AZ-305 Design infrastructure solutions Practice Question
A company plans to migrate an on-premises application with strict low-latency requirements to Azure. The application must communicate with an Azure SQL Database. Which of the following is the best design to minimize latency?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates often overestimate ExpressRoute's ability to eliminate latency, forgetting that physical distance from on-premises to Azure still adds delay, while co-locating both application and database in the same region with Private Link provides the lowest possible latency.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Deploy the application and Azure SQL Database in the same Azure region, and connect via Azure Private Link.
The best design because deploying both the application and Azure SQL Database in the same Azure region minimizes network distance and latency. Using Azure Private Link creates a private endpoint for the SQL Database within the application's virtual network, eliminating internet routing and reducing latency further by keeping traffic entirely within the Microsoft backbone network.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Deploy the application in one region and Azure SQL Database in a different region, using Azure Traffic Manager.
Why it's wrong here
Placing the application and Azure SQL Database in separate Azure regions introduces WAN latency on every database query, which can cause significant performance degradation. Azure Traffic Manager is a DNS-based routing service that directs client traffic to the nearest or healthiest endpoint; it does not optimize or accelerate connections between your application and a database. In fact, using Traffic Manager for database endpoints would add unnecessary DNS indirection and fail to solve cross-region network distance.
- ✗
Deploy the application on-premises and use a Point-to-Site VPN to connect to Azure SQL Database.
Why it's wrong here
Point-to-Site VPN is intended for individual remote users to connect to an Azure VNet from a single device, not for production server-to-database connectivity. This approach would require each on-premises server to maintain a separate VPN connection, and the protocol's throughput and reliability are not designed for continuous, latency-sensitive workloads. Moreover, keeping the application on-premises does not satisfy the migration goal, making this option fundamentally incorrect.
- ✓
Deploy the application and Azure SQL Database in the same Azure region, and connect via Azure Private Link.
Why this is correct
Deploying the application and Azure SQL Database in the same Azure region minimizes physical distance between compute and data, drastically reducing network round-trip time. Azure Private Link creates a private endpoint with a NIC in the application's virtual network, so all SQL traffic flows over the Microsoft backbone and never traverses the public internet. This combination delivers the lowest possible latency and a secure, isolated connectivity path, meeting the performance and migration requirements in a best-practice architecture.
- ✗
Deploy the application on-premises and use ExpressRoute to connect to Azure SQL Database.
Why it's wrong here
ExpressRoute gives a dedicated private circuit from on-premises to Azure, but the application still runs outside Azure, so the workload is not actually migrated. Even though ExpressRoute offers lower and more consistent latency than the internet, the physical distance between on-premises infrastructure and Azure always adds more delay than a same-region deployment. The question asks to migrate the application, so an architecture that leaves it on-premises—no matter how reliable the network—fails the core requirement.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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