AZ-305 Design data storage solutions Practice Question
You are designing a storage solution for a globally distributed application that requires low-latency read access from multiple regions. Which Azure storage solution should you recommend?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse RA-GRS (which provides read access to only one secondary region, not multiple regions) with true multi-region active-active reads. While RA-GRS does allow reads from the secondary at any time, it cannot serve reads from multiple secondary regions and does not support multi-region writes, making Cosmos DB the better solution for global low-latency reads.
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 Cosmos DB with multi-region writes and multiple read regions
Azure Cosmos DB with multi-region writes and multiple read regions is the correct choice because it provides turnkey global distribution with single-digit-millisecond latency for reads and writes from any Azure region. This solution directly addresses the requirement for low-latency read access from multiple regions, as Cosmos DB automatically replicates data to all configured regions and offers multiple consistency models to balance performance and data freshness.
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 Blob Storage with read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS)
Why it's wrong here
RA-GRS asynchronously replicates blobs to a single paired secondary region, where reads are allowed via a separate endpoint (secondary blob service). Because replication is asynchronous, read-after-write consistency is not guaranteed; in a disaster or during normal operation, users can see stale data and read latency depends on network distance to that one secondary region. It also supports only one write region, so a globally distributed application with active writes in many geographies would experience high latency and no local write capability.
- ✗
Azure SQL Database with active geo-replication
Why it's wrong here
Active geo-replication creates one or more readable secondary databases in different Azure regions, but only the primary database accepts writes; any failover to a secondary is an explicit, manual operation (or via failover group policies), not an active-active architecture. The secondaries are updated asynchronously with a recovery point objective (RPO) of up to 5 seconds, so reads from a secondary can be stale; moreover, to serve low-latency reads from many global locations you'd have to manually provision many secondaries, and writes still route to a single primary. This fits high-availability disaster recovery scenarios, not multi-region read/write scalability.
- ✗
Azure Files with Azure File Sync
Why it's wrong here
Azure File Sync is a hybrid service that syncs Azure file shares to on-premises Windows Server machines, providing local caching for branch offices; it is not a globally distributed data plane for cloud-native applications. The Azure file share itself remains a single regional resource, so clients accessing it over the internet from other regions incur latency, and Azure File Sync does not offer multi-region writes with automatic conflict resolution. Its purpose is centralized file management and caching on your own servers, not global low-latency database access.
- ✓
Azure Cosmos DB with multi-region writes and multiple read regions
Why this is correct
Azure Cosmos DB is designed for active-active global distribution: every region can accept both reads and writes, and data is automatically replicated to all regions associated with the account, with tunable consistency levels and conflict-resolution policies. This enables single-digit-millisecond read and write latencies at the 99th percentile for any region where the app is deployed, backed by SLAs for availability, latency, throughput, and consistency. For a globally distributed application, it provides the required multi-region write capability and near-local read performance that the storage options above cannot deliver.
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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.