AZ-305 Design business continuity solutions Practice Question
A company runs a file server on Azure VMs using Windows Server. The server stores business-critical documents. You need to design a backup strategy that meets a recovery point objective (RPO) of 1 hour and recovery time objective (RTO) of 4 hours. The solution must be cost-effective. Which backup solution should you use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse Azure Site Recovery (a replication/DR tool) with Azure Backup (a backup tool), leading them to choose Site Recovery for a simple backup requirement, which is cost-prohibitive and not designed for point-in-time recovery with hourly RPOs.
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 Backup for Azure VMs
Azure Backup for Azure VMs provides application-consistent backups for Windows Server VMs, supporting RPOs as low as 1 hour with frequent backup policies and RTOs within 4 hours by restoring to a new VM or using instant restore. It is cost-effective because it uses incremental backups and only charges for storage consumed, without the replication overhead of Site Recovery.
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 it's wrong here
Azure Site Recovery is fundamentally a disaster recovery service, not a backup service. It continuously replicates the entire VM to a secondary Azure region to enable failover during an outage, but it does not create point-in-time backup snapshots with a chosen retention policy. Moreover, the continuous replication and secondary region storage incur significantly higher costs than a backup solution, and it cannot restore files from a specific historical point in time.
- ✗
Azure Backup for Azure Blobs
Why it's wrong here
Azure Backup for Azure Blobs is designed to protect block blobs within Azure Storage accounts, providing operational and vaulted backups of blobs. It cannot back up the files or system state from a Windows VM because it operates at the storage account level, not at the VM guest OS level. Since the file server runs on a VM, this option would leave the VM's disks and the file system itself unprotected, making it inapplicable for the stated scenario.
- ✓
Azure Backup for Azure VMs
Why this is correct
Azure Backup for Azure VMs is the correct choice because it provides true backup functionality at the VM level, with policy-based scheduling (e.g., once or twice daily) and customizable retention for long-term archival. It leverages the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for Windows VMs to produce application-consistent snapshots, and also takes crash-consistent snapshots, enabling reliable restore of the entire VM or individual files. This directly covers the file server's data and system state, meeting the requirement for backup with a recovery point objective.
- ✗
Azure File Sync
Why it's wrong here
Azure File Sync is a file synchronization and caching service that connects on-premises file servers or Azure VMs to Azure file shares, enabling multi-site sync and local caching. It is not a backup solution; it only mirrors the current state of files and does not create point-in-time recovery points or version history. While it can support a business continuity strategy when combined with Azure Backup for file shares, it does not protect the VM itself or provide the granular backup and retention capabilities required.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Azure Site Recovery Design
Key term
BIA and RPO RTO Design
Business Impact Analysis and the design of Recovery Point Objective and Recovery Time Objective define how much data loss and downtime a business can tolerate after an IT failure, guiding the architecture of backup and disaster recovery systems.
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every AZ-305 question from scratch — 795 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This AZ-305 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the AZ-305 exam.