AZ-305 Design business continuity solutions — Timed 20 Questions

Question 1

A financial services company runs a critical SQL Server database on Azure Virtual Machines. They require a disaster recovery solution with an RPO of less than 15 seconds and an RTO of less than 1 hour. Which technology should they implement?

Accepted Answer

SQL Server Always On Availability Groups. SQL Server Always On Availability Groups provide synchronous data replication at the database level, enabling an RPO of less than 15 seconds by committing transactions on both primary and secondary replicas simultaneously. With automatic failover and a secondary replica in a different Azure region, the RTO can be under 1 hour, meeting the critical requirements for a SQL Server workload on Azure VMs.

Answer

Azure Site Recovery

Answer

Azure Backup for SQL Server

Answer

Geo-redundant backups

Question 2

A company runs a critical web application on Azure App Service in a single region. They need to achieve high availability across regions with automatic failover in the event of a regional outage. Which approach should they recommend?

Accepted Answer

Deploy to multiple regions with Azure Front Door. Azure Front Door provides global load balancing and automatic failover across multiple regions by routing traffic to the nearest healthy backend. For a critical web application requiring cross-region high availability, deploying App Service instances in multiple regions behind Front Door ensures seamless failover during a regional outage, as Front Door monitors endpoint health and redirects traffic away from failed regions.

Answer

Deploy multiple App Service instances in the same region with Traffic Manager

Answer

Use App Service auto-scaling rules to handle increased load

Answer

Enable Azure Site Recovery for the App Service

Question 3

A company runs a critical SQL Server database on Azure Virtual Machines in a single region. They need a disaster recovery solution across regions with a recovery point objective (RPO) of zero. The database is update-intensive with frequent writes. Which configuration should they implement?

Accepted Answer

SQL Server Always On Availability Group with synchronous commit across regions.. SQL Server Always On Availability Group with synchronous commit across regions ensures zero data loss because transactions are committed on both the primary and secondary replicas before the primary acknowledges the commit. This meets the RPO of zero, even though it introduces latency due to cross-region synchronization. For an update-intensive workload, synchronous commit is the only option that guarantees no data loss at the cost of increased write latency.

Answer

SQL Server Always On Availability Group with asynchronous commit.

Answer

Azure Site Recovery to another region.

Answer

Deploy the VMs in a different availability zone within the same region.

Question 4

A company runs a critical application on Azure Virtual Machines in a single availability set. They want to protect against an entire Azure region failure. They need a recovery time objective (RTO) of 30 minutes and a recovery point objective (RPO) of 15 minutes. Which solution should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Site Recovery to another region.. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) provides orchestrated replication, failover, and failback of Azure VMs to a secondary region, enabling a recovery time objective (RTO) of 30 minutes and a recovery point objective (RPO) of 15 minutes as required. ASR replicates VM disks continuously to the target region, and in a regional failure, you can initiate a planned or unplanned failover to bring up the application within the specified RTO/RPO. This is the only option that offers both cross-region disaster recovery and the granular recovery objectives stated.

Answer

Azure Backup for VMs with geo-redundant backup storage.

Answer

Deploy VMs in an availability zone within the same region.

Answer

Use Azure managed disks with geo-replication (LRS to GRS).

Question 5

A company runs multiple on-premises workloads that are critical. They need a disaster recovery solution that can replicate workloads to Azure and enable failover in the event of an on-premises outage. The solution must support non-VMware and non-Hyper-V physical servers. Which Azure service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Site Recovery. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is the correct service because it provides orchestrated replication and failover for on-premises physical servers (including non-VMware, non-Hyper-V) to Azure. It supports physical-to-Azure (P2A) replication using the Mobility service installed on the source server, enabling automated failover during an outage. This directly meets the requirement for critical workload disaster recovery with failover capability.

Answer

Azure Backup

Answer

Azure Migrate

Answer

Azure Disaster Recovery

Question 6

A company has several Azure Virtual Machines running Windows Server with critical applications. They need to back up these VMs to a secondary Azure region to protect against regional disasters. The backup must be application-consistent and support file-level restore. Which solution should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Azure Backup with geo-redundant storage (GRS) in a Recovery Services vault. Azure Backup with geo-redundant storage (GRS) in a Recovery Services vault is the correct solution because it provides application-consistent backups of Windows Server VMs using the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to ensure data integrity, and it supports file-level restore by allowing you to mount the backup as a drive to recover individual files. The GRS option replicates backup data to a paired secondary region, meeting the disaster recovery requirement without additional manual steps.

Answer

Azure Site Recovery

Answer

Azure Snapshot of managed disks stored in a different region

Answer

Azure Managed Disk with incremental snapshots and manual cross-region copy

Question 7

A company runs a SQL Server database on an Azure VM in West Europe. They need to back up the database daily and retain backups for 7 years for compliance. They also require the ability to restore the database to a secondary Azure region (North Europe) if the primary region fails. They want to minimize operational overhead and costs. Which Azure Backup configuration should they use?

Accepted Answer

A. Option A is correct because Azure Backup's built-in cross-region restore (CRR) for Azure VMs allows you to restore SQL Server databases hosted on Azure VMs to a paired secondary region (North Europe) in the event of a disaster, while retaining backups for up to 10 years (covering the 7-year compliance requirement). This configuration minimizes operational overhead by using Azure Backup's native policy-based scheduling and storage management, and it is cost-effective as it uses geo-redundant storage (GRS) for the Recovery Services vault without needing a separate backup infrastructure.

Answer

B

Answer

C

Answer

D

Question 8

A company runs a stateless web application on Azure VMs. They need to ensure the application remains available in the event of an entire Azure datacenter failure. They want to achieve a 99.99% SLA. Which deployment option should they recommend?

Accepted Answer

B. To survive an entire Azure datacenter failure and achieve a 99.99% SLA, the stateless web application must be deployed across at least two Azure Availability Zones within a region. Availability Zones are physically separate datacenters within the same region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking. Deploying VMs in a zone-redundant configuration ensures that if one datacenter fails, the application continues running in another zone, meeting the 99.99% SLA (which requires a minimum of two zones).

Answer

A

Answer

C

Answer

D

Question 9

A company wants to back up their Azure VMs (running Windows and Linux) to a Recovery Services vault. The backup data must be encrypted at rest using customer-managed keys. They also need to retain monthly backups for 5 years for compliance. Which configuration should they use?

Accepted Answer

A. Option A is correct because Azure Backup supports encryption at rest using customer-managed keys (CMK) via Azure Disk Encryption or Azure Disk Encryption Set (DES) with a key vault. For long-term retention, the backup policy can be configured to retain monthly recovery points for up to 5 years, meeting compliance requirements. The Recovery Services vault stores encrypted backup data, and CMK ensures the customer controls the encryption keys.

Answer

B

Answer

C

Answer

D

Question 10

A company runs a critical application on an Azure virtual machine in the West US region. They want to enable disaster recovery to East US with the ability to perform non-disruptive DR drills. They need an RPO of a few minutes. Which Azure service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Site Recovery. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is the correct service because it provides continuous replication of Azure VMs from a primary region (West US) to a secondary region (East US) with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of a few minutes. It also supports non-disruptive disaster recovery drills by allowing you to perform test failovers in an isolated network without impacting the production workload.

Answer

Azure Backup

Answer

Azure Traffic Manager

Answer

Azure Blueprints

Question 11

A company runs a legacy on-premises application that relies on a SQL Server database. They want to use Azure as a disaster recovery site with a recovery point objective of less than 15 minutes. They need to be able to fail back to the on-premises environment after a disaster. Which Azure service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Site Recovery. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) orchestrates replication, failover, and failback of on-premises SQL Server workloads to Azure, supporting a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of less than 15 minutes through continuous replication. It enables failback to the original on-premises environment after a disaster, which is a critical requirement for this scenario.

Answer

Azure Backup

Answer

Azure SQL Database

Answer

Azure Traffic Manager

Question 12

A company runs a critical application on Azure VMs in a single region. The application writes data to Azure SQL Database (PaaS) and Azure Blob Storage. The company needs a disaster recovery plan with an RPO of less than 5 minutes for the database and less than 15 minutes for the blob storage, and an RTO of less than 1 hour for the entire solution. What should they recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use Azure Site Recovery for VMs, active geo-replication for Azure SQL Database, and read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS) for Blob Storage.. Option C is correct because Azure Site Recovery provides the VM replication needed to meet the RTO of under 1 hour, active geo-replication for Azure SQL Database offers a configurable RPO of as low as 5 seconds (well under the 5-minute requirement), and RA-GRS for Blob Storage provides read-access to a secondary region with an RPO typically under 15 minutes, enabling fast failover and read access during a disaster.

Answer

Use Azure Site Recovery for VMs, geo-replication for Azure SQL Database, and geo-redundant storage (GRS) for Blob Storage.

Answer

Use Azure Backup for VMs, geo-redundant storage for SQL Database backups, and geo-redundant storage for Blob Storage.

Answer

Use Azure Front Door with multi-region deployment of VMs and Azure Cosmos DB for the database.

Question 13

A company runs a critical application on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) in a single region. The application is stateless and uses an Azure SQL Database with active geo-replication for database DR. They need to ensure the AKS cluster can failover to a secondary region with an RTO of 15 minutes and an RPO of 5 seconds for the database. What should they recommend for the AKS cluster?

Accepted Answer

Deploy AKS clusters in two regions and use Azure Traffic Manager to route traffic.. Option A is correct because deploying AKS clusters in two regions with Azure Traffic Manager enables active-passive or active-active failover. Traffic Manager uses DNS-based routing to direct traffic to the secondary region when the primary fails, meeting the RTO of 15 minutes. The stateless application can be redeployed or scaled in the secondary cluster, while the Azure SQL Database with active geo-replication ensures an RPO of 5 seconds by continuously replicating transactions.

Answer

Deploy a single AKS cluster with pods spread across availability zones within the region.

Answer

Use Azure Site Recovery to replicate the AKS cluster to another region.

Answer

Back up the AKS cluster configuration and container images to a geo-redundant storage account.

Question 14

A company has an on-premises application running on physical servers with various operating systems. They want to use Azure as a disaster recovery site with an RPO of less than 1 hour and an RTO of less than 4 hours. They need to replicate the servers to Azure and support failover and failback. Which Azure service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Site Recovery. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) orchestrates replication, failover, and failback for physical servers and VMs to Azure, meeting the RPO of <1 hour and RTO of <4 hours. It supports heterogeneous operating systems on physical servers and provides continuous replication with recovery points as low as 30 seconds, enabling both planned and unplanned failover with full failback capability.

Answer

Azure Backup (MARS agent)

Answer

Azure Migrate

Answer

Azure File Sync

Question 15

A company runs a three-tier application on Azure VMs in the West US region. They want to enable disaster recovery to East US using Azure Site Recovery. The application requires that the web tier starts first, then the application tier, and finally the database tier after a consistency check. They also need to be able to perform non-disruptive DR drills. Which Azure Site Recovery capabilities should they use together?

Accepted Answer

Recovery Plan with pre/post actions and Test Failover. Option A is correct because a Recovery Plan in Azure Site Recovery allows you to define the startup order of tiers (web, app, database) using pre-actions and post-actions, which can invoke Azure Automation runbooks or scripts to perform the consistency check. Test Failover enables non-disruptive DR drills by creating an isolated copy of the replicated VMs in East US without impacting the production environment. Together, these capabilities meet both the ordered startup and drill requirements.

Answer

Network mapping and IP customization

Answer

Replication policy with crash-consistent snapshots

Answer

Azure Automation runbooks and Azure Monitor alerts

Question 16

A company runs SQL Server on an Azure virtual machine. They need to automate database backups with application-consistency and retain backups for 10 years to meet compliance. They also want to restore to any point in time within the last 35 days. Which Azure Backup solution should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Backup for SQL Server in Azure VM. Azure Backup for SQL Server in Azure VM (Option A) is correct because it provides native application-consistent backups for SQL Server databases running on Azure VMs, supports long-term retention (LTR) up to 10 years using the backup vault's retention rules, and enables point-in-time restore (PITR) for the last 35 days by leveraging SQL Server transaction log backups. This solution is specifically designed for SQL Server workloads and meets both compliance and recovery requirements without additional infrastructure.

Answer

Azure Backup for Azure VM

Answer

Azure Site Recovery

Answer

SQL Server Always On Availability Groups

Question 17

A company runs a critical application that uses Azure SQL Managed Instance in the West Europe region. They need to ensure that the database remains available if a regional failure occurs. The solution must provide automatic failover with an RPO of less than 5 seconds and an RTO of less than 1 minute. The secondary region must also be able to serve read-only queries for reporting purposes. Which Azure service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Configure Azure SQL Managed Instance with an auto-failover group to a secondary instance in North Europe.. Azure SQL Managed Instance supports auto-failover groups, which enable automatic, synchronous replication of databases to a secondary instance in a paired region (North Europe). This provides an RPO of less than 5 seconds (synchronous commit) and an RTO of under 1 minute, while the secondary can be used for read-only queries by adding the `-AllowReadOnlyFailoverToSecondary` parameter or using the listener's read-only endpoint. This meets all stated requirements for regional failover, low RPO/RTO, and read-only reporting.

Answer

Enable read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS) on the storage account hosting the database files.

Answer

Deploy SQL Server Always On Availability Groups with a synchronous replica in North Europe.

Answer

Use Azure Site Recovery to replicate the SQL Managed Instance to a secondary region as a virtual machine.

Question 18

A company has an on-premises Hyper-V environment with 20 virtual machines running various workloads. They want to use Azure as a disaster recovery site. The required recovery point objective (RPO) is 15 minutes, and the recovery time objective (RTO) is 2 hours. They want to automate failover and failback. Which Azure service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Site Recovery. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is the correct service because it provides orchestrated replication, failover, and failback for Hyper-V VMs to Azure as a DR site. It supports the required RPO of 15 minutes (using near-synchronous replication with change tracking) and RTO of 2 hours (via automated recovery plans), and it natively automates both failover and failback processes without additional scripting.

Answer

Azure Migrate

Answer

Azure Backup

Answer

Azure Recovery Services Vault

Question 19

A company runs a file server on an Azure VM in the East US region. They want to back up the file shares to Azure and be able to restore individual files if accidentally deleted. They also need to be able to restore the entire file share to a secondary region (West US) in case of a regional disaster. The solution should automatically protect the file shares and provide versioning for up to 30 days. Which Azure service and configuration should they recommend?

Accepted Answer

Configure Azure Backup on the Azure file share using a Recovery Services vault with geo-redundant storage (GRS). Enable cross-region restore on the vault.. Azure Backup for Azure file shares uses a Recovery Services vault and can be configured with geo-redundant storage (GRS) to replicate backup data to a paired secondary region. Enabling cross-region restore on the vault allows restoring the entire file share to the secondary region (West US) during a regional disaster. Azure Backup automatically protects the file share with scheduled backups and provides up to 30 days of retention for point-in-time restores of individual files or the entire share.

Answer

Use Azure File Sync to sync the file share to an on-premises server, and then back up the on-premises server using Azure Backup.

Answer

Enable soft delete and versioning on the storage account, and configure replication to a secondary region using RA-GRS.

Answer

Create a scheduled Azure Automation runbook that takes snapshots of the file share every day and copy them to a storage account in West US.

Question 20

A company runs a critical SQL Server database on an Azure virtual machine. They need a backup strategy that supports point-in-time restore down to the second and long-term retention of backups for 7 years to meet compliance. They want to offload backup management to Azure. Which backup solution should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Backup for SQL Server on Azure VM. Azure Backup for SQL Server on Azure VM provides native integration that supports point-in-time restore down to the second for SQL Server databases and allows configuring long-term retention (LTR) for up to 10 years, meeting the 7-year compliance requirement. It offloads backup management to Azure by automating backup schedules, retention policies, and restore operations without requiring manual scripting or third-party tools.

Answer

Azure Site Recovery

Answer

SQL Server managed backup to Azure

Answer

Azure Disk Backup