Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure (AZ-204) Practice Exam 2025 - Free Azure Practice Questions and Solutions Guide

The correct feature that enables Azure to ensure redundancy and availability by logically grouping virtual machines (VMs) is the Availability Set. Availability Sets are used to protect your applications from localized hardware failures and ensure that at least one instance of your application is running, even during maintenance events.

When you place VMs in an Availability Set, Azure distributes them across multiple physical servers, storage units, and network hardware within a datacenter. This distribution minimizes the risk of downtime due to hardware failures, as not all VMs are affected if a server fails. Azure guarantees that VMs in an Availability Set will be spread across different fault domains and update domains, thus maximizing availability.

In contrast, the Load Balancer is primarily used to distribute incoming network traffic across multiple VMs, enhancing scalability rather than redundancy. Availability Zones, another important Azure feature, are designed for data center-level redundancy, providing high availability across geographically separate locations, but they do not organize VMs in the same way Availability Sets do. Resource groups serve as containers for related Azure resources, but they do not inherently provide redundancy or availability features.