A company runs a critical application on Azure virtual machines (VMs) in the West US region. They need a disaster recovery solution that replicates the VMs to East US with a recovery point objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of 2 hours. The application consists of multiple VMs, and the company needs to be able to fail over a single VM without impacting others during an actual disaster. They also want to periodically test the recovery process without affecting the production environment. Which Azure Site Recovery feature should they use to enable non-disruptive testing?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.
Distractor review
Recovery Plans
Recovery Plans orchestrate the failover of multiple VMs but do not provide an isolated testing environment. They are used for actual failover, not for non-disruptive drills.
Distractor review
Planned failover
Planned failover is used to migrate VMs from the primary to secondary region with zero data loss, typically for planned maintenance. It is not a testing feature and will impact production.
Best answer
Test failover
Test failover creates an isolated copy of replicated VMs in a separate virtual network for validation purposes, without affecting ongoing replication or production. It is designed exactly for non-disruptive disaster recovery drills.
Distractor review
Network mapping
Network mapping defines the target virtual network for failover. It is a configuration step, not a testing feature. It does not provide isolated testing.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Many certification questions include familiar terms but test a specific constraint. Read the exact wording before choosing an answer that is generally true but wrong for this case.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
This question should be treated as a scenario, not a definition check. Identify the problem, the constraint and the best action. Then compare each option against those facts.
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.
- Use explanations to understand the rule behind the answer.
TExam Day Tips
- Underline the problem statement mentally.
- 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.
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More questions from this exam
Keep practising from the same exam bank, or move into a focused topic page if this question exposed a weak area.
Question 1
A company is designing hub-and-spoke networking. Spoke VNets must use a central Azure Firewall for outbound internet traffic. Which two configurations are required?
Question 2
A company is designing private access to a PaaS database from workloads in a VNet. The database should not be reachable over its public endpoint. What should be recommended?
Question 3
A data platform must support analytical queries over petabytes of files in a data lake, while preserving hierarchical namespaces and fine-grained ACLs. Which storage service should you design around?
Question 4
A database workload has an RPO of 15 minutes and an RTO of 4 hours. Cost is more important than near-zero data loss. Which design is usually more appropriate than synchronous multi-region replication?
Question 5
A hub-and-spoke Azure network must centralize outbound inspection and still allow spokes to resolve private endpoint DNS names. Which two components are commonly required? (Choose 2.)
Question 6
A multinational company uses Microsoft Entra ID and several Azure subscriptions. Security administrators need to review privileged role assignments every month and require justification for continued access. Which design should be recommended?
FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this AZ-305 question test?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Test failover — Test failover in Azure Site Recovery allows you to validate your disaster recovery strategy by creating a copy of the replicated VMs in an isolated network, without impacting the ongoing replication or production workloads. It meets the requirement for non-disruptive testing. Recovery Plans are used to orchestrate failover of multiple VMs in a specific order, not for testing a single VM without impact. Planned failover is for migrating VMs without data loss and is not used for testing. Network mapping defines the target network for failover, but does not provide testing capabilities.
What should I do if I get this AZ-305 question wrong?
Then try more questions from the same exam bank and focus on understanding why the wrong options are tempting.
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