- A
Azure Traffic Manager with active-passive and geo-replication for Azure SQL Database
Why wrong: Traffic Manager can route traffic but does not provide HTTP-level routing or WAF capabilities. Geo-replication for SQL Database alone does not provide automatic failover; auto-failover groups are needed.
- B
Azure Front Door with active-active or active-passive routing and auto-failover groups for Azure SQL Database
Azure Front Door provides global HTTP/HTTPS routing with health probes and automatic failover, and auto-failover groups for SQL Database provide geo-replication with automatic failover, meeting RPO and RTO requirements.
- C
Azure Application Gateway with backend pools in multiple regions and SQL Database failover groups
Why wrong: Azure Application Gateway is a regional load balancer and cannot route traffic across regions globally.
- D
Azure Load Balancer with multiple regions and Azure SQL Database automatic failover
Why wrong: Azure Load Balancer is a regional layer-4 load balancer and cannot handle cross-region traffic routing.
Quick Answer
The answer is Azure Front Door with active-active or active-passive routing and auto-failover groups for Azure SQL Database. This combination works because Azure Front Door handles global HTTP(S) traffic redirection and automatic regional failover for the web tier, while auto-failover groups replicate the SQL database synchronously within a region and asynchronously across regions, enabling a coordinated failover of the entire application stack with minimal data loss. On the AZ-305 exam, this scenario tests your understanding of disaster recovery patterns for multi-tier applications, often appearing as a trap where candidates mistakenly pair Traffic Manager with SQL failover groups—but Traffic Manager operates at the DNS level and cannot provide the instant, health-probe-driven failover that Front Door offers for HTTP workloads. A key memory tip: think of Front Door as the “front door” that routes users to the healthy region, while auto-failover groups are the “backup key” that keeps the database in sync and ready to take over.
AZ-305 Design business continuity solutions Practice Question
This AZ-305 practice question tests your understanding of design business continuity solutions. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. 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 web application on Azure App Service with a backing Azure SQL Database in a single region. They need to ensure availability during an Azure region outage. The solution must automatically fail over the entire application stack with minimal data loss and redirect user traffic to the secondary region. Which combination of Azure services should they implement?
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 Front Door with active-active or active-passive routing and auto-failover groups for Azure SQL Database
Azure Front Door provides global HTTP(S) load balancing with automatic failover between regions, and when combined with auto-failover groups for Azure SQL Database, it ensures the entire application stack (web + database) fails over together with minimal data loss. The auto-failover group replicates the database synchronously within the same region and asynchronously across regions, allowing a user-configurable grace period to trade off between data loss and availability. This matches the requirement for automatic, coordinated failover of the full stack and traffic redirection.
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 Traffic Manager with active-passive and geo-replication for Azure SQL Database
Why it's wrong here
Traffic Manager can route traffic but does not provide HTTP-level routing or WAF capabilities. Geo-replication for SQL Database alone does not provide automatic failover; auto-failover groups are needed.
- ✓
Azure Front Door with active-active or active-passive routing and auto-failover groups for Azure SQL Database
Why this is correct
Azure Front Door provides global HTTP/HTTPS routing with health probes and automatic failover, and auto-failover groups for SQL Database provide geo-replication with automatic failover, meeting RPO and RTO requirements.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- ✗
Azure Application Gateway with backend pools in multiple regions and SQL Database failover groups
Why it's wrong here
Azure Application Gateway is a regional load balancer and cannot route traffic across regions globally.
- ✗
Azure Load Balancer with multiple regions and Azure SQL Database automatic failover
Why it's wrong here
Azure Load Balancer is a regional layer-4 load balancer and cannot handle cross-region traffic routing.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse Azure Traffic Manager (DNS-level, no application health awareness) with Azure Front Door (HTTP/S-level, health-probe driven), and they overlook that auto-failover groups are required for SQL Database to achieve coordinated, automatic failover with minimal data loss, rather than relying on geo-replication alone.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Azure Front Door uses Anycast-based routing and health probes to monitor endpoints, enabling sub-second failover at the application layer. Auto-failover groups for Azure SQL Database leverage the Availability Zones and geo-replication technology, allowing you to define a failover policy with a grace period (typically 0–3600 seconds) that controls the RPO; a grace period of 0 means no data loss but requires synchronous replication, which can impact performance. In a real-world scenario, if the primary region goes down, Front Door detects the failure via health probes and redirects traffic to the secondary region, while the auto-failover group automatically promotes the secondary database to primary, ensuring the application stack remains functional with minimal 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
An e-commerce site experiences heavy traffic on Black Friday and near-zero traffic during off-peak weeks. Rather than provisioning permanent large VMs, the team uses auto-scaling groups that add capacity automatically under load and reduce it overnight. Questions like this test whether you understand elasticity, availability zones, and cloud compute scaling patterns.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
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Design business continuity solutions — study guide chapter
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this AZ-305 question test?
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 Front Door with active-active or active-passive routing and auto-failover groups for Azure SQL Database — Azure Front Door provides global HTTP(S) load balancing with automatic failover between regions, and when combined with auto-failover groups for Azure SQL Database, it ensures the entire application stack (web + database) fails over together with minimal data loss. The auto-failover group replicates the database synchronously within the same region and asynchronously across regions, allowing a user-configurable grace period to trade off between data loss and availability. This matches the requirement for automatic, coordinated failover of the full stack and traffic redirection.
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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Last reviewed: Jun 11, 2026
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.
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