- A
Azure Site Recovery
Azure Site Recovery orchestrates replication, failover, and failback for Hyper-V VMs to Azure. It supports near-synchronous replication and custom RPOs down to 30 seconds.
- B
Azure Migrate
Why wrong: Azure Migrate is used for discovering, assessing, and migrating on-premises workloads to Azure. It does not provide ongoing replication or disaster recovery failover.
- C
Azure Backup
Why wrong: Azure Backup provides backup and restore, but it does not offer orchestrated failover to Azure or failback. RPO is typically once per day, not 15 minutes.
- D
Azure Recovery Services Vault
Why wrong: The Recovery Services vault is a container used by both Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery. It is not a service itself; you must enable either Backup or Site Recovery within it.
Quick Answer
The answer is Azure Site Recovery. This service is the correct choice because it provides native, orchestrated replication for on-premises Hyper-V VMs to Azure as a disaster recovery site, supporting the required 15-minute RPO through near-synchronous replication with change tracking and a 2-hour RTO via automated recovery plans. Azure Site Recovery also natively automates both failover and failback processes without additional scripting, making it the only service that meets all stated requirements for disaster recovery for Hyper-V VMs. On the AZ-305 exam, this scenario tests your ability to distinguish between Azure Site Recovery and services like Azure Backup or Azure Migrate; a common trap is choosing Azure Backup, which handles long-term retention but lacks the orchestrated failover and sub-hour RPO capabilities needed here. Remember the mnemonic “ASR for DR” — if the question mentions failover, failback, and a tight RPO, Azure Site Recovery is your answer.
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 company has an on-premises Hyper-V environment with 20 virtual machines running various workloads. They want to use Azure as a disaster recovery site. The required recovery point objective (RPO) is 15 minutes, and the recovery time objective (RTO) is 2 hours. They want to automate failover and failback. Which Azure service should they use?
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 Site Recovery
Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is the correct service because it provides orchestrated replication, failover, and failback for Hyper-V VMs to Azure as a DR site. It supports the required RPO of 15 minutes (using near-synchronous replication with change tracking) and RTO of 2 hours (via automated recovery plans), and it natively automates both failover and failback processes without additional scripting.
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 this is correct
Azure Site Recovery orchestrates replication, failover, and failback for Hyper-V VMs to Azure. It supports near-synchronous replication and custom RPOs down to 30 seconds.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- ✗
Azure Migrate
Why it's wrong here
Azure Migrate is used for discovering, assessing, and migrating on-premises workloads to Azure. It does not provide ongoing replication or disaster recovery failover.
- ✗
Azure Backup
Why it's wrong here
Azure Backup provides backup and restore, but it does not offer orchestrated failover to Azure or failback. RPO is typically once per day, not 15 minutes.
- ✗
Azure Recovery Services Vault
Why it's wrong here
The Recovery Services vault is a container used by both Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery. It is not a service itself; you must enable either Backup or Site Recovery within it.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates confuse the Recovery Services Vault (a storage container) with the actual DR service (Azure Site Recovery), or they mistakenly think Azure Backup can meet low RPO/RTO requirements for disaster recovery when it is designed for backup, not replication with automated failover.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Azure Site Recovery for Hyper-V uses the Hyper-V Replica mechanism with a replication frequency as low as 30 seconds, but the 15-minute RPO is achieved by default with 5-minute replication intervals and change tracking via the Hyper-V Replica Broker. The failback process requires a site-to-site VPN or ExpressRoute to re-protect Azure VMs back to on-premises, and ASR automates this with a planned failover workflow that ensures data consistency. In real-world scenarios, ASR can handle large-scale DR with recovery plans that include custom scripts and Azure Automation runbooks for application-consistent failover.
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
A media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
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Design business continuity solutions — study guide chapter
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this AZ-305 question test?
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: Azure Site Recovery — Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is the correct service because it provides orchestrated replication, failover, and failback for Hyper-V VMs to Azure as a DR site. It supports the required RPO of 15 minutes (using near-synchronous replication with change tracking) and RTO of 2 hours (via automated recovery plans), and it natively automates both failover and failback processes without additional scripting.
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.
About these practice questions
Courseiva creates original exam-style practice questions with explanations and wrong-answer analysis. It does not publish real exam questions, exam dumps, or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
Same concept, more angles
4 more ways this is tested on AZ-305
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A company runs multiple on-premises workloads that are critical. They need a disaster recovery solution that can replicate workloads to Azure and enable failover in the event of an on-premises outage. The solution must support non-VMware and non-Hyper-V physical servers. Which Azure service should they use?
medium- A.Azure Backup
- ✓ B.Azure Site Recovery
- C.Azure Migrate
- D.Azure Disaster Recovery
Why B: Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is the correct service because it provides orchestrated replication and failover for on-premises physical servers (including non-VMware, non-Hyper-V) to Azure. It supports physical-to-Azure (P2A) replication using the Mobility service installed on the source server, enabling automated failover during an outage. This directly meets the requirement for critical workload disaster recovery with failover capability.
Variation 2. A company has a disaster recovery plan that requires testing failover of Azure VMs regularly without impacting the production environment. Which feature of Azure Site Recovery should they use?
easy- A.Planned failover
- ✓ B.Test failover
- C.Unplanned failover
- D.Failback
Why B: Test failover (also known as drill) allows you to validate your disaster recovery plan without affecting production. Option A is incorrect because planned failover is for actual migration. Option C is incorrect because unplanned failover is for actual disasters. Option D is incorrect because failback is for returning to primary after failover.
Variation 3. Which THREE of the following are required components for a disaster recovery solution using Azure Site Recovery for on-premises Hyper-V VMs?
hard- ✓ A.A Recovery Services vault in the target Azure region.
- ✓ B.A replication policy that defines retention and recovery points.
- ✓ C.The Azure Site Recovery Provider installed on each Hyper-V host.
- D.Azure Backup Server installed on-premises.
- E.An ExpressRoute connection from on-premises to Azure.
Why A: Options A, B, and D are correct. Azure Site Recovery requires a Recovery Services vault, a replication policy, and the Azure Site Recovery Provider installed on Hyper-V hosts. Option C (Azure Backup Server) is not required; Site Recovery uses its own replication mechanism. Option E (ExpressRoute) is optional.
Variation 4. Your company is designing a disaster recovery solution for a three-tier application hosted on Azure VMs. The solution must meet the following requirements: - RPO: 1 hour - RTO: 4 hours - Automated failover to a secondary region - Cost optimization is a priority Which TWO actions should you include in the design?
easy- ✓ A.Deploy an Azure Load Balancer in the secondary region with health probes to automatically route traffic after failover.
- B.Use Azure Backup to take hourly backups of the VMs and restore them in the secondary region.
- C.Configure a read-only replica of the application tier in the secondary region using Availability Zones.
- D.Deploy Azure Front Door with a backend pool containing both primary and secondary regions.
- ✓ E.Configure Azure Site Recovery replication for all application VMs from primary to secondary region.
Why A: Options A and C are correct. Azure Site Recovery provides replication and automated failover for VMs, meeting RPO and RTO. Using an Azure Load Balancer with health probes allows traffic to be redirected to the secondary region after failover. Option B is wrong because Azure Backup is not designed for automated failover and has higher RTO. Option D is wrong because read-only replicas are for read scaling, not failover. Option E is wrong because Azure Front Door is for global load balancing, not regional failover for VMs.
Last reviewed: Jun 11, 2026
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