Azure Site Recovery for Cross-Region Disk Replication
You are designing a disaster recovery strategy for an Azure virtual machine running a SQL Server Always On availability group. The primary region is East US, and the secondary region is West US. You need to ensure minimal data loss and automatic failover. Which Azure service should you use for cross-region replication of the managed disks?
Quick Answer
The answer is Azure Site Recovery. This service is the correct choice because it provides orchestrated cross-region replication for Azure VMs with managed disks, enabling recovery point objectives as low as a few seconds to ensure minimal data loss for critical workloads like SQL Server Always On availability groups. Unlike Azure Backup, which focuses on point-in-time backups, or Azure Storage Geo-Redundant Storage, which replicates at the blob level without VM failover orchestration, Azure Site Recovery handles the full replication and automatic failover process, including disk consistency and network mapping. On the AZ-305 exam, this question tests your ability to distinguish between disaster recovery services and backup services—a common trap is confusing Azure Backup’s long-term retention with Site Recovery’s near-synchronous replication. Remember the memory tip: “Backup is for yesterday, replication is for right now.”
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse Azure Site Recovery with Azure Backup or geo-redundant storage, assuming that storage-level replication (GRS) provides automatic VM failover, when in fact GRS only replicates blobs asynchronously and does not orchestrate compute or application failover.
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) orchestrates replication, failover, and failback of Azure VMs across regions. For a SQL Server Always On availability group, ASR can replicate the managed disks at the VM level, enabling automatic failover to the West US region with minimal data loss by using crash-consistent or app-consistent recovery points. This meets the requirement for cross-region replication with automatic failover, unlike storage-level replication which does not provide orchestrated failover.
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 Traffic Manager
Why it's wrong here
Traffic Manager is for DNS-based traffic routing, not disk replication.
- ✓
Azure Site Recovery
Why this is correct
Azure Site Recovery replicates Azure VMs and supports automatic failover with low RPO.
- ✗
Azure Backup
Why it's wrong here
Azure Backup is for backup and restore, not continuous replication and automatic failover.
- ✗
Azure Storage Geo-Redundant Storage (GRS)
Why it's wrong here
GRS provides storage-level replication but does not orchestrate VM failover.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Designing Identity Solutions
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.
About these practice questions
One of 212 original AZ-305 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
Same concept, more angles
1 more way 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. You are designing a disaster recovery strategy for an Azure virtual machine running a critical application. The VM is in the East US region. Your recovery point objective (RPO) is 15 minutes, and your recovery time objective (RTO) is 1 hour. Which Azure service should you use to replicate the VM to the West US region?
easy- ✓ A.Azure Site Recovery
- B.Azure Traffic Manager
- C.Azure Backup
- D.Azure Migrate
Why A: Azure Site Recovery (ASR) orchestrates replication, failover, and failback of Azure VMs between regions. It supports continuous replication with an RPO as low as 30 seconds and can meet your 15-minute RPO, while automated failover and recovery plans can achieve a 1-hour RTO by spinning up replicated VMs in the West US region.
JA
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.