SC-100 Certification Practice Question #230

Question

You have an Azure subscription.

You plan to deploy multiple containerized microservice-based apps to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

You need to recommend a solution that meets the following requirements:

•	Manages secrets
•	Provides encryption
•	Secures service-to-service communication by using mTLS encryption
•	Minimizes administrative effort

What should you include in the recommendation?

Accepted Answer

The recommendation must satisfy all four requirements together — manage secrets, provide encryption, secure service-to-service traffic with mTLS, AND minimize administrative effort. MS Learn's Dapr-on-AKS documentation explicitly lists Dapr's overlap with service meshes as including "Secure service-to-service communication with mTLS encryption" (via the dapr-sentry CA), plus dedicated Secrets and Encryption building blocks, all delivered through a managed AKS cluster extension with automatic upgrades and smart defaults. That managed extension is what tips the "minimizes administrative effort" requirement decisively toward Dapr. Istio (the highest-voted dissent, 👍 7) does provide mTLS, but it is infrastructure-centric, more complex to operate, and lacks Dapr's secrets API — so it fails the secrets + minimal-effort criteria. Flux and Envoy don't cover the security requirements at all. Suggested Answer and the dominant vote (C, 15) align with MS Learn; held at 86% due to the well-argued Istio minority on the mTLS point.

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