A company runs a critical application on Azure VMs and an Azure SQL Managed Instance in a single region. They need a disaster recovery solution with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 5 minutes for the database and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 2 hours for the entire stack. They want to minimize cost and use native Azure services. Which combination should they implement?
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
Azure Site Recovery for VMs and active geo-replication for the database
Active geo-replication is only available for Azure SQL Database (single), not for Azure SQL Managed Instance.
Distractor review
Azure Backup for VMs and auto-failover groups for the database
Azure Backup is designed for data backup and restore, not for replication with an RTO of 2 hours, and does not provide automatic VM orchestration.
Best answer
Azure Site Recovery for VMs and auto-failover groups for the database
Azure Site Recovery replicates VMs to a secondary region with RPO of seconds to minutes and RTO of hours, and auto-failover groups provide geo-replication and automatic failover for Azure SQL Managed Instance with RPO of seconds.
Distractor review
Deploy a second region with VMs and database replicas manually configured and Azure Traffic Manager
Manual deployment does not provide automated replication and failover, and does not meet the RPO/RTO requirements as efficiently as native Azure services.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: NAT rules depend on direction and matching traffic
NAT is not only about the public address. The inside/outside interface roles and the ACL or rule that matches traffic are just as important.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
NAT questions usually test address translation, overload/PAT behaviour, static mappings and whether the right traffic is being translated. Read the interface direction and address terms carefully.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
- PAT allows many inside hosts to share one public address using ports.
- Inside local and inside global describe the private and translated addresses.
- NAT ACLs identify traffic for translation, not always security filtering.
TExam Day Tips
- Identify inside and outside interfaces first.
- Check whether the scenario needs static NAT, dynamic NAT or PAT.
- Do not confuse NAT matching ACLs with normal packet-filtering intent.
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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?
Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Azure Site Recovery for VMs and auto-failover groups for the database — Azure Site Recovery provides VM replication to a secondary region with configurable RPO and RTO, and includes recovery plans for orchestration. For Azure SQL Managed Instance, auto-failover groups provide geo-replication with an RPO of seconds and automatic failover. Active geo-replication is for a single Azure SQL Database, not Managed Instance. Azure Backup is for data protection, not replication for DR with low RTO.
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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