Quick Note — Recommend a Caching Solution for Applications
AZ-305 › Unit 4: Design infrastructure solutions › Design an application architecture › Recommend a caching solution for applications
Quick Note — Recommend a Caching Solution for Applications
Caching is an architecture decision about where repeated work should stop. A database query, API call, rendered page, identity lookup, or image transformation may be correct and still be too slow or expensive to repeat for every request. A good cache absorbs repetition while preserving the application's correctness, security, and recovery behavior. A poor cache hides stale data, amplifies outages, or becomes an accidental system of record.
Retrieval target
- Recommend a Caching Solution for Applications
- Closed-book recall
- 5 minutes
- Open the full lesson after a miss
Decision anchors
| Prompt | Compact answer |
|---|---|
An application that uses Azure Managed Redis shows rising latency during peak traffic. Which evidence should the architect examine first to determine whether memory pressure and eviction are contributing to the problem? | Use Azure Monitor cache metrics together with Redis telemetry for used memory, server load, cache hits/misses, and evicted keys. Evicted keys indicate that the configured memory policy is removing data under pressure; miss ratio then reveals the downstream effect on the source database. Activity Log records management operations and does not describe per-request cache behaviour.… |
| A product catalogue is read frequently by many stateless application instances. Updates are much less frequent, database reads are the latency bottleneck, and the application can tolerate rebuilding cached entries.… | Use Azure Managed Redis with the cache-aside pattern. Each application instance checks the shared cache, reads the source database on a miss, then writes the result with a suitable expiration. A process-local cache is not shared and creates inconsistent instances. Azure Front Door caches HTTP responses or static assets at the edge; it is not the normal store for database query objects.… |
Application instances in a spoke virtual network must reach Azure Managed Redis without traversing the public internet. Public network access to the cache must be disabled. Which network design should you recommend? | Create an Azure Private Endpoint for Azure Managed Redis, link the appropriate private DNS zone to every virtual network that must resolve the cache name, and disable public network access. VNet peering can carry the private traffic when the endpoint is in a connected hub, but peering alone does not create a private address for a PaaS service. Service endpoints do not provide the requested private endpoint. |
A latency-sensitive workload has modest memory needs but performs a very high number of operations per second. Which Azure Managed Redis performance tier is the best initial candidate for a benchmark? | Compute Optimized provides the greatest compute relative to memory and is the correct starting point for throughput-intensive or latency-sensitive workloads. Memory Optimized favors a high memory-to-vCPU ratio. Balanced is the default when needs are mixed or unknown. Flash Optimized trades some performance for economical large datasets by using RAM and NVMe flash.… |
Read the answers once, then cover the right-hand column and reconstruct each one from the prompt. A useful answer names the requirement, the recommended control or service boundary, and the nearest alternative it rejects. If you can only recognize the answer after seeing it, retrieval is not yet secure.
Ninety-second explanation
Without notes, explain:
- What requirement signals this learning objective rather than a neighbouring one?
- Which two solution families are most likely to be compared?
- Which hard constraint eliminates the strongest distractor?
- What identity, network, data, or failure boundary must appear in the design?
- Which operational test would prove the recommendation works?
Then compare your explanation with the full lesson. Record the missing decision rule—not merely the missed product name—in your error log.
When to open the full lesson
Open the curriculum-linked lesson when you cannot explain a comparison, when a scenario depends on a numeric limit or SKU feature, or when the service is on a retirement path. Use current Microsoft Learn documentation for availability, limits, pricing, naming, and migration milestones; the quick note is intentionally compact.
Source and freshness
Derived from the linked AZ-305 lesson and retrieval deck, grounded in both attached course sources. Reviewed 2026-08-02. Current Microsoft documentation controls changing product contracts.