AZ-305 Design business continuity 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.

• ✗

  Use Azure Storage account snapshots for on-premises files and Azure VM snapshots for VMs.

  Why it's wrong here

  Storage account snapshots apply only to Azure blobs and Azure Files shares, not to on-premises files, so they are inherently unable to protect the on-premises portion of this hybrid environment. VM snapshots for Azure VMs are crash-consistent point-in-time images that lack centralized policy management, item-level recovery, and long-term retention controls needed for a 7-year compliance requirement. These snapshots are also stored alongside the source disks, increasing storage costs without providing off-site or vault-based archival, making them an incomplete backup strategy.

• ✓

  Deploy Azure Backup with the Microsoft Azure Recovery Services (MARS) agent for on-premises and the Azure Backup extension for VMs.

  Why this is correct

  Azure Backup is the correct service because it unifies protection for both sides of the hybrid infrastructure in a single Recovery Services vault. For on-premises files and system state, the MARS agent runs on Windows servers and sends encrypted backups to the vault; for Azure VMs, the Azure Backup extension coordinates with the VM's guest OS to create application-consistent snapshots. Backup policies in Azure Backup allow configurable retention up to 99 years, which easily satisfies the 7-year compliance mandate, and the vault provides centralized monitoring, alerting, and long-term archival across all protected workloads.

• ✗

  Set up Azure File Sync to sync on-premises files to Azure Files, then back up the Azure file shares.

  Why it's wrong here

  Azure File Sync creates a sync relationship between an on-premises Windows file server and an Azure file share, but it is a synchronization and caching mechanism, not a backup. If on-premises files are accidentally deleted or corrupted, the sync process propagates those changes to the Azure file share, so the 'backup' copy becomes just as damaged. Additionally, Azure File Sync does not protect Azure VMs in any way, and although Azure file shares can be snapshotted, that does not address the VM backup requirement or provide the policy-driven, long-term retention needed for compliance.

• ✗

  Use Azure Site Recovery for both on-premises servers and Azure VMs.

  Why it's wrong here

  Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is fundamentally a disaster recovery service that replicates workloads for planned or unplanned failover, not a backup service for archiving and compliance. ASR maintains recovery points for hours or at most a few weeks depending on the replication configuration, but it does not support the 7-year retention required by the policy. Using ASR for both on-premises servers and Azure VMs also means you incur continuous replication costs and failover complexity, and you still have no mechanism for item-level file recovery or long-term archival, which are core backup requirements.

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