AZ-305 Design business continuity solutions Practice Question
Fabrikam Inc. runs a file-sharing service used by 500 employees globally. The service is deployed on Azure VMs in the North Europe region. The VMs store data on Azure Files shares (Standard performance tier) mounted via SMB. The company's business continuity policy requires: - RPO: 1 hour for any data loss. - RTO: 4 hours to restore service after a regional disaster. - All data must be backed up and recoverable in a different region. - Budget is a concern; prefer cost-effective solutions.
Currently, there is no backup in place. You need to design a solution. What should you do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often assume Azure Backup supports a 1-hour backup frequency for Azure Files (it does not; the minimum is 4 hours), leading them to incorrectly select Option B without considering ASR and GRS for meeting the RPO and cross-region requirement.
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
✓
Set up Azure Site Recovery (ASR) for the VMs and Azure Files. Replicate to a secondary region (West Europe). Use ASR recovery plans to orchestrate failover.
Azure Site Recovery (ASR) can replicate the VMs to a secondary region (West Europe), meeting the RPO (near-synchronous) and RTO (4 hours achievable). For the Azure Files data, the storage account hosting the file shares should be configured with geo-redundant storage (GRS), which automatically replicates data to a paired region, satisfying the cross-region recoverability requirement. This combination is cost-effective as it uses built-in replication without additional backup infrastructure. Option B is incorrect because Azure Backup for Azure Files does not support a 1-hour backup frequency (minimum is 4 hours), and Azure Backup for Azure VMs also has a minimum 4-hour frequency, so it cannot meet the 1-hour RPO. Option C fails cross-region requirement as snapshots are stored in the same region, and VM backup frequency is daily. Option D requires an on-premises server and does not provide failover to a different Azure region.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Set up Azure Site Recovery (ASR) for the VMs and Azure Files. Replicate to a secondary region (West Europe). Use ASR recovery plans to orchestrate failover.
Why this is correct
Correct. ASR replicates VMs to a secondary region with low RPO, and GRS on the Azure Files storage account provides cross-region data replication. This meets all requirements cost-effectively.
- ✗
Configure Azure Backup for the Azure Files shares with a backup policy of 1-hour frequency. Also back up the VMs using Azure Backup with a 1-hour policy. Store backups in a Recovery Services vault with geo-redundant storage (GRS). Enable cross-region restore.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Azure Backup for Azure Files cannot achieve 1-hour RPO (minimum 4 hours). While GRS and cross-region restore are good, the frequency does not meet the RPO requirement.
- ✗
Use Azure Files share snapshots taken every hour and store them in a separate storage account in the same region. For VM backup, use Azure Backup with daily frequency. In a disaster, deploy new VMs and restore from snapshots.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Snapshots every hour can meet RPO, but storing them in the same region fails the cross-region requirement. Also, daily VM backup does not meet 1-hour RPO for VM data.
- ✗
Implement Azure File Sync between the Azure Files share and an on-premises file server. For disaster recovery, failover to the on-premises server.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Azure File Sync to on-premises does not provide failover to a different Azure region and introduces dependency on on-premises infrastructure, which is not cost-effective and may not meet RTO.
Visual reference
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Designing Backup and Recovery
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
Data Replication Strategy
A data replication strategy is a plan for copying and synchronizing data across multiple locations to ensure availability, durability, and performance.
About these practice questions
One of 795 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 →
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.