AZ-305 Design business continuity solutions Practice Question
Which TWO Azure services can be used to automatically redirect traffic to an alternate region in the event of a regional outage? (Choose two.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse regional load balancers (Application Gateway, Load Balancer) with global traffic routing services, forgetting that only DNS-based or Anycast-based services (Traffic Manager, Front Door) can redirect traffic across regions during an outage.
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 Traffic Manager
Azure Traffic Manager (C) is a DNS-based global traffic load balancer that can route users to endpoints in different regions and, with priority routing plus endpoint monitoring, automatically fail over to an alternate region when the primary region's endpoint becomes unhealthy. Azure Front Door (E) is a global Layer 7 entry point that uses anycast, health probes, and origin groups to detect a regional outage and automatically redirect traffic to a healthy origin in another region. Azure Application Gateway (A) is a regional Layer 7 load balancer, so it can distribute traffic only among backends within its own region and cannot by itself redirect across regions during a regional outage. Azure Load Balancer (B) is a regional Layer 4 load balancer scoped to a single region and has no global failover capability. Azure DNS (D) is a general-purpose authoritative DNS hosting service; it does not provide built-in health probing or automatic regional failover routing on its own.
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 Application Gateway
Why it's wrong here
Application Gateway is a regional layer-7 load balancer; it distributes HTTP traffic across backends within one region and cannot itself redirect across regions during an outage. Azure Front Door and Traffic Manager provide the global DNS or anycast routing needed. Application Gateway suits path-based routing and WAF within a single region.
- ✗
Azure Load Balancer
Why it's wrong here
Azure Load Balancer distributes traffic only within a single region across VMs in a backend pool; it has no cross-region endpoint awareness or health-based regional failover. It is tempting because it does perform health-probe-based redirection, but that is regional load balancing, whereas the scenario demands global redirection via Traffic Manager or Front Door.
- ✓
Azure Traffic Manager
Why this is correct
Azure Traffic Manager provides DNS-based global load balancing, using priority or performance routing to fail over to an alternate region when health probes detect an outage. This satisfies the stem's requirement for automatic redirection during a regional outage, since DNS responses point clients to a healthy regional endpoint.
- ✗
Azure DNS
Why it's wrong here
Azure DNS alone cannot detect a regional outage or perform health-based failover; it only resolves names, and its alias records still require a health probe or Traffic Manager in front. It is tempting because DNS-based redirection is a genuine failover pattern, but that needs Azure Traffic Manager's endpoint monitoring, not DNS by itself.
- ✓
Azure Front Door
Why this is correct
Azure Front Door performs global HTTP load balancing with health probes and priority or latency routing, automatically directing web traffic to a healthy origin in an alternate region during an outage, meeting the automatic redirection requirement.
Visual reference
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Related to this question
Learn chapter
Multi-Region Active-Active Architecture
Key term
Application Gateway Design
Application Gateway Design is the process of planning and configuring a layer 7 load balancer in Azure that routes web traffic based on URL paths, hostnames, or other HTTP rules for secure, scalable, and high-performance application delivery.
Key term
Azure Load Balancer Design
Azure Load Balancer Design is the process of planning and configuring a Layer 4 (TCP/UDP) load balancer in Microsoft Azure to distribute incoming network traffic across healthy virtual machines or services for high availability and scalability.
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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.