Match each Azure disaster recovery feature to its description.
Drag a concept onto its matching description — or click a concept then click the description.
Orchestrates replication and failover of VMs
Cloud-based backup for Azure and on-premises workloads
Physically separate datacenter within a region
Logical grouping for fault and update domains
Another Azure region for cross-region replication
Answer choices
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: Replicates workloads from primary site to secondary site, enabling automated failover and failback.
Azure disaster recovery features include Site Recovery for replication and failover, Backup for retention, Availability Zones for datacenter failure protection, and Paired Regions for region-level disaster recovery. Common confusions involve mixing the roles of Site Recovery and Backup.
Answer analysis
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
Azure Site Recovery: Replicates workloads from primary site to secondary site, enabling automated failover and failback.
Why this is correct
Azure Site Recovery continuously replicates Azure VMs and on-premises workloads to a secondary site or region, using recovery plans to orchestrate automated failover with minimal RPO and RTO. It also supports failback after the primary site is restored, making it a true disaster-recovery orchestration service. This statement correctly describes that replication and failover role, not backup retention.
Azure Backup: Provides cloud-based backup for Azure resources, supporting long-term retention.
Why this is correct
Azure Backup is a managed cloud backup service that captures point-in-time recovery points for Azure VMs, SQL/SAP databases, and file shares, storing them in a Recovery Services vault. Its policy engine supports long-term retention (up to 10 years or more for many workloads) to meet compliance and archival requirements. Unlike Site Recovery, it does not continuously replicate for failover; it restores data by rehydrating from stored snapshots.
Availability Zones: Physically separate datacenters within an Azure region to protect against datacenter failures.
Why this is correct
Availability Zones are groups of physically separate datacenters inside a single Azure region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking. Deploying VMs or applications across zones shields them from a datacenter-level failure, but does not help during a region-wide outage. They are a high-availability solution within one region, not a cross-region or backup service.
Azure Paired Regions: Pairing of regions to protect against region-wide disasters, with automatic replication for some services.
Why this is correct
A paired region is another Azure region within the same geography that is designated as a recovery partner, typically at least 300 miles away. Azure orders planned maintenance across pairs sequentially and provides automatic geo-replication for selected services (e.g., geo-redundant storage), enabling RTO-oriented recovery if the primary region is lost. This pairing specifically addresses region-wide disaster protection, unlike Availability Zones which only protect within one region.
Azure Site Recovery: Provides long-term retention of backups.
Why it's wrong here
Long-term retention of backup snapshots is a feature of Azure Backup, not Azure Site Recovery. Site Recovery is an orchestration engine that continuously replicates workloads and automates failover and failback, but it does not keep months or years of point-in-time backup copies. Claiming that Azure Site Recovery provides long-term backup retention misidentifies the product's core disaster-recovery purpose.
Azure Backup: Replicates VMs for failover.
Why it's wrong here
Replicating VMs for failover is the function of Azure Site Recovery, not Azure Backup. Azure Backup creates application-consistent snapshots and stores recovery points in a vault, allowing restoration to an earlier point-in-time, but it does not maintain a continuously synchronized secondary copy or perform automated failover. This wrong option conflates backup and restore with disaster-recovery replication and orchestration.
Go deeper
Learn chapter
Azure Backup Vault Design
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 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 →
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.