pass-through Authentication with Seamless SSO: Which hybrid identity method meets all three requirements?

1. Pass-through Authentication (PTA) with Seamless SSO ✓

   PTA validates passwords directly against on-premises AD using a lightweight agent — no password hashes are stored in Azure AD. Authentication is real-time, so disabling an on-premises account immediately prevents sign-in (unlike PHS where stale hashes persist for up to 2 minutes). Seamless SSO provides transparent sign-in from domain-joined machines.
2. Password Hash Synchronization (PHS) with Seamless SSO

   PHS synchronizes hashed password hashes (a hash of the NTLM hash) to Azure AD. While the original password is not stored in plaintext, password hashes ARE stored in the cloud — violating the requirement. Also, PHS has up to a 2-minute delay before a disabled account's hash is updated.
3. Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) with Azure AD Connect

   AD FS also validates passwords against on-premises AD and doesn't store hashes in the cloud. However, AD FS requires significant infrastructure (AD FS farms, WAP servers, certificates) — more complex and costly than PTA which provides the same security guarantees with just lightweight agents.
4. Azure AD B2B with guest accounts for each employee

   B2B is for external partner/vendor access, not for integrating your own organization's employees. It doesn't synchronize on-premises AD accounts and cannot enforce on-premises account disablement.

All 470 Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions questions →

Business Critical tier with a built-in readable secondary: Which service tier satisfies all requirements?

1. General Purpose tier deployed with a zone-redundant configuration

   General Purpose tier uses remote storage (Azure Premium Storage) for HA — failover takes 20-30 seconds (not sub-second). It does not support in-memory OLTP and does not include readable secondary replicas.
2. Business Critical tier with a built-in readable secondary ✓

   Business Critical tier provides: 99.99% SLA, Always On availability group-based HA with sub-second automatic failover (no data loss), in-memory OLTP support, and a built-in readable secondary replica at no extra cost — satisfying all four requirements.
3. General Purpose tier with active geo-replication to another region

   Active geo-replication provides cross-region DR (RTO minutes, RPO seconds) but does not provide sub-second local failover. It also does not add in-memory OLTP support or eliminate the 20-30 second failover time within the primary region.
4. Hyperscale tier configured with a single named replica

   Hyperscale supports readable replicas (named replicas) and has high performance, but its SLA depends on replica count, and in-memory OLTP support is not available in Hyperscale. Business Critical is the correct tier for in-memory OLTP.

All 340 Design data storage solutions questions →

Test Failover to an isolated Azure VNet: Which ASR operation achieves this without affecting ongoing replicati

1. Disable replication temporarily, start the VMs manually in Azure to validate them, then re-enable replication from scratch after testing completes

   Incorrect. Disabling replication loses the recovery point history and requires reconfiguring replication from scratch. This adds significant recovery time and operational risk — Test Failover is specifically designed to avoid this disruption.
2. Planned Failover to Azure — cleanly shuts down the on-premises VMs and fails the workload over to Azure with zero data loss for validation

   Incorrect. Planned Failover is a production operation — it shuts down on-premises VMs and activates the Azure copies as production. This is not a test; it actually moves the workload. Using Planned Failover for a test would disrupt production operations.
3. Unplanned Failover (Failover) to Azure — immediately starts the Azure VMs from the latest available recovery point to validate the application

   Incorrect. Unplanned Failover is for actual disasters — it starts Azure VMs from the latest recovery point without gracefully shutting down on-premises VMs. Using this for a test causes data inconsistency and stops production replication.
4. Test Failover to an isolated Azure VNet — replicated VMs start in Azure for validation without interrupting replication to the production VNet ✓

   Correct. ASR Test Failover creates copies of replicated VMs in an isolated VNet (not connected to production) — replication continues uninterrupted. The team can validate VM startup, application functionality, and network connectivity. After testing, 'Cleanup Test Failover' removes the test VMs without any production impact.

All 270 Design business continuity solutions questions →

VMSS with overprovisioning disabled: Which VMSS configuration minimizes cost while meeting the 2-minute SLA?

1. VMSS with Flexible orchestration and Reserved Instances for the maximum expected capacity

   Reserving maximum capacity eliminates scaling benefit entirely — paying for idle VMs at maximum capacity is not cost-optimized.
2. VMSS with overprovisioning disabled, autoscale, and a warm pool (standby pool) configured ✓

   Warm pools (standby pools) keep VMs in a pre-initialized state so they can be added to the scale set rapidly — typically in under 30 seconds — meeting the 2-minute SLA cost-effectively.
3. VMSS with Uniform orchestration, autoscale policy, and a minimum count of 0 with scale-out trigger on queue depth

   Scaling from 0 with VM initialization (3-5 minutes typical) would violate the 2-minute SLA when all VMs are deallocated.
4. VMSS with Flexible orchestration mode and Spot VMs with overprovisioning enabled

   Spot VMs can be evicted at any time, making them unsuitable for SLA-bound workloads. Overprovisioning helps availability but Spot eviction undermines the 2-minute SLA.

All 572 Design infrastructure solutions questions →

Partner portal: Which Azure AD capabilities should be used for each application respectively?

1. Partner portal: Azure AD B2C with custom user flows; Customer portal: Azure AD B2B guest invitation model

   This reverses the appropriate tools. B2C would force partners to abandon their existing corporate identities and create new consumer accounts, while B2B guest invitations cannot scale to millions of unknown consumers signing in with Google or Facebook.
2. Partner portal: Azure AD B2B (guest invitations); Customer portal: Azure AD B2C (consumer identity platform) ✓

   B2B federation allows external partners to sign in with their existing corporate identities (Azure AD, Google Workspace, etc.) via guest user invitations. B2C is a separate consumer identity management service that supports millions of users, social identity providers (Google, Facebook, Apple), local accounts, and custom user journeys — designed for customer-facing applications.
3. Both applications: Azure AD B2B guest invitations, since each scenario depends on collaboration with external users

   B2B is designed for organization-to-organization collaboration with known partners. It is not built for millions of consumer accounts with social login, and guest accounts do not scale to consumer volume or support Google/Facebook identity providers natively.
4. Both applications: Azure AD B2C tenants, since B2C can federate corporate identities and social logins alike

   Using B2C for the partner portal would lose corporate identity federation — partners would create new B2C local accounts instead of using their existing corporate identity. B2B is the right tool for known organizational partners with existing corporate identities.

All 470 Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions questions →

Azure SQL Managed Instance as the fully managed PaaS: Which Azure SQL option best supports this migration with

1. Azure SQL Managed Instance as the fully managed PaaS target ✓

   Azure SQL Managed Instance provides near 100% SQL Server compatibility including: SQL Server Agent, cross-database queries, CLR assemblies, and linked servers (including to Oracle via OLEDB). It is a fully managed PaaS service, eliminating OS and SQL Server patch management.
2. Azure SQL Database Elastic Pool with elastic cross-database query

   Elastic Pool with elastic query can support some cross-database queries, but it does not support SQL Server Agent, CLR assemblies, or linked servers to Oracle. This is not a near-complete SQL Server compatibility solution.
3. SQL Server installed on an Azure Virtual Machine (IaaS)

   SQL Server on VM supports all SQL Server features including Agent, CLR, and linked servers — but it is IaaS (not PaaS), requiring OS patching, storage management, and VM maintenance. The requirement is for a fully managed PaaS service.
4. Azure SQL Database deployed as a single standalone database

   Azure SQL Database does not support SQL Server Agent, CLR assemblies (limited support only), cross-database queries within the same server, or linked servers. These features require SQL Managed Instance.

All 340 Design data storage solutions questions →

Priority routing with East US as Priority 1 and West: Which Traffic Manager routing method meets these require

1. Priority routing with East US as Priority 1 and West Europe as Priority 2 ✓

   Correct. Priority routing sends all traffic to the highest-priority healthy endpoint. With East US at Priority 1 and West Europe at Priority 2, all normal traffic goes to East US. When East US health probes fail, Traffic Manager automatically routes to West Europe (Priority 2). No load balancing between sites when both are healthy.
2. Weighted routing with East US at weight 100 and West Europe at weight 1

   Incorrect. Weighted routing distributes traffic proportionally — with weights 100:1, approximately 99% goes to East US and 1% to West Europe during normal operation. This violates the requirement that ALL traffic goes to East US when it's healthy. Weighted routing doesn't implement true active-passive.
3. Geographic routing with every client region mapped to the East US endpoint

   Incorrect. Geographic routing directs traffic based on the user's geographic origin. You cannot assign all geographies to one endpoint without losing DR capability — if East US fails, all geographies mapped to it would receive errors, not failover to West Europe.
4. Performance routing based on the lowest measured latency per client

   Incorrect. Performance routing sends each client to the endpoint with the lowest measured latency — clients in Europe would be routed to West Europe even during normal operation when East US is healthy. This doesn't implement the all-traffic-to-East-US requirement.

All 270 Design business continuity solutions questions →

AZ-305 exam: the facts

How many questions are on the AZ-305 exam?

Around 50. The vendor does not publish a fixed count for AZ-305, so this is the figure it indicates rather than a guaranteed number.

How long is the AZ-305 exam?

100 minutes. Across 50 questions that is about 120 seconds per question.

What topics does the AZ-305 exam cover?

4 domains: Design infrastructure solutions, Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions, Design data storage solutions, Design business continuity solutions. Weights: Design infrastructure solutions 0.325%, Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions 0.275%, Design data storage solutions 0.225%, Design business continuity solutions 0.175%.

How many AZ-305 practice test questions does Certsqill have?

1652, spread across 4 exam domains. Every one shows all options, which is correct, and why each of the others is not.