AZ-305 Design data storage solutions Practice Question
A multinational corporation is designing a data storage solution for its global customer data. The data must be stored in the Azure region closest to each customer to minimize latency, but all data must be accessible from a central analytics platform for reporting. The solution must also comply with data residency regulations that require customer data to remain in the country of origin. Which Azure storage solution should the company recommend?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates may be tempted to choose Azure Cosmos DB with multi-master writes for global distribution, but multi-master replicates data across regions, violating data residency regulations. The correct solution involves keeping data localized via per-country databases with geo-replication limited to the same country.
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 SQL Database with active geo-replication
Azure SQL Database with active geo-replication allows the creation of a primary database in a central region and readable secondary databases in other regions. This enables low-latency reads for customers by serving data from the closest secondary while respecting data residency because the primary remains in the country of origin and replicas can be limited to the same country. The central analytics platform can query the primary database for reporting. This solution avoids the global replication that would violate residency 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 Cosmos DB with multi-master writes and conflict resolution
Why it's wrong here
Azure Cosmos DB multi-master writes causes every write region to contain replicas of all data, so a customer's data will be copied across all participating regions and may leave the mandated geography. The conflict resolution mechanism only manages concurrent write conflicts; it does nothing to restrict data placement. Partition-level residency is only possible with single-region writes, so multi-master writes violate strict data-residency requirements.
- ✗
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 with geo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS)
Why it's wrong here
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 with GZRS copies data asynchronously to a fixed Azure paired secondary region that you cannot select per customer, and the secondary endpoint is read-only in practice. Because GZRS provides zone redundancy in the primary region plus one predetermined geo-redundant copy, you cannot actively replicate different customer data to different regions. This service lacks per-tenant geo-targeting and active write capacity in the secondary region, making it unable to satisfy granular data-residency requirements.
- ✗
Azure Blob Storage with geo-redundant storage (GRS)
Why it's wrong here
Azure Blob Storage with GRS replicates your entire storage account asynchronously to an Azure-defined paired region, with failover performed at the account level, not the customer level. You have no ability to specify a different secondary region for each customer's data, and the secondary copy is not actively writable. Because all blobs in the account share the same geographic strategy, this option cannot enforce per-customer data residency constraints.
- ✓
Azure SQL Database with active geo-replication
Why this is correct
Azure SQL Database active geo-replication is correct because you create a database per customer and configure a readable secondary in the region that customer requires; replication is at the database level so isolation is clean. Even though it replicates the entire database rather than individual rows, that granularity matches the per-customer isolation model. You control both the primary and secondary locations, ensuring data residency while maintaining an active failover endpoint.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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