AZ-305 Design business continuity solutions Practice Question
This AZ-305 practice question tests your understanding of design business continuity solutions. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. 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 financial services company runs a critical SQL Server database on Azure Virtual Machines. They require a disaster recovery solution with an RPO of less than 15 seconds and an RTO of less than 1 hour. Which technology should they implement?
Why wrong: Incorrect. Azure Site Recovery typically has an RPO of several minutes, which does not meet the sub-15-second requirement.
B
SQL Server Always On Availability Groups
Correct. Always On Availability Groups with synchronous replication can provide an RPO of zero and an RTO of seconds to minutes, satisfying the disaster recovery requirements.
C
Azure Backup for SQL Server
Why wrong: Incorrect. Azure Backup provides point-in-time restore but has a typical RPO of hours and RTO that is not suitable for sub-1-hour recovery.
D
Geo-redundant backups
Why wrong: Incorrect. Geo-redundant backups are for storage-level redundancy and do not provide the required low RPO/RTO for a SQL Server database.
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
SQL Server Always On Availability Groups provide synchronous data replication at the database level, enabling an RPO of less than 15 seconds by committing transactions on both primary and secondary replicas simultaneously. With automatic failover and a secondary replica in a different Azure region, the RTO can be under 1 hour, meeting the critical requirements for a SQL Server workload on Azure VMs.
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 Site Recovery
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Azure Site Recovery typically has an RPO of several minutes, which does not meet the sub-15-second requirement.
✓
SQL Server Always On Availability Groups
Why this is correct
Correct. Always On Availability Groups with synchronous replication can provide an RPO of zero and an RTO of seconds to minutes, satisfying the disaster recovery requirements.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Azure Backup for SQL Server
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Azure Backup provides point-in-time restore but has a typical RPO of hours and RTO that is not suitable for sub-1-hour recovery.
✗
Geo-redundant backups
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Geo-redundant backups are for storage-level redundancy and do not provide the required low RPO/RTO for a SQL Server database.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse Azure Site Recovery's VM-level replication with database-level replication, assuming it can meet low RPO/RTO for SQL Server, but it cannot achieve sub-15-second RPO because it replicates at the hypervisor level with inherent lag.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Always On Availability Groups use Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) and can be configured with synchronous-commit mode to ensure zero data loss (RPO=0) within a single data center, but across Azure regions, network latency may require asynchronous mode, still achieving sub-15-second RPO. The listener endpoint abstracts the primary replica, allowing applications to reconnect automatically during failover, which is critical for meeting the RTO. In a real-world scenario, a financial trading system would use a multi-region deployment with at least one synchronous replica in the same region and an asynchronous replica in a paired region for disaster recovery.
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.
Related glossary terms
Concepts from this question explained
These glossary pages explain the core terms tested in this AZ-305 question in full detail.
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: SQL Server Always On Availability Groups — SQL Server Always On Availability Groups provide synchronous data replication at the database level, enabling an RPO of less than 15 seconds by committing transactions on both primary and secondary replicas simultaneously. With automatic failover and a secondary replica in a different Azure region, the RTO can be under 1 hour, meeting the critical requirements for a SQL Server workload on Azure VMs.
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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