AZ-305 Design business continuity solutions Practice Test 3 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company runs a critical web application on Azure VMs in the West US region. They need a disaster recovery solution that replicates the VMs to the East US region. The recovery point objective (RPO) must be 30 minutes, and the recovery time objective (RTO) must be 1 hour. The company also needs to perform quarterly disaster recovery drills without impacting the production environment. Additionally, after a failover, the solution must automatically update traffic management to route users to the East US region. Which combination of Azure services should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Site Recovery and Azure Traffic Manager. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) orchestrates replication, failover, and failback of Azure VMs from West US to East US, meeting the 30-minute RPO and 1-hour RTO. Azure Traffic Manager automatically updates DNS-based traffic routing to the East US region after failover, ensuring users are redirected without manual intervention. This combination satisfies all requirements: DR replication, RPO/RTO, quarterly drills (via test failover), and automated traffic management.

Answer

Azure Backup and Azure Traffic Manager

Answer

Azure Site Recovery and Azure Front Door

Answer

Azure Backup and Azure Front Door

Question 2

A company runs a critical SQL Server database on an Azure virtual machine in the West US region. They need a disaster recovery solution that replicates the database to a secondary region (East US) with a recovery point objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of 2 hours. The solution must also support non-disruptive disaster recovery drills. The company currently uses SQL Server Standard Edition. Which Azure service should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Azure Site Recovery. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) replicates the entire VM, including the SQL Server database, to the secondary region with an RPO as low as 15 minutes and an RTO of 2 hours when using a recovery plan. It supports non-disruptive disaster recovery drills by allowing test failovers that run in an isolated network without impacting the production environment. This makes ASR the correct choice for a SQL Server Standard Edition VM requiring cross-region DR with drills.

Answer

SQL Server Always On Availability Groups

Answer

Azure Backup with cross-region restore

Answer

Azure SQL Database geo-replication

Question 3

A company runs a critical line-of-business application on Azure VMs within a single region. The application tier is deployed across multiple VMs. They need to protect against a failure of an entire Azure datacenter within that region. The solution should automatically distribute the VMs across physically separate locations with independent power, cooling, and networking. The company also requires the lowest possible latency between application and database tiers within the same location. Which deployment strategy should they use?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the VMs across multiple availability zones. Availability zones are physically separate datacenters within an Azure region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking. Deploying the application tier VMs across multiple zones protects against an entire datacenter failure while keeping all resources within the same region, ensuring the lowest possible latency between application and database tiers when they are placed in the same zone.

Answer

Deploy the VMs in an availability set

Answer

Use Azure Site Recovery to replicate VMs to a paired region

Answer

Use Azure Proximity Placement Groups

Question 4

A company runs a mission-critical SQL Server database on an Azure virtual machine using SQL Server Standard Edition. They need a disaster recovery solution that replicates the database to a secondary Azure region with a recovery point objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of 1 hour. The solution must support non-disruptive disaster recovery drills. The company cannot modify the SQL Server configuration or use Always On features due to licensing constraints. Which Azure service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Site Recovery. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) replicates the entire VM (including the SQL Server database) to a secondary Azure region, meeting the RPO of 15 minutes and RTO of 1 hour. It supports non-disruptive disaster recovery drills by allowing test failovers in an isolated network without affecting the production environment. ASR does not require any changes to SQL Server configuration or licensing, as it operates at the hypervisor level using continuous replication.

Answer

SQL Server log shipping to a VM in the secondary region

Answer

Azure Backup with cross-region restore

Answer

Azure SQL Database geo-replication

Question 5

A company uses Azure Site Recovery to replicate critical Azure virtual machines (VMs) to a secondary Azure region for disaster recovery. The VMs use managed disks and are part of a multi-tier application. After a failover, the recovery VMs must be automatically placed into a specific availability set to maintain the application architecture. How should the administrator configure this in Azure Site Recovery?

Accepted Answer

Configure the target availability set in the VM replication settings in the Recovery Services vault. Option A is correct because Azure Site Recovery (ASR) allows you to configure the target availability set directly in the replication settings for each VM. When you enable replication for a VM, under the 'Target availability set' setting, you can select an existing availability set in the target region. ASR will then automatically place the recovered VM into that availability set during failover, ensuring the multi-tier application architecture is maintained without manual intervention.

Answer

Create a recovery plan and add a manual step or script to move VMs to the availability set after failover

Answer

Convert the managed disks to unmanaged disks for replication, then specify the availability set

Answer

Azure Site Recovery does not support placing VMs into an availability set in the target region

Question 6

A company runs a critical application on Azure VMs in the West US region. They need to protect against a regional disaster using Azure Site Recovery. The VMs use unmanaged disks. The recovery point objective (RPO) must be 15 minutes and the recovery time objective (RTO) must be 1 hour. Additionally, they must be able to perform quarterly disaster recovery drills that do not affect the production environment. Which configuration should they use in Azure Site Recovery?

Accepted Answer

Set up replication with a 15-minute snapshot frequency and perform test failover for drills.. Option A is correct because Azure Site Recovery supports replication of Azure VMs with unmanaged disks, and a 15-minute snapshot frequency meets the RPO requirement. Test failover allows quarterly disaster recovery drills without impacting the production environment, as it creates isolated copies of VMs in a separate network for validation.

Answer

Use Azure Backup for VM replication and perform restore drills.

Answer

Configure a recovery plan with a pre-script to take a snapshot every 15 minutes.

Answer

Enable multi-VM consistency group with a 15-minute consistency frequency.

Question 7

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?

Accepted Answer

Recovery plan with automation runbooks and order groups. Option B is correct because 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 8

A company runs SQL Server on Azure VMs using SQL Server Standard Edition. They need a disaster recovery solution that replicates the database to a secondary Azure region with a recovery point objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of 2 hours. They cannot use Always On Availability Groups due to licensing constraints. They also need to perform non-disruptive disaster recovery drills. Which Azure service should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Azure Site Recovery. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) replicates entire SQL Server VMs (including their databases) to a secondary Azure region, supporting RPOs as low as 30 seconds and RTOs of 2 hours or less. It allows non-disruptive disaster recovery drills by performing test failovers in an isolated network without affecting the production environment. This solution avoids the licensing constraints of Always On Availability Groups and works with SQL Server Standard Edition.

Answer

Azure Backup for SQL Server

Answer

SQL Server Log Shipping to an Azure VM

Answer

Geo-replication for Azure SQL Database

Question 9

A company runs critical Azure VMs. They want to protect against accidental deletion or corruption of data by implementing a retention policy for Azure Backup. They need to keep daily backups for 30 days, weekly backups for 12 weeks, and monthly backups for 12 months. Which Azure Backup feature should they configure?

Accepted Answer

Backup policy with long-term retention. A backup policy with long-term retention (LTR) in Azure Backup allows you to define granular retention rules for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly backup points. This directly meets the requirement to keep daily backups for 30 days, weekly for 12 weeks, and monthly for 12 months by configuring the retention duration for each frequency in the backup policy.

Answer

Immutable vault

Answer

Backup tiering

Answer

Soft delete

Question 10

A company runs a mission-critical application on Azure VMs in West US. They need a disaster recovery plan with an RPO of 5 minutes and an RTO of 30 minutes. The application consists of multiple VMs that must be recovered in a specific order: the database VM first, then the front-end VMs. They also need to ensure that after failover, the IP addresses of the VMs are retained to avoid DNS propagation delays. The company wants to test the recovery process periodically without affecting production. Which Azure Site Recovery features should they use?

Accepted Answer

Use recovery plans with virtual machine group ordering and failover network settings to assign static IPs.. Option A is correct because Azure Site Recovery recovery plans allow you to define the order of VM recovery using groups, and you can assign static IP addresses via failover network settings to retain IPs after failover. This meets the RPO of 5 minutes (via continuous replication) and RTO of 30 minutes (via orchestrated failover), while test failover can be performed without impacting production.

Answer

Use failover settings with retention IP and test failover.

Answer

Use recovery plans with custom scripts for ordering and Azure Traffic Manager for IP retention.

Answer

Use Azure Site Recovery with Application Consistent Snapshots and ignore IP retention.

Question 11

A company runs several Azure virtual machines (VMs) that host SQL Server databases. The databases are stored on data disks attached to the VMs. The company needs to back up the databases and VMs separately. They require application-consistent backups for SQL Server to ensure transactional integrity. Additionally, they need to retain backups for up to 7 years to meet compliance requirements. The solution must minimize administrative overhead and support long-term retention of database backups. Which Azure service or feature should they use for the database backups?

Accepted Answer

Azure Backup for SQL Server in Azure VMs. Azure Backup for SQL Server in Azure VMs is the correct choice because it provides native, application-consistent backups specifically for SQL Server databases running on Azure VMs. It integrates directly with SQL Server VSS writer to ensure transactional integrity, supports long-term retention up to 10 years (exceeding the 7-year requirement), and minimizes administrative overhead by automating backup scheduling, retention management, and point-in-time restore. This service is purpose-built for SQL Server database backups, separate from VM-level backups.

Answer

Azure Backup for Azure VMs with application-consistent snapshots

Answer

Azure Site Recovery

Answer

Azure Files

Question 12

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 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. Option B is correct because it meets all requirements: a 30-second replication policy achieves the 5-minute RPO, multi-VM consistency groups ensure crash-consistent recovery across tiers, script actions in the recovery plan enforce the correct startup order (database first, then app, then web), static IP mapping retains IP addresses after failover, and test failover allows non-disruptive drills. This combination of features directly addresses the RPO, RTO, ordering, IP retention, and testing needs.

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

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 13

A company runs an SAP HANA database on Azure large instances (HLI) in the West US region. The database is critical for business operations. They need a disaster recovery solution with a recovery point objective (RPO) of near zero (seconds) and a recovery time objective (RTO) of less than 30 minutes in the event of a region-wide outage. The solution must automatically replicate data to a secondary region (East US) and support automated failover. Which design should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Configure HANA System Replication (async) between the primary and secondary site, and use a Pacemaker cluster with Azure Load Balancer to enable automated failover. Option A is correct because HANA System Replication (async) provides near-zero RPO by continuously replicating log changes to the secondary region, while a Pacemaker cluster with Azure Load Balancer enables automated failover within the required 30-minute RTO. This combination meets the strict RPO/RTO requirements for SAP HANA on Azure Large Instances, as Azure Site Recovery does not support HLI and synchronous replication would introduce unacceptable latency over the West US to East US distance.

Answer

Use Azure Site Recovery to replicate the HANA large instance VMs with a replication frequency of 30 seconds and enable auto-failover

Answer

Schedule HANA database backups every 5 minutes to Azure Blob Storage with geo-redundant storage (GRS), and restore in the secondary region on demand

Answer

Set up HANA System Replication with synchronous mode to the secondary region

Question 14

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 a crash-consistent state at the application level. 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 15

A company runs a mission-critical application on Azure virtual machines (VMs) in the West US region. The application consists of multiple VMs that must be recovered in a specific order during a disaster: database VM first, then application VMs, then web VMs. They also require that after failover to East US, the VMs retain their private IP addresses to avoid DNS updates. The recovery point objective (RPO) is 5 minutes and recovery time objective (RTO) is 30 minutes. The company needs to perform quarterly disaster recovery tests without impacting production. Which combination of Azure Site Recovery features should they configure?

Accepted Answer

Use app-consistent replication, recovery plans with pre/post scripts for ordering, and static IP address assignment in failover settings. Option B is correct because the requirement for an RPO of 5 minutes and RTO of 30 minutes necessitates application-consistent replication, which ensures database and application integrity. The need to recover VMs in a specific order is met by recovery plans with pre/post scripts, which allow custom actions (e.g., starting the database VM first, then application, then web). Static IP address assignment in failover settings ensures that VMs retain their private IP addresses after failover to East US, avoiding DNS updates.

Answer

Use crash-consistent replication, recovery plans with manual ordering, and target network with same IP address range

Answer

Use multi-VM consistency groups, recovery plans with automation runbooks, and Azure Traffic Manager to redirect traffic

Answer

Use application-consistent replication, recovery plans with pre/post scripts for ordering, and target network with different IP address range and DNS updates