AZ-900 Describe Azure architecture and services Practice Question
A company is designing a disaster recovery solution for an application hosted on Azure VMs. They want to replicate the VMs to a secondary Azure region and automatically failover if the primary region fails. Which Azure service should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse Azure Backup (which protects data) with Azure Site Recovery (which provides full disaster recovery with replication and automated failover), or they mistakenly think Traffic Manager's health-based routing can substitute for actual VM replication and failover orchestration.
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 Site Recovery
Azure Site Recovery (ASR) orchestrates replication, failover, and failback of Azure VMs between regions. It continuously replicates VM disks to the secondary region and, upon a failure, allows you to initiate a planned or unplanned failover with a single click, meeting the stated disaster recovery and automatic failover requirements.
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 this is correct
Azure Site Recovery is the dedicated disaster recovery service for Azure VMs. It continuously replicates VM disks from the primary region to a secondary region, updating recovery points as frequently as every 30 seconds. In a disaster, you can execute a planned or unplanned failover to spin up the replicated VMs in the target region, with a defined recovery time objective. It is purpose-built for automated failover, not just data protection.
- ✗
Azure Backup
Why it's wrong here
Azure Backup protects VMs by creating recovery point snapshots in a Recovery Services vault and supports file-level or full-VM restores. However, backups are not replicated continuously and do not offer automated failover; restoring a backup can take minutes to hours, with RPOs spanning up to 24 hours for daily snapshots. That makes Backup a data-protection and restoration tool, not a disaster recovery failover mechanism, because critical applications need minimal downtime and near-synchronous replication.
When this WOULD be correct
Azure Backup would be correct if the question asked for a service to back up Azure VMs to a secondary region for long-term retention and restore in case of data corruption or accidental deletion, without requiring automatic failover.
- ✗
Azure Traffic Manager
Why it's wrong here
Azure Traffic Manager is a DNS-based traffic router that directs end-user requests to the most appropriate endpoint, such as an application in a different Azure region. It does not replicate VMs, data, or configurations; it only reroutes traffic based on routing methods like priority or performance. In a DR scenario, Traffic Manager could redirect users to a secondary region, but only if that region contains a running, replicated application — which Traffic Manager itself cannot provide.
When this WOULD be correct
A company wants to distribute user traffic across multiple Azure regions for high availability and low latency, with automatic failover if a regional endpoint becomes unavailable. Azure Traffic Manager would be the correct choice for this DNS-level traffic routing scenario.
- ✗
Azure Load Balancer
Why it's wrong here
Azure Load Balancer operates at Layer 4 and distributes inbound traffic across healthy VM instances within a single Azure region or across availability zones in that region. It cannot replicate VM state or move workloads to another region, so it provides high availability for regional failures, not disaster recovery. Even if you placed a load balancer in each region, you would still need separate replication and coordination to handle a full regional outage.
When this WOULD be correct
A question asking for a service to distribute traffic across multiple VMs in the same region to improve application availability and scalability, without cross-region replication or failover.
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.
✓Azure Site RecoveryCorrect answer▾
Why this is correct
Azure Site Recovery is the dedicated disaster recovery service for Azure VMs. It continuously replicates VM disks from the primary region to a secondary region, updating recovery points as frequently as every 30 seconds. In a disaster, you can execute a planned or unplanned failover to spin up the replicated VMs in the target region, with a defined recovery time objective. It is purpose-built for automated failover, not just data protection.
✗Azure BackupWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Azure Backup is designed for backing up data and restoring it to the same or alternate location, but it does not provide automated failover or replication of entire VMs to a secondary region for disaster recovery.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
Azure Backup would be correct if the question asked for a service to back up Azure VMs to a secondary region for long-term retention and restore in case of data corruption or accidental deletion, without requiring automatic failover.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse backup with disaster recovery, assuming that backing up VMs to another region also enables automatic failover, not realizing that Azure Backup lacks orchestrated replication and failover capabilities.
✗Azure Traffic ManagerWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Azure Traffic Manager is a DNS-based traffic load balancer that distributes incoming traffic across multiple endpoints, but it does not replicate VMs or provide automated failover for disaster recovery scenarios.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
A company wants to distribute user traffic across multiple Azure regions for high availability and low latency, with automatic failover if a regional endpoint becomes unavailable. Azure Traffic Manager would be the correct choice for this DNS-level traffic routing scenario.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse Traffic Manager's ability to redirect traffic during an outage with the VM replication and orchestrated failover capabilities of Azure Site Recovery.
✗Azure Load BalancerWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Azure Load Balancer distributes incoming traffic among healthy VMs within a region, but it does not replicate VMs to another region or provide automated failover across regions for disaster recovery.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
A question asking for a service to distribute traffic across multiple VMs in the same region to improve application availability and scalability, without cross-region replication or failover.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse load balancing with failover, thinking that distributing traffic can also handle region failures, but Load Balancer operates only within a single region.
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?”
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About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every AZ-900 question from scratch — 981 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
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.