AZ-305 Design business continuity solutions Practice Question
A company runs a mission-critical SQL Server database on an Azure virtual machine using SQL Server Standard Edition. They need a disaster recovery solution that replicates the database to a secondary Azure region with a recovery point objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of 1 hour. The solution must support non-disruptive disaster recovery drills. The company cannot modify the SQL Server configuration or use Always On features due to licensing constraints. Which Azure service should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often choose Azure Backup (Option C) thinking it provides cross-region restore with low RPO, but they overlook that Backup's cross-region restore is designed for long-term retention and compliance, not for sub-hour RPOs, and it does not support non-disruptive drills.
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 a secondary Azure region, meeting the RPO of 15 minutes and RTO of 1 hour. It supports non-disruptive disaster recovery drills by allowing test failovers in an isolated network without affecting the production environment. ASR does not require any changes to SQL Server configuration or licensing, as it operates at the hypervisor level using continuous replication.
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 is the only listed option that provides full IaaS disaster recovery by continuously replicating the entire VM (disk-level) to the secondary region, with app-consistent recovery points every 15 minutes. It supports non-disruptive test failovers that run in parallel with production, satisfying the DR drill requirement without downtime, and a coordinated failover can restore the mission-critical SQL Server VM well within the 1-hour RTO.
- ✗
SQL Server log shipping to a VM in the secondary region
Why it's wrong here
SQL Server log shipping is a database-level feature that periodically copies transaction log backups to a secondary VM but requires manual recovery of the database to bring it online, and every drill would break the log chain, forcing a full backup and reseed. It does not replicate the VM's operating system or SQL Server configuration, and the combination of manual steps and log restore is unlikely to guarantee a 1-hour RTO or a clean, non-impactful DR test.
- ✗
Azure Backup with cross-region restore
Why it's wrong here
Azure Backup with cross-region restore is fundamentally a backup service, not a continuous replication engine; it takes scheduled snapshots and, for cross-region restore, uses geo-redundant storage to restore a VM in the paired region from a recovery point. Creating a restored VM from a backup typically takes hours, far exceeding the required 1-hour RTO, and performing a restoration for a drill would not be a non-disruptive failover but rather a separate, full VM recovery that doesn't test automated failover processes.
- ✗
Azure SQL Database geo-replication
Why it's wrong here
Azure SQL Database geo-replication is a PaaS feature designed for Azure SQL Database and SQL Managed Instance, providing readable secondaries and auto-failover groups, but the mission-critical workload runs on SQL Server installed on an Azure VM, which is not a supported target for this service. Since geo-replication cannot be applied to an IaaS-hosted SQL Server, this option is inapplicable; adopting it would require migrating the database to Azure SQL Database, which fundamentally changes the architecture rather than protecting the existing VM.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Designing Azure Storage Solutions
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.
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.
About these practice questions
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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.