DP-300 Plan and configure a high availability and disaster recovery environment Practice Test 8 — 15 Questions

Question 1

Your company runs a mission-critical database on Azure SQL Managed Instance in the East US region. To comply with a new regulatory requirement, you must ensure that the database can be recovered within 15 minutes in the event of a regional disaster, with a maximum data loss of 10 seconds. You also need to minimize compute costs during normal operations. What should you configure?

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

Accepted Answer

Deploy the primary instance as Business Critical with a zone-redundant secondary replica, and configure a failover group to a secondary instance in a paired region using Business Critical with a non-readable secondary.. Business Critical tier on Azure SQL Managed Instance provides the lowest recovery time via built-in zone-redundant secondary replicas and supports failover groups for cross-region disaster recovery. Pairing a Business Critical primary with a Business Critical geo-secondary in a paired region, using a non-readable secondary to avoid extra compute cost, satisfies the 15-minute RTO and 10-second RPO while minimizing normal-operation cost.

Answer

Use a General Purpose instance with a failover group to a secondary instance in a paired region.

Answer

Configure a zone-redundant Business Critical instance in East US only, without a geo-secondary.

Answer

Deploy the primary instance as Business Critical with a readable secondary replica, and configure a failover group to a secondary instance in a paired region using General Purpose.

Question 2

You have an Azure SQL Database that uses the General Purpose service tier. The database is critical and you need to protect against a regional outage with an RPO of 1 hour and an RTO of 12 hours. What is the most cost-effective solution?

Accepted Answer

Use geo-restore with the default backup retention.. Geo-restore uses the automatically replicated geo-redundant backups (RA-GRS) to restore the database to a different region, providing an RPO of up to 1 hour and an RTO that depends on database size but is typically within 12 hours. It requires no secondary database to be provisioned, making it the most cost-effective option for the stated RPO/RTO. This matches the requirement exactly without paying for an always-on secondary.

Answer

Enable active geo-replication.

Answer

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

Answer

Deploy a zone-redundant configuration.

Question 3

You are designing a disaster recovery plan for an Azure SQL Managed Instance that hosts an OLTP application. The application requires an RPO of 15 seconds and an RTO of 5 minutes. You need to choose a configuration that meets these requirements. Which TWO options should you consider? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Configure a failover group with a secondary instance in a paired region, both using Business Critical service tier.. (failover group with Business Critical secondary in paired region) meets the RPO of 15 seconds and RTO of 5 minutes because Business Critical tier uses synchronous commit within the region and asynchronous replication across regions, with failover group providing automated failover. Option E (active geo-replication) is not supported for Azure SQL Managed Instance; only failover groups are available. Option B does not protect against regional failure. Option C's General Purpose tier cannot guarantee the required low RPO/RTO. Option D is not a standalone solution.

Answer

Deploy a zone-redundant Business Critical instance in a single region.

Answer

Deploy a General Purpose instance with a failover group to a secondary in another region.

Answer

Ensure the secondary instance has at least one readable secondary replica.

Answer

Use active geo-replication between two Business Critical instances in different regions.

Question 4

Your company uses Azure SQL Database with active geo-replication for disaster recovery. The primary database is in the West Europe region. You need to perform a planned failover to the secondary in North Europe for a maintenance window. Which THREE actions should you take? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

After failover, verify that the new secondary (in West Europe) is configured as a readable secondary.. Option E is correct because a planned failover (no data loss) is the proper mechanism for a scheduled maintenance window; it waits for the secondary to catch up and synchronizes the databases before switching roles, guaranteeing zero data loss. Option D is correct because after the role switch the North Europe database becomes the new primary, so the application connection strings must be updated to point to the new primary endpoint (or use a listener/alias) for the application to keep working. Option C is correct because after failover the old primary in West Europe becomes the new secondary, and you should verify it is configured as a readable secondary so it can continue serving read-only workloads and remain a valid failover target. Option A is incorrect because a forced failover allows data loss and is intended for unplanned outages when the primary is unavailable, not for a planned maintenance window. Option B is incorrect because active geo-replication automatically re-establishes data synchronization after failover; manual seeding is not required and is only relevant when initializing a new secondary with a manual seed.

Answer

Initiate a forced failover to ensure the fastest switchover.

Answer

Manually seed the new secondary database after failover.

Question 5

You have an Azure SQL Database that uses active geo-replication between two regions. You need to ensure minimal data loss during an unplanned failover while maintaining the current configuration. Which THREE settings should you verify? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

The replication mode is 'async' (asynchronous) with a low RPO target.. Option A is correct because active geo-replication for Azure SQL Database always uses asynchronous replication, and verifying that the replication mode is 'async' with a low RPO target ensures you understand the potential data loss window during an unplanned failover. Option B is correct because the seed type must be 'automatic' so that the secondary database is continuously seeded and kept in sync; if seeding is manual or incomplete, the secondary may not have all data, increasing data loss. Option C is correct because placing the secondary in a paired region with low network latency reduces replication lag, which directly minimizes data loss during an unplanned failover. Option D is not correct because making the secondary 'readable' affects read-only workloads and does not reduce replication lag or data loss; readability is not required for minimal data loss. Option E is not correct because a failover group's 'forced' failover policy is used for planned failovers and does not affect the data loss window during an unplanned failover; active geo-replication does not use failover group naming for this purpose.

Answer

The secondary database is configured as 'readable' to avoid lag.

Answer

The failover group is named with a 'forced' failover policy.

Question 6

You are designing a disaster recovery plan for an Azure SQL Managed Instance that hosts a financial application. The application requires an RPO of 0 seconds and an RTO of 30 seconds. Which TWO configurations meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Deploy a Business Critical instance with zone redundancy and a failover group to a secondary instance in a paired region, using the Business Critical service tier.. Option C is correct because a Business Critical instance with zone redundancy plus a failover group to a secondary Business Critical instance in a paired region provides synchronous replication within the region and asynchronous replication across regions, and failover groups enable fast automatic or manual failover with a low RTO; the Business Critical tier's built-in readable secondary and local zone redundancy support an RPO of 0 seconds for committed transactions. Option D is correct because a failover group with the 'planned' failover option and a Business Critical secondary instance performs a zero-data-loss failover (RPO = 0) and is designed for fast, controlled failover, meeting the 30-second RTO when using the Business Critical tier's synchronous local replicas and failover group endpoint. Option A is not correct because active geo-replication is not supported for Azure SQL Managed Instance, so it cannot be used in this scenario. Option B is not correct because zone redundancy alone in a single region does not provide cross-region disaster recovery, and automatic failover within a zone-redundant instance does not guarantee a 30-second RTO for region-level disasters. Option E is not correct because restoring from the latest backup is a manual process with data loss (RPO > 0) and an RTO far longer than 30 seconds.

Answer

Configure active geo-replication between two Business Critical instances in different regions.

Answer

Deploy a zone-redundant Business Critical instance in a single region and rely on automatic failover.

Answer

Set up a manual failover process using a PowerShell script that restores from the latest backup.

Question 7

You are the database administrator for a global e-commerce company that uses Azure SQL Database for its product catalog. The database is currently deployed in the East US region using the General Purpose service tier. The company is expanding to Europe and wants to improve disaster recovery posture. The new requirements are: RPO of 5 seconds, RTO of 1 hour, and the ability to serve read traffic from the secondary region during normal operations. The budget is limited, so you must minimize cost while meeting these requirements. The application connection strings can be updated to a listener endpoint. What should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Upgrade the primary to Business Critical, configure a failover group with a readable secondary in West Europe using Business Critical, and use the listener endpoint for application connections.. It meets all requirements: upgrading the primary to Business Critical provides synchronous replication with an RPO of 2-5 seconds, and configuring a failover group with a readable secondary in West Europe using Business Critical ensures the secondary can serve read traffic from Europe and failover can occur within 1 hour. The listener endpoint simplifies application connection management. Option A is incorrect because General Purpose tier has an RPO of 5-30 minutes, which cannot meet the 5-second requirement, and a same-region secondary does not serve European read traffic. Option C is incorrect because zone-redundancy only protects within a region, not across regions, and a General Purpose secondary would have higher RPO. Option D is incorrect because a readable secondary in the same region does not serve read traffic from Europe, and geo-restore has an RTO of hours, not 1 hour.

Answer

Keep the primary as General Purpose, create a readable secondary in the same region, and configure active geo-replication to a secondary in West Europe.

Answer

Deploy a zone-redundant Business Critical database in East US and use auto-failover groups to a secondary in West Europe with General Purpose.

Answer

Upgrade the primary database to Business Critical, create a readable secondary in the same region, and use geo-restore for DR.

Question 8

You manage an Azure SQL Managed Instance that hosts a line-of-business application. The instance is currently deployed in the UK South region using the General Purpose service tier. The business has a new requirement for disaster recovery with an RPO of 30 minutes and an RTO of 2 hours. You need to implement a solution that minimizes ongoing costs. The secondary region should be UK West. The application can tolerate a brief outage during failover. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Deploy a secondary General Purpose instance in UK West and configure a failover group.. Deploying a secondary General Purpose instance in UK West and configuring a failover group meets the RPO of 30 minutes and RTO of 2 hours while minimizing costs. Failover groups provide automatic or manual failover and manage the replication of databases and instance-level objects. General Purpose tier is cost-effective and sufficient for the stated recovery objectives.

Answer

Deploy a zone-redundant General Purpose instance in UK South only.

Answer

Keep the current instance and rely on geo-restore to UK West.

Answer

Upgrade both instances to Business Critical and configure a failover group.

Question 9

You are a database administrator for a startup that uses Azure SQL Database for its main application. The database is currently in the West US region using the General Purpose service tier. The company expects rapid growth and wants to ensure high availability within the region. They want to minimize downtime during planned maintenance. The application uses read-heavy workloads, and they want to offload read traffic to a secondary replica. The budget is flexible but should be justified. What should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Upgrade the database to the Business Critical service tier and enable read scale-out.. Business Critical service tier is the only Azure SQL Database tier that supports read scale-out via a built-in readable secondary replica, and it also provides the local high-availability architecture (multiple replicas) that minimizes downtime during planned maintenance. General Purpose does not offer a readable secondary, and zone redundancy alone does not provide read offloading.

Answer

Enable zone redundancy on the current General Purpose database.

Answer

Configure a readable secondary on the current General Purpose database.

Answer

Create a secondary database in a different region and use active geo-replication.

Question 10

You are planning a disaster recovery strategy for an Azure SQL Database that supports a critical financial application. The database is deployed in the Brazil South region. Because of data sovereignty requirements, the secondary database must also be located in Brazil, but in a different availability zone. The application requires an RPO of 10 seconds and an RTO of 30 minutes. The database size is 2 TB and you need to minimize egress costs. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the database using the Hyperscale service tier with zone-redundant configuration.. Hyperscale service tier with zone-redundant configuration meets the requirements: it supports zone redundancy within the same region (satisfying data sovereignty), provides fast failover with RPO of 10 seconds and RTO under 30 minutes, and is suitable for large databases (2 TB). Option A is incorrect because Business Critical with zone redundancy and a failover group is designed for high availability within a region, but the mention of a failover group implies geo-replication, which is unnecessary and may increase costs; also, Business Critical has a maximum size of 4 TB but Hyperscale is more cost-effective for large databases. Option C is incorrect because General Purpose does not support zone redundancy and cannot meet the RPO/RTO. Option D is incorrect because geo-replication to another region violates data sovereignty and incurs higher egress costs.

Answer

Deploy the database using the Business Critical service tier with zone redundancy and a failover group.

Answer

Use the General Purpose service tier with a zone-redundant backup configuration.

Answer

Configure active geo-replication to a secondary database in a different Brazilian region (e.g., Brazil Southeast).

Question 11

You are a database architect for a multinational corporation that uses Azure SQL Database for a customer relationship management (CRM) system. The primary database is in the East US region using the Business Critical service tier. The compliance team requires that in the event of a regional disaster, the database can be failed over to a secondary region with zero data loss and an RTO of 30 seconds. Additionally, the secondary region must be able to handle read-only queries during normal operations to reduce load on the primary. You need to design a solution that meets these requirements with the lowest possible latency for write operations. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Deploy a failover group with a readable secondary in a paired region using Business Critical, and ensure the failover is planned to achieve zero data loss.. A failover group with a readable secondary in a paired region using Business Critical meets all requirements: it provides zero data loss via planned failover, an RTO under 30 seconds, and read-only query offloading. Business Critical tier supports local read replicas and geo-replication with the lowest write latency because it uses local SSD and in-memory OLTP. The failover group also manages the listener endpoint for seamless redirection.

Answer

Create a secondary database in a paired region using active geo-replication and configure it as readable.

Answer

Deploy a failover group with a secondary database in a paired region using Business Critical, but do not make the secondary readable.

Answer

Configure zone redundancy on the existing Business Critical database in East US.

Question 12

You are the database administrator for a global e-commerce company that runs its critical order processing system on Azure SQL Database. The database is currently deployed as a single database in the West US region using the Business Critical service tier (4 vCores, 320 GB storage). The application requires a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of no more than 5 seconds and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of no more than 30 seconds in the event of a regional outage. The secondary region must be in East Asia. The solution must also handle planned failovers for maintenance without data loss. You need to configure high availability and disaster recovery to meet these requirements with the lowest possible latency for writes. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Configure auto-failover groups with read-scale failover. Deploy a readable secondary in East Asia using the Business Critical tier. Set the failover policy to automatic.. Auto-failover groups with a readable secondary in East Asia using Business Critical tier provide automatic failover meeting RTO of 30 seconds, and asynchronous geo-replication typically achieves RPO of 5 seconds for Azure SQL Database. The readable secondary can also handle read-only workloads. This configuration offers the lowest write latency since writes are acknowledged locally without waiting for cross-region synchronization. Option A is incorrect because geo-restore has RPO of 1 hour and RTO of several hours. Option B is incorrect because zone redundancy is intra-region and Traffic Manager does not ensure RPO/RTO. Option D is incorrect because active geo-replication is asynchronous, not synchronous, and synchronous cross-region replication is not supported; it would increase write latency.

Answer

Configure geo-restore of the database to the East Asia region. Enable auto-failover groups with manual failover.

Answer

Deploy the database as a zone-redundant configuration within West US. Use Azure Traffic Manager to redirect traffic to a secondary database in East Asia.

Answer

Create a failover group with an active geo-replication secondary in East Asia. Set the failover policy to automatic with a grace period of 1 hour. Ensure the secondary is configured for synchronous commit.

Question 13

Your company has an Azure SQL Managed Instance deployed in the East US region. The database hosts a financial application that requires a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 15 minutes and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 seconds. The solution must use a secondary region in West US. The budget allows for a single secondary instance but must minimize compute costs during normal operations. You have configured a failover group between the primary and a secondary managed instance in West US. During a recent disaster recovery drill, you observed that the failover took 20 minutes to complete, exceeding the RTO. You need to improve the failover time to meet the 15-minute RTO without increasing costs. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Configure the failover group to use manual failover instead of automatic; this reduces failover time because you can control the exact moment.. Configuring manual failover allows the database administrator to initiate failover immediately without waiting for a grace period. This reduces the overall failover time, as the 20-minute failover observed likely included time waiting for automatic failover to trigger after the grace period. With manual failover, the switch can be performed in less than 15 minutes. Option B is incorrect because setting the grace period to 1 hour would actually increase the time before automatic failover occurs, and enabling read-scale failover does not reduce failover time. Option C increases cost and does not directly affect failover time. Option A does not significantly reduce failover time.

Answer

Ensure the secondary managed instance is in a different virtual network and configure cross-region VNet peering for faster synchronization.

Answer

Create a failover group with automatic failover policy and set the grace period to 1 hour. Also, enable read-scale failover for the secondary.

Answer

Scale up the primary managed instance to a higher service tier (e.g., from General Purpose to Business Critical) to improve performance.

Question 14

You manage an Azure SQL Database in the Business Critical service tier that supports a critical order-processing application. The database must maintain read-write availability if a single Azure datacenter fails, without any application connection string changes. You enable zone redundancy. A colleague asks what additional action is required to ensure the application automatically reconnects to the database after a zone-level failure occurs. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

No additional action is required; the Business Critical tier with zone redundancy automatically handles zone failures and the application reconnects using the same connection string.. Business Critical with zone redundancy provides automatic failover across availability zones within a region. The application connects to the same logical server, so no connection string changes are needed. The platform handles the failover transparently, and the application should implement retry logic to survive the brief interruption during failover. Cross-region solutions like auto-failover groups are not required for zone-level failures.

Answer

Manually initiate a failover by using the Azure portal or PowerShell when a zone failure is detected.

Answer

Configure an auto-failover group and update the application to use the failover group listener endpoint.

Answer

Enable the retry logic in the application connection string by setting ConnectRetryCount and ConnectRetryInterval.

Question 15

You manage an Azure SQL Managed Instance named SQLMI1 in the East US region. The instance hosts a mission-critical database. The business requires a recovery point objective (RPO) of 5 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of 1 hour in case of a regional outage. You need to configure a disaster recovery solution that meets these requirements. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Configure an auto-failover group between SQLMI1 and a secondary managed instance in West US.. Auto-failover groups for Azure SQL Managed Instance provide asynchronous replication with an RPO of about 5 seconds and a typical RTO of less than 1 hour. They are the recommended solution for cross-region disaster recovery. Zone redundancy only handles zonal failures, geo-secondary is not supported for Managed Instance, and LTR backups are not suitable for rapid recovery. Therefore, an auto-failover group is the correct choice.

Answer

Configure long-term retention (LTR) backups to a different region.

Answer

Create a geo-secondary of the database on another managed instance in a different region.

Answer

Enable zone redundancy on SQLMI1.