Microsoft Azure Architect Design (AZ-304) Practice Test

What benefit does Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) provide for static content in web applications?

1. Automatic scaling

2. Data encryption

3. Minimized latency and faster load times

4. Cost-effective storage solutions

The correct answer is: Minimized latency and faster load times

Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) significantly enhances the performance of web applications by minimizing latency and ensuring faster load times for static content. By caching static assets like images, scripts, and stylesheets at strategically located edge servers around the world, Azure CDN reduces the physical distance between users and the resources they are accessing. This results in quicker retrieval of content, as users can access data from a nearby server rather than a central location, leading to improved user experience. The ability of Azure CDN to deliver content from edge locations allows it to serve end users with lower latency than if the content were fetched from a centralized origin server. Data is delivered quickly even during high traffic periods, as the load is distributed across multiple edge servers, which also contributes to a more efficient use of bandwidth. While automatic scaling, data encryption, and cost-effective storage are important features in broader aspects of cloud services, they do not specifically encompass the primary advantage of using Azure CDN for static content delivery. The core benefit remains its capability to reduce latency and speed up content loading times, which is critical for maintaining responsive web applications.