A company runs a multi-tier application on Azure virtual machines (VMs) in the West US region. The application consists of a web tier, an application tier, and a database tier. They need to implement a disaster recovery plan to a secondary region (East US) with a recovery point objective (RPO) of 5 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of 15 minutes. The VMs must be recovered in the correct order: database tier first, then application tier, then web tier. The company also wants to test the recovery process periodically without affecting production. They need to ensure that after failover, the VMs retain their IP addresses to minimize DNS propagation delays. Which combination of Azure Site Recovery features should they use?

Use Azure Site Recovery with a replication policy of 5-minute frequency, configure a recovery plan with manual ordering, and rely on default IP assignment

Manual ordering is not efficient for a 15-minute RTO; you need automated execution. Also, default IP assignment may change IPs, causing DNS propagation delays.

Use Azure Site Recovery with a replication policy of 15-minute frequency and configure manual IP mapping after failover

15-minute replication does not meet the 5-minute RPO. Manual IP mapping delays recovery and increases RTO beyond 15 minutes.

Use Azure Backup with daily snapshots and a geo-restore option, then manually restore VMs in order

Azure Backup is not designed for sub-hour RPO or RTO. Daily snapshots cannot achieve 5-minute RPO. Manual restore is too slow for a 15-minute RTO.

What does this AZ-305 question test?

CIDR notation defines the prefix length.

What is the correct answer to this question?

The correct answer is: Use Azure Site Recovery with a replication policy of 30-second frequency, create multi-VM consistency groups for each tier, build a recovery plan with script actions for ordering and static IP mapping, and use test failover for drills — To achieve an RPO of 5 minutes, you need frequent replication; Azure Site Recovery supports replication frequency up to 30 seconds for Azure-to-Azure (which can meet 5-minute RPO). Multi-VM consistency groups ensure that all VMs within a group are recovered to the same crash-consistent or app-consistent point, which is critical for the database and application tiers. Recovery plans allow you to group VMs and define order of recovery, and you can add pre- or post-actions (like scripts) for custom tasks. IP address retention in Azure Site Recovery can be achieved by configuring target network settings to map to the same IPs (if the target subnet is the same size). Testing is done via test failover without affecting production. Other options: Availability Zones are for within-region, not cross-region. Azure Backup does not provide replication with sub-15-minute RPO.

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.