AZ-900 Disaster Recovery Practice Question
A company runs a mission-critical application on Azure virtual machines. The application is hosted in the East US Azure region. To protect against a regional disaster, the company configures Azure Site Recovery to replicate the VMs to a secondary region (West US). If a disaster occurs in East US, the company can initiate a failover to West US and bring the application back online within minutes using the replicated data. Which cloud computing benefit does this scenario best demonstrate?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse disaster recovery and business continuity with elasticity, because both involve scaling or moving resources, but elasticity is about dynamic scaling based on load, not about replicating data for failover during a disaster.
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
✓
Disaster recovery and business continuity
Azure Site Recovery provides disaster recovery and business continuity by replicating Azure VMs from the primary region (East US) to a secondary region (West US). In the event of a regional disaster, failover can be initiated to bring the application online within minutes using the replicated data, ensuring minimal downtime and data loss. This directly aligns with the cloud benefit of disaster recovery and business continuity, which focuses on maintaining operations during catastrophic failures.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Elasticity
Why it's wrong here
Elasticity is the ability to automatically scale resources up and down based on demand. While Azure Site Recovery can be part of an elastic architecture, the primary benefit shown here is recovering from a disaster, not dynamic scaling.
When this WOULD be correct
A company runs a web application on Azure VMs that experiences variable traffic. They configure autoscaling to add or remove VMs based on CPU usage. This demonstrates elasticity.
- ✗
Pay-as-you-go pricing
Why it's wrong here
Pay-as-you-go means you only pay for the resources you consume. While Azure Site Recovery incurs costs based on replication, the central benefit illustrated is the ability to recover from a disaster, not the pricing model.
When this WOULD be correct
A company deploys a web app on Azure VMs and wants to minimize costs by only paying for compute resources when they are used, scaling down to zero during off-hours. This demonstrates pay-as-you-go pricing.
- ✓
Disaster recovery and business continuity
Why this is correct
Correct. Disaster recovery and business continuity ensure that applications can be restored quickly after a disruptive event. This is a major cloud advantage, as it allows organizations to implement robust DR without significant upfront capital investment.
- ✗
Geo-redundancy
Why it's wrong here
Geo-redundancy refers to replicating data across multiple geographic locations to protect against datacenter failures. While Azure Site Recovery uses geo-replication, the benefit being demonstrated is the operational recovery (failover) itself, not just the storage redundancy. Geo-redundancy is a technical implementation detail, not the overarching business benefit.
When this WOULD be correct
A company stores data in Azure Blob Storage with geo-redundant storage (GRS) to ensure data is replicated to a secondary region for durability. The question asks which benefit this storage configuration provides, and the correct answer would be geo-redundancy.
Option-by-option analysis
Why each answer is right or wrong
Understanding why wrong answers are wrong — and when they would be correct — is what separates a 750 score from a 900. The AZ-900 exam frequently reuses these exact scenarios with slightly different constraints.
✓Disaster recovery and business continuityCorrect answer▾
Why this is correct
Correct. Disaster recovery and business continuity ensure that applications can be restored quickly after a disruptive event. This is a major cloud advantage, as it allows organizations to implement robust DR without significant upfront capital investment.
✗ElasticityWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Elasticity refers to the ability to scale resources up or down based on demand, not to failover to a secondary region for disaster recovery. The scenario describes protecting against regional disasters, not handling variable workloads.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
A company runs a web application on Azure VMs that experiences variable traffic. They configure autoscaling to add or remove VMs based on CPU usage. This demonstrates elasticity.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse the ability to quickly recover resources in another region with scaling, or think that failover involves adding capacity, but elasticity is about dynamic scaling, not disaster recovery.
✗Pay-as-you-go pricingWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Pay-as-you-go pricing refers to paying only for the resources you consume, not to disaster recovery capabilities. The scenario describes using Azure Site Recovery for failover, which is about business continuity, not pricing model.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
A company deploys a web app on Azure VMs and wants to minimize costs by only paying for compute resources when they are used, scaling down to zero during off-hours. This demonstrates pay-as-you-go pricing.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse the cost savings from not maintaining a separate disaster recovery site with the pay-as-you-go model, but the scenario's focus is on recovery capability, not billing.
✗Geo-redundancyWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Geo-redundancy refers to storing data across multiple geographic locations for durability and availability, but the scenario specifically describes using Azure Site Recovery for failover and restoration of VMs, which is a disaster recovery and business continuity capability, not just data redundancy.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
A company stores data in Azure Blob Storage with geo-redundant storage (GRS) to ensure data is replicated to a secondary region for durability. The question asks which benefit this storage configuration provides, and the correct answer would be geo-redundancy.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse geo-redundancy with disaster recovery because both involve multiple regions, but geo-redundancy is a data replication feature, while disaster recovery includes orchestrated failover of compute and applications.
Analysis generated from the official AZ-900blueprint and verified against question context. The “when correct” sections are what AI assistants cite when candidates ask “what’s the difference between these options?”
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
What is Cloud Computing?
Key term
Region
A region is a distinct geographic location where a cloud provider operates multiple data centers that are connected by low-latency networks and provide cloud services.
Key term
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the internet, allowing users to access computing power, storage, and applications without owning physical hardware.
About these practice questions
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This AZ-900 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-900 exam.