AZ-305 Design business continuity solutions Practice Question
A company uses Azure Site Recovery to replicate VMs from the primary region to the secondary region. During a disaster, they want to ensure that the failover process is automated and includes runbooks to perform post-failover actions. Which TWO components are required? (Choose two.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse Azure Logic Apps with Azure Automation runbooks, but only runbooks are directly supported within Azure Site Recovery Recovery Plans for post-failover automation.
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 Automation runbooks
Azure Automation runbooks are required because they contain the PowerShell or Python scripts that execute post-failover actions, such as updating DNS records, reconfiguring network settings, or starting dependent services. Azure Site Recovery Recovery Plans are required because they orchestrate the failover sequence, including grouping VMs into ordered groups and invoking runbooks at specific steps. Together, they enable automated, scripted post-failover tasks within a structured failover workflow.
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 Automation runbooks
Why this is correct
Azure Automation runbooks are PowerShell or Python scripts that ASR executes as steps inside a Recovery Plan, enabling custom post-failover actions such as updating DNS records, changing IP addresses, or reconfiguring application dependencies. They are correct because they provide the scripted logic that makes failover automation truly workload-aware, and they run either on an Azure Hybrid Worker or in Azure after the VMs start.
- ✓
Azure Site Recovery Recovery Plans
Why this is correct
Azure Site Recovery Recovery Plans are the orchestration containers that group VMs into failover groups, enforce boot order, and allow you to insert automated actions (like runbooks) plus manual pauses before and after failover. This option is correct because Recovery Plans are the primary ASR mechanism for coordinating multi-VM failover as a single, repeatable process; without them, runbooks lack the sequencing and dependency management needed for consistent recovery.
- ✗
Azure Monitor alerts
Why it's wrong here
Azure Monitor alerts detect metric or log conditions and can trigger action groups (e.g., webhooks, ITSM tickets, or Automation runbooks), but they are not part of ASR's failover pipeline and cannot orchestrate the replication state machine. Alerts fire based on telemetry after a condition is already true; they do not participate in the pre/post steps of a Recovery Plan. Therefore they are wrong because they are a reactive monitoring tool, not a failover automation control plane.
- ✗
Azure Logic Apps
Why it's wrong here
Azure Logic Apps is a general-purpose integration service for designing workflows across hundreds of connectors, and while a webhook from ASR could theoretically invoke an HTTP-triggered Logic App, ASR has no native Logic App step type in Recovery Plans. The supported, first-class automation path is Azure Automation runbooks embedded in Recovery Plans; using Logic Apps would require custom glue code and adds latency/complexity without any ASR-specific benefit. Thus it is wrong because it is not the standard or integrated failover automation mechanism.
- ✗
Azure Backup
Why it's wrong here
Azure Backup provides independent, policy-based backup and restore of VMs, including application-consistent snapshots and long-term retention, but it is a data-protection service, not a disaster-recovery replication service. It does not maintain a continuous replica in a secondary region and has no built-in concept of failover orchestration or Recovery Plans; restore is an on-demand, manual or scheduled operation. Therefore it is wrong because it lacks the automated failover and runbook integration capabilities that ASR offers.
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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.
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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.