AZ-305 Design business continuity solutions Practice Question
Exhibit
{
"properties": {
"provisioningState": "Succeeded",
"recoveryServicesProvider": {
"id": "/Subscriptions/.../resourceGroups/.../providers/Microsoft.RecoveryServices/vaults/.../replicationFabrics/.../replicationRecoveryServicesProviders/..."
},
"primaryFabricFriendlyName": "onprem-fabric",
"recoveryFabricFriendlyName": "azure-fabric",
"primaryFabricProvider": "HyperVSite",
"replicationHealth": "Critical",
"testFailoverState": "None",
"currentProtectionState": "PlannedFailoverCompleted"
},
"id": "/.../replicationProtectedItems/...",
"name": "vm-critical"
}Refer to the exhibit. The JSON snippet shows the properties of a replication-protected item in Azure Site Recovery. What is the MOST LIKELY reason for the replication health being 'Critical'?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates assume 'Critical' replication health always indicates a technical failure (e.g., network or storage issues), but in Azure Site Recovery, a planned failover intentionally stops replication, causing the health to become 'Critical' as a normal post-failover state.
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
✓
A planned failover was completed, stopping replication
When a planned failover is completed in Azure Site Recovery, replication is automatically stopped and the replication health status changes to 'Critical' because the protected item is no longer actively replicating to the recovery region. This is expected behavior after a planned failover, as the source and target are now synchronized and replication is disabled to prevent data overwrites. The 'Critical' health indicator in this context reflects the intentional cessation of replication, not a fault.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The replication storage account is misconfigured
Why it's wrong here
A misconfigured replication storage account—such as an incorrect key, disabled firewall, or expired SAS token—would prevent Azure Site Recovery from writing replicated data to the target account, producing job errors and a protection state like 'ReplicationNotHealthy' or 'ConfigurationNotFound' rather than a failover-completed marker. The reported state 'PlannedFailoverCompleted' indicates the failover workflow itself ran to completion, which is the action that intentionally stops replication. Since this state results from a successful orchestrated failover rather than a storage-level failure, misconfiguration is not the root cause of the critical health indicator.
- ✗
There is a network connectivity issue between the on-premises site and Azure
Why it's wrong here
If network connectivity between the on-premises configuration server/protected infrastructure and Azure were lost, ongoing replication would fail with errors such as 'ReplicationError' or 'JournalGap', and the protection state would reflect an unhealthy replication relationship, not a completed failover. A planned failover requires a healthy control channel to orchestrate the shutdown, final replication, and cutover steps; without that connectivity the failover would remain stuck or fail entirely. Therefore, a successful 'PlannedFailoverCompleted' state is inconsistent with a network connectivity issue at the time of reporting.
- ✓
A planned failover was completed, stopping replication
Why this is correct
Azure Site Recovery intentionally stops the continuous replication stream during a planned failover to guarantee that no data written after the cutover is replicated; once this completes, the protection state is set to 'PlannedFailoverCompleted'. The replication health automatically becomes 'Critical' because the active replication link is no longer transferring data—this is an expected result of the failover lifecycle, not a sign of misconfiguration or infrastructure failure. To restore a healthy state, you must commit or reverse the failover and then re-protect the workload, which establishes a fresh replication relationship; until then, the critical health flag correctly indicates that replication is stopped.
- ✗
A test failover was initiated but not cleaned up
Why it's wrong here
A test failover launches an isolated, sandboxed copy of the replicated VM in Azure without disturbing the ongoing replication from on-premises, and its lifecycle is tracked by properties such as testFailoverState. The JSON snippet shows 'testFailoverState': 'None', which means no test failover is currently in progress and none was left without cleanup. Even if a test failover had been initiated and not cleaned up, it would not set the protection state to 'PlannedFailoverCompleted' nor stop replication; it would leave the state as 'TestFailover' or 'TestFailoverCompleted' and replication health would remain healthy because the underlying replication continues uninterrupted.
Go deeper
Related to this question
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Azure Health Data Services (FHIR)
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.
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.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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