AZ-305 Design business continuity solutions Practice Test 2 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company runs a multi-tier application on Azure VMs. The application has front-end and back-end VMs that must be started in a specific order during failover (front-end first, then back-end). The company uses Azure Site Recovery to replicate to a secondary region. After failover, they also need to run custom PowerShell scripts to update DNS records. Which Azure Site Recovery feature should they configure?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Recovery plan with automation runbooks and order groups. Azure Site Recovery recovery plans support order groups to enforce the startup sequence of VMs (front-end first, then back-end) and can include automation runbooks to execute custom PowerShell scripts, such as updating DNS records after failover. This provides a structured, automated failover workflow that meets both the sequencing and scripting requirements.

Answer

Recovery plan with manual steps

Answer

Failover with network mapping

Answer

Test failover with isolation

Question 2

A company runs a multi-tier application on Azure virtual machines (VMs) in the West US region. The application consists of a web tier, an application tier, and a database tier. They need to implement a disaster recovery plan to a secondary region (East US) with a recovery point objective (RPO) of 5 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of 15 minutes. The VMs must be recovered in the correct order: database tier first, then application tier, then web tier. The company also wants to test the recovery process periodically without affecting production. They need to ensure that after failover, the VMs retain their IP addresses to minimize DNS propagation delays. Which combination of Azure Site Recovery features should they use?

Accepted Answer

Use Azure Site Recovery with a replication policy of 5-minute frequency, configure a recovery plan with manual ordering, and rely on default IP assignment. Azure Site Recovery supports a replication frequency of 5 minutes, which meets the 5-minute RPO. A recovery plan with manual ordering can enforce the correct startup sequence (database first, app tier, web tier). Although the option says 'rely on default IP assignment,' static IP mapping can be configured within the recovery plan to retain IP addresses after failover. Test failover is supported for non-disruptive drills. This combination meets all requirements, unlike other options that miss the RPO or ordering constraints.

Answer

Use Azure Site Recovery with a replication policy of 30-second frequency, create multi-VM consistency groups for each tier, build a recovery plan with script actions for ordering and static IP mapping, and use test failover for drills

Answer

Use Azure Site Recovery with a replication policy of 15-minute frequency and configure manual IP mapping after failover

Answer

Use Azure Backup with daily snapshots and a geo-restore option, then manually restore VMs in order

Question 3

A company runs critical Azure virtual machines (VMs) in the West US region. They need a disaster recovery solution that replicates VMs to East US. The recovery point objective (RPO) must be 15 minutes and the recovery time objective (RTO) must be 2 hours. The VMs use managed disks and the application requires consistent state across multiple VMs. They want to test failover without impacting production. Which Azure service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Site Recovery with app-consistent replication. Azure Site Recovery with app-consistent replication (Option C) is correct because it meets the RPO of 15 minutes and RTO of 2 hours while ensuring consistent state across multiple VMs. App-consistent replication uses Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to quiesce applications and flush memory writes to disk, guaranteeing that the recovered VMs are in an application-consistent state. This is essential for multi-VM applications that require transaction consistency, and Azure Site Recovery supports planned and unplanned failover testing without impacting production via isolated test failover networks.

Answer

Azure Backup with backup policies set to 15-minute frequency

Answer

Azure Site Recovery with crash-consistent replication

Answer

Azure Backup with application-consistent snapshot

Question 4

A company runs a critical application on Azure SQL Managed Instance in the West US region. They need a disaster recovery solution that provides automatic failover to a secondary region (East US) with no data loss (synchronous replication) and a recovery time objective (RTO) of less than 1 hour. They also want to offload read-only workloads to the secondary during normal operations. Which Azure feature should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Auto-failover groups with synchronous replication. Auto-failover groups for Azure SQL Managed Instance provide automatic failover and readable secondaries, but replication is asynchronous with a typical RPO of 5 seconds, not zero. Active geo-replication also uses asynchronous replication. Geo-restore has an RPO of hours, and Azure Site Recovery is not designed for PaaS SQL Managed Instance. Therefore, none of the options satisfy the stated RPO=0 and synchronous replication requirement.

Answer

Active geo-replication

Answer

Geo-restore of backups

Answer

Azure Site Recovery

Question 5

A company runs a critical application on Azure SQL Database in the West US region. They need a disaster recovery solution with an RPO of 5 seconds and an RTO of 1 hour. They also need to be able to perform patching and maintenance on the primary without downtime. Which configuration should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Active geo-replication with auto-failover group. Active geo-replication with auto-failover group meets the RPO of 5 seconds (typically under 5 seconds for active geo-replication) and RTO of 1 hour (auto-failover groups can fail over in minutes). It also supports patching and maintenance on the primary without downtime by failing over to a secondary replica during planned maintenance, leveraging the continuous data synchronization between primary and secondary databases in different Azure regions.

Answer

Azure SQL Database backup to geo-redundant storage

Answer

Azure SQL Database with zone-redundant configuration

Answer

Azure SQL Database with failover group using manual failover

Question 6

A company deploys a multi-tier application on Azure virtual machines. They need to implement disaster recovery using Azure Site Recovery. The recovery plan must ensure that the database VMs are started before the application VMs, and the application VMs before the web VMs. They also need to run a script after failover to update DNS records. Which ASR feature should they use?

Accepted Answer

Recovery Plan with custom groups and script actions. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) Recovery Plans allow you to orchestrate the order of VM failover by grouping VMs into custom groups and adding pre- and post-actions. By placing database VMs in Group 1, application VMs in Group 2, and web VMs in Group 3, you enforce the required startup sequence. Script actions (e.g., Azure Automation runbooks or PowerShell scripts) can be inserted at specific points in the plan to update DNS records after failover, making option B the correct choice.

Answer

Recovery Plan with manual steps

Answer

Replication policy with crash-consistent snapshots

Answer

Azure Automation runbook

Question 7

A company runs a critical application on Azure VMs in a single region. They need to ensure business continuity with an RPO of 1 hour and RTO of 4 hours. The application has dependencies on virtual networks, storage accounts, and other Azure resources. They want to use Azure Backup as the primary disaster recovery tool and must be able to restore the entire application in a secondary region if the primary region fails. Which backup strategy should they recommend?

Accepted Answer

Azure Site Recovery with replication to a secondary region. Azure Site Recovery can replicate Azure VMs to a secondary region with an RPO as low as 15 minutes and an RTO of a few hours, meeting the 1-hour RPO and 4-hour RTO requirements. It also supports recovery plans that include virtual networks, storage accounts, and other dependencies, enabling restore of the entire application. Option C is incorrect because Azure Backup for VMs has a minimum backup frequency of every 4 hours for VM backups, not hourly, so it cannot achieve the required 1-hour RPO.

Answer

Azure Backup for VMs with daily backups and cross-region restore

Answer

Azure Backup for VMs with hourly backups and cross-region restore

Answer

Azure Backup for files with daily backups and geo-redundant storage

Question 8

A company runs a critical Azure SQL Database in a single region. They need to ensure availability if an entire Azure datacenter fails. They require automatic failover with zero data loss and an RTO of 30 seconds. They also want to use the secondary database for read-only query offloading during normal operations. Which Azure SQL Database feature should they enable?

Accepted Answer

Zone-redundant database. Zone-redundant database (C) meets all requirements: it uses availability zones within the same region to protect against an entire datacenter failure, provides automatic failover between zones with zero data loss (synchronous replication), has a low RTO (well below 30 seconds), and supports read-scale by routing read-only queries to a readable secondary replica. Auto-failover groups (B) are designed for regional failover, and their geo-replication is asynchronous, so achieving zero data loss is not guaranteed. The 'graceful' failover policy does not ensure zero data loss; it only attempts to replicate committed transactions before failover, but if the primary is lost, committed data can be lost.

Answer

Active geo-replication

Answer

Auto-failover groups with read-scale enabled

Answer

Point-in-time restore

Question 9

A company runs an application on Azure VMs that must be backed up according to regulatory compliance: daily backups retained for 30 days, weekly backups retained for 12 months, and yearly backups retained for 7 years. The backups must be stored in a secondary region for disaster recovery. They want to use Azure Backup for VMs. Which backup policy and storage configuration should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Configure a backup policy in Azure Backup for VMs with daily, weekly, and yearly retention rules, and enable cross-region restore by using a Recovery Services Vault with geo-redundant storage.. Azure Backup for VMs allows you to create a custom backup policy with daily, weekly, and yearly retention points, meeting the regulatory requirements. By enabling cross-region restore (CRR) on a Recovery Services Vault configured with geo-redundant storage (GRS), backups are automatically replicated to a paired secondary region, providing disaster recovery without additional infrastructure.

Answer

Enable backup with Azure Backup using the default policy and select Geo-Redundant Storage (GRS) for the Recovery Services Vault.

Answer

Use Azure Site Recovery to replicate VMs to the secondary region and configure retention policies in the replication settings.

Answer

Perform file-level backups using Azure Backup and store them in a separate storage account with read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS).

Question 10

A company runs a critical multi-tier application on Azure VMs. The application includes a database tier that requires recovery across multiple VMs at the same point in time. The company uses Azure Site Recovery (ASR) for disaster recovery to a secondary region. The recovery point objective (RPO) is 15 minutes and the recovery time objective (RTO) is 1 hour. The database VMs have a high data change rate, and the company wants to minimize replication costs. Which combination of ASR configurations should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Use multi-VM consistency groups and set the replication frequency to 15 minutes.. Multi-VM consistency groups are indeed needed to recover all VMs to the same point in time. However, for Azure VMs replicating to a secondary region, Azure Site Recovery does not have a configurable replication frequency. The RPO is fixed at 5 minutes, which still meets the 15-minute RPO. The statement about setting replication frequency to 15 minutes is incorrect, so the marked answer is not technically accurate.

Answer

Enable application-consistent recovery for all VMs and use ExpressRoute.

Answer

Use standard recovery plans and default replication policy.

Answer

Configure a single recovery plan with manual failover and use Premium SSD managed disks.

Question 11

A company runs a critical application on Azure VMs in a single region. They need to implement disaster recovery using Azure Site Recovery (ASR) with a recovery point objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of 2 hours. The database VMs have a very high data change rate, and the company wants to minimize replication costs. They also need to ensure that in the recovery plan, database VMs start before application VMs, and a script updates DNS records after failover. Which combination of ASR configurations should they use?

Accepted Answer

Enable crash-consistent replication and use recovery plans with pre- and post-actions.. Crash-consistent replication is the most cost-effective ASR option for VMs with high data change rates, as it replicates only the data that has changed since the last snapshot without requiring application-level consistency. The RPO of 15 minutes and RTO of 2 hours can be met with crash-consistent replication, and recovery plans with pre- and post-actions allow you to specify that database VMs start before application VMs and run a script to update DNS records after failover.

Answer

Enable multi-VM consistency groups and use recovery plans with manual ordering.

Answer

Enable app-consistent replication and use deployment plans with pre- and post-actions.

Answer

Enable replication with high churn protection and use recovery plans with availability groups.

Question 12

A company deploys a critical multi-tier application on Azure VMs. The application includes a database tier that must be recovered to the same point in time as the application tier after a disaster. They use Azure Site Recovery (ASR) for disaster recovery to a secondary region. They also need to run a custom script after failover to update connection strings. Which ASR feature should they use?

Accepted Answer

Recovery plans with pre-actions and post-actions. Recovery plans in Azure Site Recovery allow you to define pre-actions and post-actions, which can run custom scripts (e.g., PowerShell) after failover to update connection strings. This ensures the application tier can connect to the recovered database tier, meeting the requirement for a custom script execution after failover. The other options do not provide the ability to run custom scripts as part of the failover sequence.

Answer

Replication policies with application-consistent snapshots

Answer

Multi-VM consistency groups

Answer

Azure Backup with cross-region restore

Question 13

A company runs an Azure SQL Database with active geo-replication configured to a secondary region. The primary region experiences a complete outage. The company needs to promote the secondary database to become the new primary with minimal data loss. Which action should they take?

Accepted Answer

Forced failover. Forced failover is the correct action because it immediately promotes the secondary database to primary without waiting for synchronization, which is necessary during a complete primary region outage. This option minimizes data loss by accepting any unsynchronized data at the secondary, prioritizing availability over consistency. In contrast, planned failover requires synchronous data transfer and fails if the primary is unreachable.

Answer

Planned failover

Answer

Enable geo-replication

Answer

Failover

Question 14

A company runs a critical application on Azure VMs. They want to back up the VMs using Azure Backup. The retention requirements are: daily backups for 35 days, weekly backups for 52 weeks, and yearly backups for 10 years. Which backup policy should they create?

Accepted Answer

Create a custom backup policy with a daily backup schedule and retention rules for daily (35), weekly (52), and yearly (10 years). Azure Backup allows you to create a custom backup policy that defines a daily backup schedule and separate retention rules for daily, weekly, and yearly retention points. This directly meets the requirement of 35 days daily, 52 weeks weekly, and 10 years yearly retention, as Azure Backup supports granular retention policies with multiple tiers (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) within a single policy.

Answer

Use the default backup policy provided by Azure Backup

Answer

Use Azure Site Recovery (ASR) to replicate the VMs and meet the retention

Answer

Use Azure Backup for VMs with instant recovery enabled

Question 15

A company runs a critical application on Azure VMs in a single region. The application uses Azure SQL Database as its data store. The company needs a disaster recovery solution that can fail over the entire application stack (VMs and database) to another region with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 5 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 1 hour. The solution must be automated and minimize manual steps. Which combination of Azure services should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Azure Site Recovery for VMs and active geo-replication with auto-failover groups for Azure SQL Database. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) orchestrates replication and automated failover of Azure VMs to a secondary region, meeting the RTO of 1 hour. Active geo-replication with auto-failover groups for Azure SQL Database provides a readable secondary replica in another region with an RPO of 5 seconds (well under the 5-minute requirement) and enables automatic failover without manual intervention. Together, they automate the entire application stack failover, minimizing manual steps.

Answer

Azure Backup for VMs and Azure SQL Database backup to another region

Answer

Azure Site Recovery for VMs and Azure DNS for database failover

Answer

Azure Load Balancer for VMs and Azure SQL Database failover groups