AZ-305 Design business continuity solutions Practice Question
A company uses Azure Backup to protect on-premises Windows servers and Azure VMs. They need to restore a file from a backup of an Azure VM that was deleted three months ago. The backup policy retains daily backups for 30 days and weekly backups for 12 months. What is the CORRECT way to restore the file?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers assume file-level recovery is not available for Azure VMs (similar to on-premises agent backups) or that they must restore the entire VM, but Azure Backup explicitly provides a 'File Recovery' option for Azure VM backups that works even after the VM is deleted.
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
✓
Use the file-level recovery option to mount the recovery point as a drive and copy the file
Azure Backup supports file-level recovery for Azure VMs by mounting the recovery point as a network drive using iSCSI. This allows you to browse and copy individual files without restoring the entire VM or disk. Since the backup is older than 30 days but within 12 months, a weekly recovery point is available and can be used for file-level restore.
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 Backup does not support file-level restore for Azure VMs; restore the entire disk
Why it's wrong here
This statement is incorrect because Azure Backup does provide file-level restore for Azure VMs. The service's file-level recovery feature mounts the chosen recovery point as a drive via an iSCSI target using a generated script, allowing you to browse the file system and copy individual files to the VM. Therefore, you do not need to restore an entire disk - this answer incorrectly denies the availability of a supported feature.
- ✗
Restore the entire VM from a weekly recovery point and then copy the file
Why it's wrong here
Recovering a single file by restoring the whole VM from a weekly recovery point is excessively time-consuming and resource-intensive. It also risks data loss because the weekly point is older than a daily or on-demand point, and if the VM has been deleted and no recovery point was explicitly retained, restore may be impossible. Azure Backup's file-level recovery gives you immediate, granular access to the exact file from a more recent recovery point, avoiding full-disk downtime.
- ✗
Use the 'Restore to a new VM' option and select the file during the restore process
Why it's wrong here
The 'Restore to a new VM' option reconstructs the entire VM from the recovery point, creating a new virtual machine with all disks intact; it provides no mechanism to select or extract a single file during the restore process. File selection is only possible through the separate file-level recovery workflow, which mounts the recovery point as a read-only drive on the existing VM. Consequently, this answer describes a workflow that does not exist in the Azure portal.
- ✓
Use the file-level recovery option to mount the recovery point as a drive and copy the file
Why this is correct
Azure Backup supports file-level recovery for Azure VMs: in the Recovery Services vault, select the recovery point and choose 'File Recovery', which downloads a script (PowerShell for Windows, bash for Linux) that mounts the recovery point as an iSCSI drive on your current VM. You then copy the required file from that mounted drive and, when finished, unmount it to release the connection. This is the correct, supported method because it gives you direct access to the file system without restoring the entire VM or recreating it.
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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.