AZ-305 Design business continuity 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.

• ✗

  Azure File Sync with cloud tiering.

  Why it's wrong here

  Azure File Sync with cloud tiering is a file synchronization and storage optimization service, not a backup solution. It synchronizes an SMB file share to an Azure file share and can tier cold files to the cloud to reduce local storage usage, but it does not take point-in-time snapshots of the VM's disks, system state, or application data. Consequently, it cannot restore individual files from an Azure VM's disk, and cloud tiering merely replaces a file with a metadata endpoint until it is recalled. This option fails the requirement because no VM-level or disk-level recovery is possible.

• ✗

  Azure Backup using MARS agent with file and folder backup.

  Why it's wrong here

  The MARS (Microsoft Azure Recovery Services) agent backs up files, folders, and Windows system state to a Recovery Services vault, but it is designed primarily for on-premises Windows servers, not for Azure VM backups. Even when installed on an Azure VM, it operates inside the guest OS and does not coordinate with the Azure VM backup extension or the VM's underlying VHD snapshots, so it cannot produce crash-consistent or application-consistent snapshots of the entire VM. Additionally, MARS does not support disk-level or file-level restore from a VM snapshot; it only restores the specific backed-up files and folders. This makes it unsuitable for backing up an Azure VM as a whole and recovering files from within the VM disks.

• ✓

  Azure Backup for Azure VMs with file-level restore.

  Why this is correct

  Azure Backup for Azure VMs with file-level restore is the correct choice because it captures full VM snapshots via the Azure Backup extension and stores them in a Recovery Services vault. The file-level restore feature mounts the selected recovery point as a disk (via a temporary recovery VM or an iSCSI target) so you can browse the file system and recover individual files or folders without restoring the entire virtual machine. This provides the granularity you need—backing up the whole Azure VM while still enabling point-in-time file recovery. It also supports both Windows and Linux VMs through a simple portal workflow or PowerShell.

• ✗

  Azure Backup for Azure VMs with instant restore.

  Why it's wrong here

  Instant Restore in Azure VM Backup is a performance improvement that reduces the time to restore by allowing you to use a locally stored snapshot (the vault-to-snapshot transfer may still be in progress) to quickly restore the entire VM. However, it does not offer file-level granularity—the restore operation always recreates the whole virtual machine from the recovery point. Even with Instant Restore enabled, recovering an individual file still requires the file-level restore feature, which is separate from Instant Restore. Therefore, choosing Instant Restore alone does not meet the requirement of recovering only specific files from the backed-up VM.

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