AZ-305 Design data storage solutions Practice Question

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

• ✗

  SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines

  Why it's wrong here

  SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines is an IaaS solution where you manage the underlying VM, operating system, and SQL Server instance, including manual patching, backup scheduling, and configuring high availability—typically via Always On Availability Groups. This administrative burden directly contradicts the goal of minimal operational overhead, as the customer retains full responsibility for maintenance and disaster recovery. While it provides maximum control, it is not the right choice when seeking to reduce DBA workload.

• ✗

  Azure SQL Database Hyperscale

  Why it's wrong here

  Azure SQL Database Hyperscale is a service tier engineered for very large databases (up to 100 TB) and rapid horizontal scaling through multiple readable replicas, making it ideal for massive OLTP workloads with high concurrency and aggressive scale-out requirements. It does not specifically target minimizing administrative overhead for typical on-premises migrations, and it introduces additional complexity around choosing service levels, managing replicas, and potential feature limitations such as lack of support for cross-database transactions compared to Managed Instance. For an ordinary database migration, the scaling features are unnecessary and the operational model is less straightforward than a fully compatible managed instance.

• ✗

  Azure SQL Database (single database)

  Why it's wrong here

  Azure SQL Database as a single database is a fully managed PaaS offering with automated patching and backups, but it operates within a logical server and offers only a subset of the SQL Server surface area. It does not include features that are often critical in existing on-premises deployments, such as SQL Server Agent jobs, linked servers, CLR, Service Broker, or cross-database queries, and it lacks system databases like msdb for job management. These limitations make it a poor fit for a straightforward lift-and-shift migration where dependencies on the broader SQL Server feature set are common.

• ✓

  Azure SQL Database Managed Instance

  Why this is correct

  Azure SQL Database Managed Instance delivers the broadest SQL Server engine compatibility, including support for SQL Agent, linked servers, CLR, and cross-database transactions, while fully automating maintenance tasks such as patching, backups, and high availability with auto-failover. This makes it the ideal PaaS target for migrating existing on-premises SQL Server databases with minimal administrative overhead, as it removes the need to manage VMs or handle manual DR configuration. The service provides a native virtual network (VNet) deployment and near-100% feature parity, so applications and DBAs can operate almost exactly as they did on-premises.

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