AZ-305 Design business continuity solutions Practice Question
This AZ-305 practice question tests your understanding of design business continuity solutions. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A company runs a legacy on-premises application that relies on a SQL Server database. They want to use Azure as a disaster recovery site with a recovery point objective of less than 15 minutes. They need to be able to fail back to the on-premises environment after a disaster. Which Azure service should they use?
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) orchestrates replication, failover, and failback of on-premises SQL Server workloads to Azure, supporting a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of less than 15 minutes through continuous replication. It enables failback to the original on-premises environment after a disaster, which is a critical requirement for this scenario.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
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 on-premises VMs to Azure with low RPO and supports failback to on-premises.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Azure Backup
Why it's wrong here
Azure Backup provides point-in-time backups, not continuous replication, and does not support DR failover and failback.
✗
Azure SQL Database
Why it's wrong here
Azure SQL Database is a managed cloud database, not a DR service for on-premises SQL Server instances.
✗
Azure Traffic Manager
Why it's wrong here
Traffic Manager performs DNS-level load balancing across endpoints, not replication or failover of workloads.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse Azure Backup (which is for archival backups) with Azure Site Recovery (which is for replication and failover), leading them to select Azure Backup despite its inability to meet the sub-15-minute RPO or support failback.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Azure Site Recovery uses the Microsoft Azure Recovery Services (MARS) agent or Hyper-V/VMware replication to continuously replicate disk-level changes to Azure, achieving RPOs as low as 30 seconds for supported workloads. For SQL Server, ASR leverages application-consistent snapshots via Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to ensure database integrity during failover. A real-world scenario where this matters is a financial services company needing to meet regulatory compliance for rapid recovery of transactional databases without data loss.
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.
TExam Day Tips
→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.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
Related glossary terms
Concepts from this question explained
These glossary pages explain the core terms tested in this AZ-305 question in full detail.
Design business continuity solutions — This question tests Design business continuity solutions — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Azure Site Recovery — Azure Site Recovery (ASR) orchestrates replication, failover, and failback of on-premises SQL Server workloads to Azure, supporting a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of less than 15 minutes through continuous replication. It enables failback to the original on-premises environment after a disaster, which is a critical requirement for this scenario.
What should I do if I get this AZ-305 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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