AZ-305 Design business continuity solutions Practice Test 7 — 15 Questions

Question 1

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?

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

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. 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 2

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. 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

Question 3

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 4

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. 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 5

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 6

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 7

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 8

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 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 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 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