AZ-305 Design business continuity solutions Practice Question
This AZ-305 practice question tests your understanding of design business continuity solutions. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
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?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
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.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
✓
Recovery plans with pre-actions and post-actions
Why this is correct
Recovery plans enable ordering of VM groups and execution of scripts via pre- and post-actions.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Replication policies with application-consistent snapshots
Why it's wrong here
Replication policies control snapshot frequency and type, but do not manage startup ordering or script execution.
✗
Multi-VM consistency groups
Why it's wrong here
Consistency groups ensure VMs fail over to the same recovery point but do not provide ordering or script automation.
✗
Azure Backup with cross-region restore
Why it's wrong here
Azure Backup is for backup and restore, not for orchestrated disaster recovery with startup sequencing and scripts.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse multi-VM consistency groups (which ensure crash-consistent recovery across VMs) with the ability to run post-failover scripts, but only recovery plans provide the orchestration layer for custom actions like updating connection strings.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Recovery plans in ASR are essentially automation runbooks that can include multiple groups of VMs, each with pre-actions and post-actions. These actions can invoke Azure Automation runbooks or custom scripts, enabling tasks like updating DNS records, changing connection strings, or reconfiguring load balancers. Under the hood, recovery plans use Azure Automation to execute PowerShell or Python scripts, ensuring that the application tier's connection strings are updated immediately after the database tier is recovered, maintaining application consistency.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
Related glossary terms
Concepts from this question explained
These glossary pages explain the core terms tested in this AZ-305 question in full detail.
Design business continuity solutions — This question tests Design business continuity solutions — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: 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.
What should I do if I get this AZ-305 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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