Microsoft Azure Architect Design (AZ-304) Practice Test

To ensure archived data cannot be deleted for five years while using an Azure Storage account, what method is ineffective?

1. Create a file share and configure an access policy.

2. Create a blob storage container and configure a legal hold access policy.

3. Create snapshots of the file share for recovery.

4. Create an immutable blob storage policy.

The correct answer is: Create snapshots of the file share for recovery.

In the context of ensuring that archived data cannot be deleted for a five-year period within an Azure Storage account, utilizing the approach of creating snapshots of the file share for recovery is ineffective for achieving a retention policy. Snapshots in Azure are primarily designed to provide point-in-time recovery options for data, allowing users to restore previous versions of files. However, they do not enforce retention policies. This means that while snapshots can help in recovering data if it gets accidentally modified or deleted, they do not prevent the underlying files or blobs from being deleted themselves, nor do they impose a time-based restriction on deletion. On the other hand, methods like creating an immutable blob storage policy or configuring a legal hold on a blob storage container are specifically designed to protect data from deletion for a specified retention period. An immutable blob storage policy can enforce a retention period during which the data cannot be modified or deleted, ensuring compliance and data integrity. Creating an access policy on a file share may offer some permissions management but lacks the enforcement of an immutability feature necessary for protecting data from deletion over long periods. Therefore, snapshots, while useful for recovery, do not offer any mechanism to prevent the deletion of data, which is why this method is considered ineffective for the requirement stated