AZ-305 Design business continuity solutions Practice Test 4 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company runs a critical application on Azure virtual machines (VMs) in the West US region. They need a disaster recovery solution that replicates the VMs to East US with a recovery point objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of 2 hours. The application consists of multiple VMs, and the company needs to be able to fail over a single VM without impacting others during an actual disaster. They also want to periodically test the recovery process without affecting the production environment. Which Azure Site Recovery feature should they use to enable non-disruptive testing?

Accepted Answer

Test failover. Test failover (Option C) is the correct feature because it allows you to validate your disaster recovery process by creating an isolated copy of your replicated VMs in a separate test network, without impacting the ongoing replication or the production environment. This directly meets the requirement for periodic, non-disruptive testing while maintaining the RPO of 15 minutes and RTO of 2 hours.

Answer

Recovery Plans

Answer

Planned failover

Answer

Network mapping

Question 2

A company runs a mission-critical multi-tier application on Azure VMs in West US. The application consists of database VMs, application VMs, and web VMs. During a disaster, the VMs must be recovered in a specific order: database tier first, then application tier, then web tier. The recovery point objective (RPO) is 5 minutes and recovery time objective (RTO) is 15 minutes. The company wants to periodically test the recovery process without impacting production. After failover to East US, the VMs must retain their private IP addresses to avoid DNS propagation delays. Which combination of Azure Site Recovery features should they configure?

Accepted Answer

A recovery plan, test failover, and static IP address assignment. Option C is correct because a recovery plan enforces the required startup order (database → application → web), test failover allows non-disruptive validation of the recovery process, and static IP address assignment ensures VMs retain their private IP addresses after failover to East US, avoiding DNS propagation delays. This combination meets the RPO of 5 minutes and RTO of 15 minutes while satisfying the requirement for periodic testing without impacting production.

Answer

A recovery plan, planned failover, and network mapping

Answer

A recovery plan, test failover, and network mapping

Answer

A recovery plan, planned failover, and static IP address assignment

Question 3

A company runs a critical OLTP application on Azure SQL Database in the West US region. They need to ensure business continuity if a regional outage occurs. The solution must have a recovery point objective (RPO) of 5 seconds and a recovery time objective (RTO) of less than 1 hour. They also want to use the secondary region for read-only query offloading. Which Azure SQL Database feature should they enable?

Accepted Answer

Active geo-replication with automatic failover group. Active geo-replication with automatic failover groups is the correct choice because it provides continuous asynchronous data replication to a secondary Azure SQL Database in a paired region, achieving an RPO of 5 seconds and an RTO of under 1 hour. The automatic failover group enables coordinated failover of multiple databases and allows the secondary region to be used for read-only query offloading by connecting with ApplicationIntent=ReadOnly.

Answer

Geo-restore

Answer

Azure Site Recovery

Answer

Read scale-out with manual regional failover

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 with synchronous replication is the correct choice because Azure SQL Managed Instance supports failover groups that can use synchronous replication to ensure zero data loss (RPO=0) when both regions are within the same paired region. The automatic failover capability meets the RTO of less than 1 hour, and the secondary region can be used for read-only query offloading by connecting to the secondary listener endpoint.

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 Backup for VMs with hourly backups and cross-region restore. Option C is correct because Azure Backup for VMs supports hourly backups (up to every 4 hours for VM backups, but with application-consistent snapshots and cross-region restore, you can achieve an RPO of 1 hour by combining frequent backups with the ability to restore in a secondary region. The cross-region restore feature allows you to restore VMs and their dependencies (VNet, storage accounts) to a paired secondary region, meeting the RTO of 4 hours when using Azure Backup's restore capabilities.

Answer

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

Answer

Azure Site Recovery with replication to a secondary region

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

Auto-failover groups with read-scale enabled. Auto-failover groups with read-scale enabled meet all requirements: they provide automatic failover across regions with zero data loss when configured with the 'graceful' data loss policy (ensuring all committed transactions are replicated), an RTO of 30 seconds or less, and the ability to offload read-only queries to the secondary replica via the read-scale listener endpoint. This feature uses a secondary readable replica in a paired region, supporting both high availability and read workload distribution.

Answer

Active geo-replication

Answer

Zone-redundant database

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.. Option A is correct because 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.. Option A is correct because multi-VM consistency groups in Azure Site Recovery ensure that all VMs in the group are recovered to the same crash-consistent point in time, which meets the requirement for cross-VM recovery. Setting the replication frequency to 15 minutes aligns with the 15-minute RPO while minimizing replication costs by avoiding more frequent replication (e.g., 5 minutes) that would increase bandwidth and storage costs.

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 Azure SQL Database in the West US region. They need a disaster recovery solution that automatically fails over to a secondary region (East US) with a recovery point objective (RPO) of 5 seconds and a recovery time objective (RTO) of less than 1 hour. Additionally, they want to offload read-only workloads to the secondary database during normal operations. Which Azure SQL Database feature should they enable?

Accepted Answer

Active geo-replication with failover groups. Active geo-replication with failover groups is the correct choice because it provides automatic, asynchronous replication of an Azure SQL Database to a secondary region (East US) with an RPO of up to 5 seconds and an RTO of less than 1 hour. Additionally, it supports readable secondary replicas, allowing read-only workloads to be offloaded to the secondary database during normal operations, meeting all stated requirements.

Answer

Point-in-time restore

Answer

Long-term backup retention

Answer

Always On availability groups (self-managed)

Question 12

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.. Option D is correct because 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 13

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 14

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 15

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). Option A is correct because 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