DP-300 Plan and configure a high availability and disaster recovery environment Practice Test 10 — 15 Questions

Question 1

You are a database administrator for a global e-commerce company. The company uses Azure SQL Database for its product catalog, which is a mission-critical OLTP workload. The database is currently deployed in the West US region using the Business Critical service tier with zone redundancy enabled. The database size is 200 GB and grows at 10 GB per month. The company has a disaster recovery requirement: in the event of a regional outage, the database must be failed over to a secondary region with an RPO of less than 5 seconds and an RTO of less than 1 minute. Additionally, the secondary database must be readable to support read-heavy reporting workloads. The solution must minimize additional compute costs. You need to recommend a configuration. Which option should you choose?

Accepted Answer

Configure active geo-replication to a secondary database in a paired region using Business Critical tier with a readable secondary.. Option B is correct. Business Critical with zone redundancy already provides high availability within the region. To achieve an RPO of less than 5 seconds and a readable secondary in another region, you need active geo-replication with a readable secondary. Option A is wrong because adding another zone-redundant replica does not provide cross-region DR. Option C is wrong because a failover group in the same region does not help with regional outage. Option D is wrong because Hyperscale may be overkill and more expensive, and zone redundancy in Hyperscale does not provide cross-region DR.

Answer

Create a failover group within the same region using Business Critical tier with a readable secondary.

Answer

Add a second zone-redundant replica in the same region and configure a failover group.

Answer

Upgrade to Hyperscale tier with zone redundancy and configure a named replica in a secondary region.

Question 2

Your company runs a financial application on Azure SQL Managed Instance. The primary instance is deployed in North Europe. You need to implement a disaster recovery solution that meets the following requirements: automatic failover to a secondary region in case of a regional outage; the secondary must be readable during normal operations to serve read-only queries; the RPO must be less than 10 seconds; the RTO must be less than 30 seconds; and you must minimize compute costs by using the smallest possible secondary instance size. The primary instance uses the Business Critical service tier. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Create a failover group between the primary and a secondary Business Critical instance in a paired region, and use a smaller compute size for the secondary.. Option A is correct. A failover group between two managed instances provides automatic failover and a readable secondary. You can configure the secondary instance with a smaller compute size (e.g., fewer vCores) because it is only used for read-only workloads and DR. Option B is wrong because you cannot change the secondary's service tier to General Purpose in a failover group; it must match the primary. Option C is wrong because the secondary must be in a different region for DR. Option D is wrong because active geo-replication is not supported for SQL Managed Instance.

Answer

Create a failover group with a General Purpose secondary instance in a different region to reduce costs.

Answer

Deploy a secondary Business Critical instance in the same region and configure a failover group.

Answer

Configure active geo-replication to a secondary managed instance in a different region.

Question 3

You are responsible for the disaster recovery of an Azure SQL Database that supports a customer-facing application. The database is 50 GB and uses the General Purpose service tier. The application requires an RPO of 1 hour and an RTO of 2 hours. The company has a limited budget and wants to minimize costs. You need to recommend a DR solution that meets the requirements without incurring additional compute costs for a secondary database. Which option should you choose?

Accepted Answer

Use point-in-time restore (PITR) with geo-redundant backup storage.. Option C is correct. Point-in-time restore using geo-redundant backup storage does not require a secondary database; you restore from backups in case of a regional outage. The RTO of 2 hours is achievable for a 50 GB database, and the RPO of 1 hour is within the backup retention (every 5-10 minutes). Option A is wrong because active geo-replication incurs compute costs for the secondary. Option B is wrong because failover groups also incur compute costs. Option D is wrong because zone redundancy does not provide cross-region DR.

Answer

Enable active geo-replication to a secondary database in a different region.

Answer

Enable zone redundancy on the primary database.

Answer

Configure a failover group with a secondary in a different region.

Question 4

You have an Azure SQL Database configured with active geo-replication. The primary region experiences an outage that lasts longer than the recovery time objective (RTO) of 5 minutes. You need to initiate a failover to the secondary region with minimal data loss. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Initiate a planned failover to the secondary region using the Azure portal.. Option B is correct because initiating a planned failover via the portal ensures the secondary becomes primary with minimal data loss by synchronizing data before failover. Option A is wrong because automatic failover groups are not configured here. Option C is wrong because geo-restore is for point-in-time recovery, not failover. Option D is wrong because forced failover may cause data loss.

Answer

Configure an auto-failover group and let it fail over automatically.

Answer

Force a failover to the secondary region using a PowerShell script.

Answer

Use geo-restore to recover the database from the most recent geo-replicated backup.

Question 5

Your company requires that all production databases in Azure SQL Database have an RPO of less than 5 seconds and an RTO of less than 1 minute during a regional outage. You need to recommend a high availability and disaster recovery solution. Which feature should you use?

Accepted Answer

Auto-failover groups with active geo-replication. Option C is correct because failover groups with active geo-replication provide the lowest RPO and RTO for regional outages. Option A is wrong because zone-redundant configuration protects only within a region. Option B is wrong because auto-failover groups without geo-replication are for within-region. Option D is wrong because long-term retention backup is for archival, not DR.

Answer

Zone-redundant configuration (Hyperscale service tier)

Answer

Long-term retention (LTR) backups

Answer

Geo-restore from geo-redundant backups

Question 6

You manage an Azure SQL Managed Instance in the East US region. To meet a 5-second RPO, you configure a failover group with a secondary in West US. During a planned maintenance, the primary becomes unavailable. The failover group is set to automatic with a grace period of 1 hour. You need to minimize downtime. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Initiate a manual forced failover to the secondary.. Option D is correct because performing a manual failover immediately reduces downtime without waiting for the grace period. Option A is wrong because waiting for automatic failover would take up to 1 hour. Option B is wrong because altering the grace period requires downtime. Option C is wrong because creating a new secondary takes time.

Answer

Drop the failover group and create a new one with immediate failover.

Answer

Wait for the automatic failover to occur after the grace period.

Answer

Alter the failover group grace period to 0 and wait for automatic failover.

Question 7

You have an Azure SQL Database in the General Purpose service tier. The database must be available during a planned patching event that updates the underlying infrastructure. What high availability feature is provided by default?

Accepted Answer

Built-in high availability with a standby replica. Option B is correct because the General Purpose service tier uses local redundancy with built-in high availability through a standby replica on a different node. Option A is wrong because zone redundancy is not default for General Purpose. Option C is wrong because geo-replication requires manual setup. Option D is wrong because Business Critical is a different tier.

Answer

Active geo-replication

Answer

Zone-redundant availability

Answer

Business Critical service tier

Question 8

You have configured a failover group using the JSON template shown. The primary server is server1 in East US, and the secondary server is server2 in West US. During a test, you notice that read-only queries against the secondary endpoint are failing. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The read-only endpoint failover policy is disabled.. Option B is correct because the readOnlyEndpoint failover policy is set to Disabled, meaning read-only routing is not enabled. Option A is wrong because read-write policy is automatic. Option C is wrong because the database is listed correctly. Option D is wrong because the grace period is set.

Answer

The database is not included in the failover group databases list.

Answer

The failover grace period is set too high.

Answer

The read-write endpoint failover policy is set to Automatic.

Question 9

A company plans to migrate an on-premises SQL Server database to Azure SQL Database Managed Instance. They require a high availability solution that provides automatic failover between replicas within the same region with an RPO of 0 and an RTO of less than 30 seconds. Which service tier should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Business Critical. Option A is correct because Business Critical service tier provides Always On availability groups with synchronous replicas ensuring zero data loss and fast failover. Option B is wrong because General Purpose has asynchronous replicas. Option C is wrong because Hyperscale uses buffer pool extension. Option D is wrong because Azure SQL Database is not Managed Instance.

Answer

General Purpose

Answer

Azure SQL Database (single)

Answer

Hyperscale

Question 10

You have an Azure SQL Database configured with active geo-replication to a secondary region. The secondary database is used for read-only workloads. A network latency issue causes replication lag to exceed 10 seconds. You need to ensure reporting queries always see consistent data. What should you configure?

Accepted Answer

Use ApplicationIntent=ReadOnly in connection strings and ensure the secondary is up-to-date.. Option C is correct because setting session context to use the primary for read-write and secondary for read-only with read-intent ensures consistent reads. Option A is wrong because auto-failover groups don't enforce consistency. Option B is wrong because read scale-out is for Hyperscale. Option D is wrong because it doesn't address consistency.

Answer

Enable read scale-out on the secondary.

Answer

Configure an auto-failover group with read-write endpoint.

Answer

Create a failover group with read-only endpoint enabled.

Question 11

You are designing a disaster recovery plan for an Azure SQL Managed Instance in the East US region. The plan must meet an RPO of 15 minutes and an RTO of 1 hour. You need to minimize costs while meeting these requirements. Which solution should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Configure a failover group between two General Purpose instances in different regions.. Option D is correct because geo-replication with a secondary in another region provides RPO of seconds and RTO of minutes, and using General Purpose tier minimizes cost. Option A is wrong because it doesn't cover regional DR. Option B is wrong because Managed Instance zones are not available in all regions. Option C is wrong because it's expensive and might not meet RTO.

Answer

Use a zone-redundant Business Critical instance.

Answer

Deploy a second instance in the same region with zone redundancy.

Answer

Configure a failover group between two Business Critical instances in different regions.

Question 12

Your organization uses Azure SQL Database Hyperscale tier. You need to ensure that if the primary region fails, the database can be failed over to a secondary region with minimal data loss. What should you configure?

Accepted Answer

Set up active geo-replication to a secondary region.. Option A is correct because Hyperscale supports geo-replication to a secondary region. Option B is wrong because zone redundancy is within region. Option C is wrong because failover groups are supported but require geo-replication. Option D is wrong because geo-restore has higher RPO.

Answer

Use geo-restore from geo-redundant backups.

Answer

Enable zone redundancy on the Hyperscale database.

Answer

Configure an auto-failover group with a secondary in the same region.

Question 13

You manage an Azure SQL Database in the Business Critical service tier. The database must be highly available within a single region. Which TWO features contribute to this high availability?

Accepted Answer

Multiple synchronous replicas (4 replicas). Options B and D are correct because Business Critical uses multiple replicas (at least 4) and zone redundancy with zone-deployment for higher availability. Options A and C are incorrect because geo-replication is for cross-region DR, and auto-failover groups are for cross-region failover. Option E is incorrect because always on availability groups are internal, not a separate feature.

Answer

Active geo-replication

Answer

Always On availability groups

Answer

Auto-failover groups

Question 14

You are tasked with designing a disaster recovery solution for Azure SQL Database that meets an RPO of 5 seconds and an RTO of 30 seconds during a regional outage. Which TWO features should you combine?

Accepted Answer

Business Critical service tier. Options B and E are correct because failover groups with active geo-replication provide low RPO and RTO, and using Business Critical service tier in both regions ensures low latency and high performance. Options A, C, and D are incorrect because zone redundancy is within region, geo-restore has high RTO, and General Purpose might not meet RPO.

Answer

General Purpose service tier

Answer

Geo-restore from GRS backups

Answer

Zone-redundant configuration

Question 15

You have an Azure SQL Managed Instance. You need to implement a disaster recovery solution that provides automatic failover with an RTO of less than 1 hour. Which THREE actions should you take?

Accepted Answer

Create a secondary Managed Instance in a different Azure region.. Options A, C, and E are correct because creating a secondary instance in another region, configuring a failover group, and using Business Critical tier (which supports failover groups) meet the requirements. Option B is wrong because zone redundancy is within region. Option D is wrong because geo-replication is not supported on Managed Instance directly; failover groups are used.

Answer

Enable zone redundancy on the primary instance.

Answer

Enable geo-replication on the instance.