AZ-305 Design infrastructure solutions Practice Question
You are designing a disaster recovery solution for a critical application running in Azure. The application uses Azure SQL Database. The recovery point objective (RPO) is 5 seconds, and the recovery time objective (RTO) is 30 minutes. Which Azure SQL Database configuration should you recommend?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often choose auto-failover groups (Option C) because they assume automatic failover is faster, but the RTO can be longer due to the grace period and the fact that automatic failover may not trigger within 30 minutes if the primary region is degraded but not fully down.
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
✓
Active geo-replication
Active geo-replication is the correct choice because it provides a continuous, asynchronous replication of data to a secondary database in a different Azure region, enabling an RPO of 5 seconds (typically under 5 seconds) and an RTO of 30 minutes or less by manually initiating a failover. This meets the stringent RPO and RTO requirements for a critical application using Azure SQL Database.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Point-in-time restore to a different region
Why it's wrong here
Point-in-time restore to a different region relies on geo-redundant backups to restore a database to an earlier moment in a paired region. Geo-restore provides an RPO of at least 1 hour and an RTO of about 12 hours, which is far above the required 5-second RPO and 30-minute RTO. This approach is a recovery-from-backup strategy, not a continuous replication solution, so it cannot achieve the near-real-time data loss objectives.
- ✓
Active geo-replication
Why this is correct
Active geo-replication maintains a readable secondary database in a different region using asynchronous replication with an RPO of up to 5 seconds. The application can initiate a manual failover to the secondary, which typically completes in under 30 seconds, satisfying the RTO of 30 minutes. This makes it the ideal choice for critical databases that require minimal data loss and fast recovery.
- ✗
Auto-failover groups
Why it's wrong here
Auto-failover groups use the same underlying geo-replication but automate failover for a group of databases through a single listener endpoint. Because failover decisions are made automatically based on health signals, the secondary may not have caught up to the latest transaction, causing an RPO that can exceed the 5-second threshold. This lack of manual control over the synchronization point makes auto-failover groups unsuitable for a solution with a hard 5-second RPO requirement.
- ✗
Azure Backup for SQL Server in Azure VM
Why it's wrong here
Azure Backup for SQL Server in Azure VM is designed for SQL Server instances running on Infrastructure-as-a-Service virtual machines, not for Azure SQL Database PaaS. It provides backup and restore capabilities with a typical RPO of 24 hours and an RTO measured in hours, completely missing the 5-second and 30-minute targets. This option is therefore inapplicable to the platform described in the scenario.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Designing Governance Solutions
Key term
BIA and RPO RTO Design
Business Impact Analysis and the design of Recovery Point Objective and Recovery Time Objective define how much data loss and downtime a business can tolerate after an IT failure, guiding the architecture of backup and disaster recovery systems.
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
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.