AZ-305 Design business continuity solutions Practice Question
A company runs a critical SQL Server database on an Azure virtual machine in the West US region. They need a disaster recovery solution that replicates the database to a secondary region (East US) with a recovery point objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of 2 hours. The solution must also support non-disruptive disaster recovery drills. The company currently uses SQL Server Standard Edition. Which Azure service should they implement?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates choose SQL Server Always On Availability Groups without realizing that Standard Edition lacks the necessary features (e.g., readable secondaries, multi-database support) to meet the RPO/RTO and drill requirements, or they mistakenly think Azure SQL Database geo-replication can be applied to a SQL Server VM.
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
✓
Azure Site Recovery
Azure Site Recovery (ASR) replicates the entire VM, including the SQL Server database, to the secondary region with an RPO as low as 15 minutes and an RTO of 2 hours when using a recovery plan. It supports non-disruptive disaster recovery drills by allowing test failovers that run in an isolated network without impacting the production environment. This makes ASR the correct choice for a SQL Server Standard Edition VM requiring cross-region DR with drills.
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 Site Recovery
Why this is correct
Azure Site Recovery replicates the entire Azure VM at the block level to a secondary region, achieving an RPO as low as 30 seconds for SQL Server when app-consistent snapshots are enabled through the SQL Server VSS writer. It provides a dedicated test failover capability that provisions the replica in an isolated VNet without any impact on production, fully satisfying the non-disruptive drill requirement. ASR works with SQL Server Standard Edition on IaaS and supports orchestrated recovery plans for multi-tier failover, making it the only option here that meets all stated RPO/RTO criteria with minimal operational overhead.
- ✗
SQL Server Always On Availability Groups
Why it's wrong here
SQL Server Always On Availability Groups require SQL Server Enterprise Edition to support the multiple synchronous and asynchronous secondary replicas needed for a cross-region disaster recovery topology; Standard Edition only offers Basic Availability Groups limited to a single database without the same failover flexibility. While AGs can provide low RPO and automated failover, they do not include a native test-failover function — conducting a drill would require adding a temporary replica or manually flipping the primary, both of which are disruptive and risk unintended data writes. Additionally, deploying AGs across Azure regions demands an internal load balancer, a domain controller, and careful listener configuration, adding significant complexity when compared to the integrated failover orchestration of Azure Site Recovery.
- ✗
Azure Backup with cross-region restore
Why it's wrong here
Azure Backup with cross-region restore is fundamentally a backup-and-restore solution rather than continuous replication, so its RPO is typically 24 hours (or longer for weekly backups) and its RTO involves restoring managed disks to a new VM, reconnecting virtual networking, and validating SQL log backups — often taking hours to days. It provides no automated failover mechanism and no isolated test-drill workflow; any disaster-recovery exercise requires a full restore into the recovery region, which runs side-by-side with production and is extremely time-consuming. While it can serve as a sensible long-term retention and corruption-protection layer, it cannot meet the low RPO/RTO requirements of a critical SQL Server database, especially when a replication-based service like Azure Site Recovery is available.
- ✗
Azure SQL Database geo-replication
Why it's wrong here
Azure SQL Database geo-replication is unsuitable because the company runs SQL Server on an Azure virtual machine, whereas this service is exclusively for Azure SQL Database (PaaS) instances. This option is tempting as it provides regional disaster recovery with suitable RPO/RTO and non-disruptive drills. It would be the correct choice if the scenario involved an Azure SQL Database PaaS instance rather than SQL Server deployed on an IaaS virtual machine.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Designing Azure Storage Solutions
Key term
Disaster Recovery Design
Disaster Recovery Design is the process of planning and implementing strategies to restore IT systems and data after a catastrophic failure, ensuring business continuity with minimal downtime and data loss.
Key term
Azure Site Recovery
Azure Site Recovery is a Microsoft Azure service that keeps your business applications and data running by automatically replicating them to a secondary location and failing over if the primary site goes down.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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