Quick Answer
The answer is zone redundancy, active geo-replication, and auto-failover groups. Zone redundancy ensures resilience within a single Azure region by replicating your database across physically separate data centers, protecting against a full zone outage. Active geo-replication provides read-scale capabilities and enables failover to a secondary paired region for disaster recovery, while auto-failover groups automate the failover process for multiple databases, allowing you to manage regional outages without manual intervention. On the AZ-305 exam, this question tests your ability to distinguish high availability features from unrelated services like read scale-out, which improves performance but not availability, or Transparent Data Encryption, which is purely a security control. A common trap is confusing read scale-out with HA, so remember that HA is about uptime and failover, not query distribution. Memory tip: think “ZAG” for Zone, Active geo-replication, and Groups—the three pillars of Azure SQL HA design.
This AZ-305 practice question tests your understanding of design infrastructure 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.
Which THREE considerations are important when designing a highly available Azure SQL Database solution?
Auto-failover groups
Enables automatic failover across regions.
Transparent Data Encryption
Why wrong: TDE is for encryption at rest, not HA.
Active geo-replication
Provides cross-region read-scale and failover.
Zone redundancy
Protects against datacenter failure within a region.
Read scale-out
Why wrong: Read scale-out is for performance, not high availability.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
Auto-failover groups
Active geo-replication provides read-scale and failover to a secondary region. Zone redundancy provides resilience within a region. Auto-failover groups enable automatic failover. Read scale-out is not related to HA. Transparent Data Encryption is for security, not HA.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
Auto-failover groups
Why this is correct
Enables automatic failover across regions.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Transparent Data Encryption
Why it's wrong here
TDE is for encryption at rest, not HA.
Active geo-replication
Why this is correct
Provides cross-region read-scale and failover.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Zone redundancy
Why this is correct
Protects against datacenter failure within a region.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Read scale-out
Why it's wrong here
Read scale-out is for performance, not high availability.
Common exam traps
Many certification questions include familiar terms but test a specific constraint. Read the exact wording before choosing an answer that is generally true but wrong for this case.
Detailed technical explanation
This question should be treated as a scenario, not a definition check. Identify the problem, the constraint and the best action. Then compare each option against those facts.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
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.
What to study next
Identify which AZ-305 exam domain this question belongs to, then review the specific concept being tested. Practise related questions in that domain and focus on understanding why each wrong answer is tempting — not just why the correct answer is right.
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FAQ
Design infrastructure solutions — This question tests Design infrastructure solutions — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: Auto-failover groups — Active geo-replication provides read-scale and failover to a secondary region. Zone redundancy provides resilience within a region. Auto-failover groups enable automatic failover. Read scale-out is not related to HA. Transparent Data Encryption is for security, not HA.
Identify which AZ-305 exam domain this question belongs to, then review the specific concept being tested. Practise related questions in that domain and focus on understanding why each wrong answer is tempting — not just why the correct answer is right.
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 20, 2026
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.
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