AZ-305 Design business continuity solutions Practice Question
A financial services company runs a critical SQL Server database on Azure VMs. They require a failover solution that provides automatic detection of database health issues and automatically fails over to a secondary replica in another Azure region with no data loss and sub-minute RPO. What should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse Azure SQL Database geo-replication (asynchronous, manual failover) with SQL Server Always On Availability Groups (synchronous, automatic failover), assuming all Azure SQL replication options provide automatic failover and zero data loss.
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
✓
SQL Server Always On Availability Groups with automatic failover
SQL Server Always On Availability Groups with automatic failover is the correct choice because it supports synchronous data replication between primary and secondary replicas, ensuring zero data loss (RPO=0) and sub-minute RPO. Automatic failover requires a quorum-based health detection mechanism (using Windows Server Failover Clustering) that monitors database health and triggers failover to a secondary replica in another Azure region without manual intervention, meeting the strict RPO and automatic failover requirements.
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 SQL Database geo-replication
Why it's wrong here
Azure SQL Database geo-replication protects single databases in the PaaS platform, not custom SQL Server instances deployed on Azure VMs. It also relies on asynchronous replication, so the recovery point objective can stretch to up to an hour—far beyond the sub-minute RPO required here. Because the workload runs on IaaS VMs, this service cannot be applied at all.
- ✓
SQL Server Always On Availability Groups with automatic failover
Why this is correct
Always On Availability Groups with automatic failover use synchronous-commit replicas to achieve a zero RPO, while the Windows Server Failover Clustering service triggers failover automatically within seconds if the primary loses connectivity. Since this feature is fully supported on SQL Server on Azure VMs, it directly protects the existing critical instance without converting to PaaS. The listener also enables applications to reconnect transparently after failover.
- ✗
Azure SQL Managed Instance failover groups
Why it's wrong here
Azure SQL Managed Instance failover groups replicate an entire PaaS instance, so they cannot protect a standalone SQL Server running on your own VMs. Although failover groups provide automatic failover at the instance level, the secondary georeplica's asynchronous upload can create an RPO of as much as one hour, which violates the strict data-loss requirement. This option also forces a migration to a fully managed platform, adding unnecessary complexity.
- ✗
Azure Backup for SQL Server
Why it's wrong here
Azure Backup for SQL Server is a backup-and-restore solution, not a high-availability or disaster-recovery replication feature. It takes transaction log backups at best every 15 minutes, so the RPO is at least that long, and failover requires human intervention to perform a restore—no automatic failover is possible. This makes it unsuitable for meeting sub-minute RPO and automatic failover requirements.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Data Residency and Sovereignty Requirements
Key term
BIA and RPO RTO Design
Business Impact Analysis and the design of Recovery Point Objective and Recovery Time Objective define how much data loss and downtime a business can tolerate after an IT failure, guiding the architecture of backup and disaster recovery systems.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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