AZ104-Q: Running a single container without orchestration

Q: You need to run one stateless container quickly, paying only for compute, without managing a Kubernetes orchestration cluster. Which service is the simplest fit?

  • A) AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service)
  • B) ACI (Azure Container Instances)
  • C) An Azure VM
  • D) Azure Table storage

Answer: B — ACI. Azure Container Instances (ACI) runs containers without a VM or orchestrator to manage — you specify the image and it runs, billed per second, ideal for a single/simple container workload. AKS is the managed Kubernetes service, powerful but overkill (and has cluster-management overhead) for one stateless container. A VM (C) requires you to run a container runtime yourself. D is storage, not compute.

Why it helps

Container choice: ACI = single/simple containers (no orchestration), AKS = complex multi-container orchestration, Functions = event-driven serverless. Match simplicity to ACI.

aci · aks · azure-functions