In one sentence. A case study gives you a small company's setup and a list of requirements, then asks several questions about it. The questions are answerable only from the text, so the skill is reading, not recall. The technique below is the one to use on exam day.
Technique
- Open every tab (Overview, Existing environment, Requirements, sometimes Planned changes) and skim once.
- Read the requirements slowly and circle the constraint words: least cost, least administrative effort, must not be reachable from the internet, within 1 hour, must not delete.
- For each question, find the one requirement it maps to, then eliminate options that are possible but break the constraint word.
- Do not import assumptions from your own company. If the text does not say there is a VPN, there is no VPN.
Overview
Contoso has offices in Sydney and Melbourne and one Azure subscription, Sub1, in tenant contoso.com. All users are synced from on-premises AD DS with Entra Connect. There is no VPN or ExpressRoute.
Existing environment
| Resource | Detail |
|---|---|
| VNet1 | 10.10.0.0/16, Australia East. Subnets Web (10.10.1.0/24) and Data (10.10.2.0/24) |
| VM-Web1, VM-Web2 | Subnet Web |
| VM-SQL1 | Subnet Data |
| VNet2 | 10.20.0.0/16, Australia Southeast. Contains VM-App1 |
| contosodata1 | GPv2, LRS storage account; container invoices |
| RSV1 | Recovery Services vault, Australia East |
| RG-Prod | Holds everything above |
Requirements
- VM-App1 must reach VM-SQL1 by private IP at the least cost.
- The invoices container must be inaccessible from the internet; only subnets Web and Data may access it. Minimise cost.
- Invoices older than 120 days must move to Archive automatically; older than 7 years must be deleted.
- Group Helpdesk-AU must be able to restart VMs in RG-Prod but must not delete them or change network settings.
- VM-SQL1 must be recoverable in Australia Southeast within 1 hour if Australia East fails.
- Accidental deletion of RG-Prod must be prevented.
- A new web app runs in App Service with two staging environments and automatic scaling.
Before you start the check: for each requirement write down, in one word, which lesson it belongs to (peering, storage firewall, lifecycle, custom role, Site Recovery, lock, App Service tier). If you cannot, go back to that lesson first.