DP-300 Plan and configure a high availability and disaster recovery environment Practice Test 2 — 15 Questions

Question 1

You have Azure SQL Database elastic pools in the primary region. You need to configure disaster recovery using a failover group. The secondary pool must be in a different region. Which PowerShell cmdlet should you use to create the secondary pool?

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

Accepted Answer

New-AzSqlDatabaseSecondary. The correct cmdlet is New-AzSqlDatabaseSecondary (Option C). When the primary database is in an elastic pool, using the -SecondaryElasticPoolName parameter creates a new elastic pool on the secondary server in a different region if it does not already exist. This makes it suitable for creating the secondary pool as part of failover group setup. Option A (Set-AzSqlDatabaseSecondary) modifies an existing geo-replication relationship, not create a new one. Option B (Add-AzSqlDatabaseToFailoverGroup) adds an existing database to a failover group, but the secondary pool must already be provisioned. Option D (New-AzSqlDatabaseFailoverGroup) creates the failover group itself, not the secondary elastic pool.

Answer

Set-AzSqlDatabaseSecondary

Answer

Add-AzSqlDatabaseToFailoverGroup

Answer

New-AzSqlDatabaseFailoverGroup

Question 2

Which THREE of the following are required considerations when configuring a failover group for Azure SQL Managed Instance?

Accepted Answer

Both instances must be in the same partner region pair.. Options A, C, and E are correct. For Azure SQL Managed Instance failover groups, both instances must be in the same partner region pair (e.g., East US and West US). The secondary instance must be in a different Azure region to provide geo-redundancy. The databases must be in the same resource group. Option B is incorrect because the secondary instance can have a different service tier than the primary. Option D is incorrect because automatic failover is not required; you can use manual failover.

Answer

Both instances must have the same service tier.

Answer

Automatic failover must be enabled.

Question 3

Which TWO of the following are valid disaster recovery options for Azure SQL Database that provide a secondary in a different Azure region?

Accepted Answer

Active geo-replication. Options A and B are correct. Active geo-replication and Failover groups are both valid disaster recovery options for Azure SQL Database that provide a secondary database in a different Azure region. Options C, D, and E are incorrect: Geo-restore (C) restores from backups and does not maintain a continuous secondary; Zone-redundant configuration (D) provides high availability within a single region, not disaster recovery; Auto-failover groups (E) is a feature that enables automatic failover for failover groups, but it is not a separate disaster recovery option—it is part of failover groups.

Answer

Geo-restore

Answer

Zone-redundant configuration

Answer

Auto-failover groups

Question 4

Your company has an Azure SQL Managed Instance in the West US region. You need to configure a disaster recovery solution that provides automatic failover to a secondary region with minimal data loss. The solution must also allow read-only access to the secondary database for reporting purposes. Which option should you use?

Accepted Answer

Configure a failover group between the primary and secondary managed instances.. Failover groups are the native disaster recovery feature for Azure SQL Managed Instance, providing automatic failover, a readable secondary (via read-only intent), and minimal data loss with a synchronization mode that prioritizes data durability. Option A (auto-failover group with active geo-replication) is incorrect because active geo-replication is a separate feature for single databases and elastic pools, not managed instances; failover groups themselves include the auto-failover capability. Option C (log shipping) is not a built-in managed instance feature, does not provide automatic failover, and the secondary is not readable during normal operation. Option D (active geo-replication) is for single databases and elastic pools, not managed instances, and does not provide automatic failover.

Answer

Create an auto-failover group with active geo-replication.

Answer

Use log shipping to a secondary managed instance.

Answer

Enable active geo-replication on the database.

Question 5

You have an Azure SQL Database configured with active geo-replication to a secondary region. A regional outage occurs in the primary region. You need to manually fail over to the secondary database with the least amount of data loss. Which PowerShell cmdlet should you run?

Accepted Answer

Set-AzSqlDatabaseSecondary -ResourceGroupName ... -ServerName ... -DatabaseName ... -PartnerResourceGroupName ... -Failover. The Set-AzSqlDatabaseSecondary cmdlet with the -Failover parameter is the documented Azure PowerShell command to manually initiate a failover of an Azure SQL Database from the primary to the secondary in an active geo-replication configuration. It performs a planned failover that preserves data by ensuring the secondary is fully synchronized before promotion, minimizing data loss.

Answer

Start-AzSqlDatabaseFailover -ResourceGroupName ... -ServerName ... -DatabaseName ...

Answer

Invoke-AzSqlDatabaseFailover -ResourceGroupName ... -ServerName ... -DatabaseName ... -Secondary

Answer

Switch-AzSqlDatabaseSecondary -ResourceGroupName ... -ServerName ... -DatabaseName ...

Question 6

You are designing a high availability solution for a mission-critical Azure SQL Database. The database must have an uptime SLA of 99.995% and automatically recover from zone-level failures without data loss. Which service tier and redundancy option should you choose?

Accepted Answer

Business Critical tier with zone redundancy. The Business Critical tier with zone redundancy provides an SLA of 99.995% and automatic recovery from zone-level failures without data loss. The Basic tier does not support zone redundancy. The General Purpose tier with zone redundancy offers a 99.99% SLA. The Hyperscale tier with zone redundancy offers a 99.95% SLA for zone-redundant configurations. Therefore, only the Business Critical tier meets the 99.995% uptime requirement with zone redundancy.

Answer

Basic tier with zone redundancy

Answer

General Purpose tier with zone redundancy

Answer

Hyperscale tier with zone redundancy

Question 7

You have an Azure SQL Database in the Business Critical tier without zone redundancy. You need to configure a disaster recovery plan that ensures the database is available in a different Azure region within 1 hour of a regional outage. The solution must minimize data loss and not require manual intervention. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Configure active geo-replication to a secondary region and enable auto-failover groups.. Active geo-replication provides asynchronous replication to a secondary region, and auto-failover groups enable automatic failover without manual intervention, meeting the RTO of 1 hour with minimal data loss. Option B is incorrect because simply creating a failover group does not guarantee automatic failover; the failover policy must be set to automatic, which is explicitly included in option A. Also, active geo-replication must be configured before setting up the failover group for single databases. Option C (geo-restore) has a longer RTO and potential data loss. Option D (copy-only backups) is not a disaster recovery solution.

Answer

Create a failover group between two servers in different regions.

Answer

Use geo-restore of the latest backup.

Answer

Configure copy-only backups to a secondary region.

Question 8

You have an Azure SQL Managed Instance configured with a failover group between the primary region (East US) and secondary region (West US). The secondary instance is used for read-only query workloads. During a planned failover test, you notice that after failover, the read-only queries on the secondary instance fail with error 4060 (cannot open database). What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The failover changed the secondary instance to primary, and read-only routing is not configured for the new secondary.. In an Azure SQL Managed Instance failover group, the secondary instance is read-only only while it remains the secondary. After a planned failover, the former secondary becomes the new primary (read-write), and the former primary becomes the new secondary. If read-only routing is not configured on the new secondary, applications attempting read-only connections will fail with error 4060 because the listener routes them to an instance that is no longer accepting read-only connections in the expected way.

Answer

The secondary instance is not in the same license type as the primary.

Answer

The firewall rules on the secondary instance do not allow the client IP.

Answer

The secondary instance is not configured to allow read-only access.

Question 9

You need to design a high availability solution for an Azure SQL Database that supports an online transaction processing (OLTP) application. The solution must provide automatic failover within seconds in case of a node failure and guarantee zero data loss. Which deployment option should you choose?

Accepted Answer

Business Critical tier with zone redundancy. (Business Critical tier with zone redundancy) is correct because the Business Critical tier uses synchronous replication and a quorum-based commit to replicas, ensuring zero data loss on failover and failover within seconds. Option A (Basic tier) does not support zone redundancy or automatic failover with zero data loss. Option B (General Purpose tier) uses asynchronous replication, which may result in data loss during failover. Option C (Hyperscale tier) uses a log-based service with a buffer, which can lead to data loss on failover.

Answer

Basic tier with zone redundancy

Answer

General Purpose tier with zone redundancy

Answer

Hyperscale tier with zone redundancy

Question 10

You have an Azure SQL Database in the General Purpose tier. You need to implement a disaster recovery solution that provides an RPO of 5 seconds and an RTO of 1 hour. The solution must use Azure PaaS features only. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Configure active geo-replication to a secondary server in a different region.. Active geo-replication provides asynchronous replication with a typical RPO of 5 seconds, and manual failover can be completed within the 1‑hour RTO window. Failover groups (Option A) are fully supported for Azure SQL Database (not limited to managed instances) and also meet the RPO/RTO targets, but they are designed to manage multiple databases as a group and introduce additional overhead for a single‑database scenario. Geo‑restore (Option C) has an RPO of up to one hour and a much longer RTO. Copy‑only backups (Option D) are not a disaster recovery solution.

Answer

Create a failover group between two servers in different regions.

Answer

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

Answer

Configure copy-only backups to a secondary region.

Question 11

You are planning a disaster recovery solution for an Azure SQL Managed Instance. The solution must meet the following requirements: provide automatic failover to a secondary region, support read-only workloads on the secondary, and allow manual failback. Which TWO features should you include? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Failover group. Options C and D are correct. Failover groups provide automatic failover to a secondary region, support readable secondary workloads, and allow manual failback by initiating a failover in the opposite direction. Option A (Active geo-replication) is not supported for Azure SQL Managed Instance. Option B (Geo-restore) does not provide automatic failover. Option E (Log shipping) is not built-in for managed instances and does not meet the requirements.

Answer

Active geo-replication

Answer

Geo-restore

Answer

Log shipping

Question 12

You have an Azure SQL Database in the Business Critical tier with zone redundancy enabled. You need to maintain high availability during a planned patching event. Which THREE actions should you take? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Verify that zone redundancy is enabled on the database.. Option B is correct because zone redundancy must be confirmed as enabled on the Business Critical database; zone redundancy spreads replicas across availability zones so that planned patching of one zone does not take down the primary, preserving high availability. Option D is correct because performing a planned failover test validates that the failover mechanism works as expected and that the application can reconnect, ensuring readiness during the actual patching event. Option E is correct because a read-scale replica in Business Critical provides an additional readable secondary that can absorb read workloads and maintain availability while the primary is being patched. Option A is not needed because active geo-replication targets a secondary region for disaster recovery, not intra-region high availability during planned patching. Option C is incorrect because scaling to a lower tier would remove Business Critical capabilities such as zone redundancy and could reduce availability rather than maintain it.

Answer

Enable active geo-replication to a secondary region.

Answer

Scale the database to a lower tier to reduce cost.

Question 13

You need to configure high availability for an Azure SQL Database that supports a critical application. The database must be resilient to a single compute node failure. Which TWO options should you consider? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Use the Business Critical service tier.. Option E (Enable zone redundancy) is correct because it spreads the database's compute and storage replicas across multiple availability zones within an Azure region, so a failure of a single compute node or even an entire zone does not cause downtime, directly satisfying the single-node-failure resilience requirement. Option D (Use the Business Critical service tier) is correct because it provisions a local Always On availability group with multiple synchronous secondary replicas, enabling automatic failover to another node within seconds if the primary compute node fails. Option A (Hyperscale read replicas) is not correct because read replicas are primarily for offloading read workloads and scale-out, not for automatic failover of the primary compute node. Option B (Active geo-replication) is not correct because it provides cross-region disaster recovery with asynchronous replication and manual failover, which addresses regional outages rather than a single compute node failure. Option C (Create an auto-failover group) is not correct because it is a cross-region DR construct that automates failover of one or more databases to a secondary region, again targeting regional disasters rather than single-node high availability.

Answer

Configure Hyperscale read replicas.

Answer

Enable active geo-replication.

Answer

Create an auto-failover group.

Question 14

Refer to the exhibit. You are reviewing the JSON configuration of an Azure SQL Database in the Business Critical tier. What is the primary benefit of setting highAvailabilityReplicaCount to 2?

Accepted Answer

It provides more read-only replicas to offload read workloads.. Setting highAvailabilityReplicaCount to 2 in Business Critical tier creates two additional readable replicas (total of 3 replicas including primary). This improves read performance by allowing more read-only connections to be offloaded to replicas. Option A (automatic failover) is inherent to Business Critical, not dependent on replica count. Option B (zone redundancy) is determined by the zoneRedundant property, not replica count. Option C (zero data loss) is achieved by synchronous replication, not replica count.

Answer

It enables automatic failover in case of a node failure.

Answer

It enables zone redundancy for the database.

Answer

It ensures zero data loss during a failover.

Question 15

Refer to the exhibit. You are reviewing the configuration of a failover group for an Azure SQL Managed Instance. Which statement is correct about this configuration?

Accepted Answer

The read-only endpoint will not automatically redirect connections after failover.. The read-only endpoint's failover policy is set to Disabled, meaning it will not automatically redirect connections after a failover. Option A is incorrect because the read-write endpoint has its failover policy set to Automatic, so it will redirect connections automatically. Option C is incorrect because the grace period for data loss is set to 1 hour (3600 seconds), but the statement says 'more than 60 minutes' which is not exactly accurate; also the primary focus is on the endpoint behavior. Option D is incorrect because the read-only endpoint is used for read-only connections, not read-write.

Answer

The read-write endpoint will not automatically redirect connections after failover.

Answer

The failover group will automatically fail over with data loss if the primary is unavailable for more than 60 minutes.

Answer

The read-only endpoint is used for read-write connections after failover.