AZ-305 Design infrastructure solutions Practice Question

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

• ✗

  Enable geo-redundant backup storage and use geo-restore in the secondary region.

  Why it's wrong here

  Geo-redundant backup storage relies on Azure's automated backup replication to the paired region, but geo-restore is a point-in-time backup operation with an RPO of up to 1 hour and an RTO typically ranging from 2 to 12 hours. Because the backups are taken periodically and the secondary copy is updated asynchronously, you cannot recover to the most recent transaction with low latency. This option fails your requirement of a 1-minute RPO and minutes-level RTO, and is therefore unsuitable for a proactive disaster-recovery plan.

• ✗

  Configure automated backups with locally-redundant storage (LRS) and enable point-in-time restore.

  Why it's wrong here

  Automated backups with LRS and point-in-time restore provide a granular RPO of 5–10 minutes, but they are stored only in the primary region and are not available for recovery if that entire region becomes unavailable. Restoring a database from these backups creates a new database and copies data back, so the RTO depends on database size and can easily exceed an hour. Since you need sub-minute data loss and fast failover under regional failure, this single-region backup approach does not meet the requirement.

• ✓

  Configure active geo-replication to a secondary region in the same Azure geography.

  Why this is correct

  Active geo-replication continuously replicates transactions from a primary database to one or more readable secondary databases in a paired or chosen secondary region, achieving an RPO of typically 5 seconds and an RTO of under 1 minute when paired with automatic failover groups. Because the secondary is always online and kept nearly synchronized, a failover merely changes the role and does not require copying or restoring data. This is the only option that satisfies both the aggressive 1-minute RPO and the minutes-level RTO while also providing cross-region redundancy.

• ✗

  Export the database to a bacpac file daily and store it in Azure Blob Storage.

  Why it's wrong here

  Exporting the database to a bacpac file on a daily schedule generates a single point-in-time snapshot, so you can lose up to 24 hours of transactions—far exceeding your 1-minute RPO. Restoring that bacpac requires importing it through the database import service, which is a costly, slow operation that can take hours depending on size and throughput. Bacpac exports are intended for migration or archival, not for disaster recovery where near-zero data loss and rapid failover are mandatory.

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