Microsoft Exam DP-420 Topic 2 Question 60 Discussion

Actual exam question for Microsoft's DP-420 exam

Question #: 60
Topic #: 2

You are designing an Azure Cosmos DB Core (SQL) API solution to store data from IoT devices. Writes from the devices will be occur every second.

The following is a sample of the data.

You need to select a partition key that meets the following requirements for writes:

Minimizes the partition skew

Avoids capacity limits

Avoids hot partitions

What should you do?

AUse timestamp as the partition key.

BCreate a new synthetic key that contains deviceId and sensor1Value.

CCreate a new synthetic key that contains deviceId and deviceManufacturer.

DCreate a new synthetic key that contains deviceId and a random number.

Show Suggested Answer

Suggested Answer: B

You can use the Set-AzCosmosDBAccountRegion cmdlet to update the regions that an Azure Cosmos DB account uses. You can use this cmdlet to add a region or change the region failover order.The cmdlet requires a resource group name, an Azure Cosmos DB account name, and a list of regions in desired failover order1.

For your scenario, based on the PowerShell command, you are using the Set-AzCosmosDBAccountRegion cmdlet to update the regions for an Azure Cosmos DB account named account1 that is configured for automatic failover. The command specifies two regions: West US and East US. The effect of running the command is thatthe account will be configured for multi-region writes.

Multi-region writes is a feature of Azure Cosmos DB that allows you to write data to any region in your account and have it automatically replicated to all other regions. This feature provides high availability and low latency for write operations across multiple regions.To enable multi-region writes, you need to specify at least two regions in your account and set them as write regions2. In your command, you are setting both West US and East US as write regions by using the -IsZoneRedundant parameter with a value of $true for both regions.

by Ceola at Mar 19, 2025, 06:13 PM

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Dominga

5 days ago

Using the timestamp as the partition key might seem like a good idea, but it could lead to hot partitions and uneven distribution of data, which would impact the performance of the Azure Cosmos DB solution.

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Tamar

6 days ago

I disagree, I think creating a new synthetic key with deviceId and sensor1Value would be a better option to avoid capacity limits.

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Carla

7 days ago

I agree with Angella, using timestamp as the partition key will help minimize partition skew.

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Belen

8 days ago

That's a good point, but I still think D is the correct answer based on the command.

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Tyra

8 days ago

I'm just wondering if the exam will ask us to actually run that PowerShell command and see what happens. That would be a real test of our knowledge!

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Lyndia

10 days ago

Haha, multi-region writes? In your dreams! This is a simple failover command, not some advanced configuration.

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Angella

13 days ago

I think we should use timestamp as the partition key to avoid hot partitions.

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Francisca

14 days ago

But wouldn't that also mean that the account will be unavailable for writes during the change?

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Solange

15 days ago

Nah, I don't think the throughput will increase. That command is probably just changing the failover settings, not the provisioned capacity.

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Dottie

16 days ago

Hold up, are you sure that's not going to make the account unavailable for writes? I thought that was one of the potential side effects.

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Mable

19 days ago

The manual failover is definitely the effect of running that command. I remember learning about that in my Azure Cosmos DB training.

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