Microsoft Azure Architect Design (AZ-304) Practice Test

What type of application deployment provides both redundancy and direct access to the underlying operating system in Azure?

1. Azure Functions

2. Virtual machine scale sets

3. Azure Logic Apps

4. Virtual machines

The correct answer is: Virtual machines

The option that provides both redundancy and direct access to the underlying operating system in Azure is virtual machines. Virtual machines allow users to create and manage individual VMs that run on physical servers in Azure's data centers. This direct access enables administration of the operating system and installed software, which is essential for applications that require specific configurations or software setups. Redundancy can be achieved through various means, such as deploying virtual machines in an availability set or using availability zones. This ensures that if one VM or the underlying hardware fails, another instance can take over seamlessly. With the flexibility of scaling and customizing the VMs, users can effectively maintain high availability and manage application workloads that demand significant control over the underlying system. In contrast, other options like Azure Functions and Azure Logic Apps are platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings that abstract away the operating system and infrastructure management, thus not providing direct access to the OS. Virtual machine scale sets do offer redundancy and ease of scaling but are specifically designed for managing a group of identical VMs rather than giving direct access to individual operating systems.