AZ-900 Describe Azure architecture and services Practice Question
Which Azure service provides a fully managed, cloud-based backup solution for protecting Azure VMs, SQL databases, and on-premises servers?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse Azure Backup (a backup service for point-in-time recovery) with Azure Site Recovery (a disaster recovery service for replication and failover), especially since both use the Recovery Services vault and are often discussed together in disaster recovery planning.
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 Backup
Azure Backup is the correct service because it provides a fully managed, cloud-based backup solution specifically designed to protect Azure VMs, SQL databases, and on-premises servers. It leverages the Azure Backup vault to store recovery points and supports policy-based scheduling, long-term retention, and application-consistent backups for these workloads.
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 Site Recovery
Why it's wrong here
Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is a managed disaster recovery service that continuously replicates workloads—often VMs and apps—to a secondary Azure region or on-premises site, enabling automated failover and failback to meet low RTO/RPO objectives during a disaster. It is not a backup solution because it focuses on replication and rapid infrastructure recovery, not on long-term retention or point-in-time restores of individual files or items. Azure Backup complements Site Recovery by providing scheduled, retained backup copies for operational recovery, so ASR is the wrong choice for this question.
- ✗
Azure Archive Storage
Why it's wrong here
Azure Archive Storage is a blob tier optimized for extremely infrequently accessed data, offering the lowest storage cost at the expense of high retrieval latency (up to several hours). It is purely an archival storage tier, not a backup service—it has no built-in scheduling, policy engine, or recovery point management. You must manually move data into it and handle point-in-time restore yourself, whereas Azure Backup orchestrates and manages the entire backup lifecycle, including retention and recovery, so Archive Storage is an incorrect choice here.
- ✓
Azure Backup
Why this is correct
Azure Backup is a fully managed, cloud-native backup service that automates the creation of scheduled backup points and applies retention policies for workloads such as Azure VMs, SQL/SAP databases, and on-premises servers through the MARS agent or DPM. It stores backup data in Recovery Services vaults, providing application-consistent snapshots, granular restore capabilities, and long-term retention with minimal operational overhead. Because the scenario asks for a comprehensive backup management solution, Azure Backup directly fulfills that role and is the correct answer.
- ✗
Azure Blob Storage snapshots
Why it's wrong here
Azure Blob Storage snapshots are read-only point-in-time copies of a blob that you manually create and manage via API, CLI, or PowerShell. While they can protect against accidental deletion or corruption, they are not a managed backup service because they lack centralized scheduling, automated retention policies, monitoring, and application-consistent recovery for VMs or databases. Snapshots are a primitive feature that must be orchestrated externally, whereas Azure Backup provides enterprise-grade backup management, making this option incorrect.
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