Quick Answer
The correct answer is Azure Site Recovery. This service is specifically designed to replicate Azure VMs to a secondary region and enable automatic failover when the primary region fails, fulfilling the exact disaster recovery requirements described. Unlike Azure Backup, which creates point-in-time recovery copies for data restoration, Azure Site Recovery continuously replicates entire VM disks to a secondary region, orchestrating the full failover and failback process with a single click. On the AZ-900 exam, this distinction is a common trap: questions about replicating VMs for disaster recovery point to Site Recovery, while questions about restoring files or databases point to Azure Backup. The exam tests your ability to match the service to the scenario—replication for high availability versus backup for data protection. A helpful memory tip is to think of "Site" for the whole site failing over and "Backup" for restoring individual files or data.
This AZ-900 practice question tests your understanding of describe azure architecture and services. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
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?
Clue words in this question
Noticing these words before you look at the options changes how you read each choice.
Clue: "primary"
Why it matters: Asks for the main purpose or function, not a secondary benefit. Eliminate answers that describe side-effects or partial functions.
Azure Site Recovery
Azure Site Recovery is the dedicated disaster recovery service for Azure VMs.
Azure Backup
Why wrong: Azure Backup provides backup and restore, not automated failover.
Azure Traffic Manager
Why wrong: Traffic Manager handles DNS-level traffic routing, not VM replication.
Azure Load Balancer
Why wrong: Load Balancer distributes traffic within a region, not across regions for disaster recovery.
Answer choices
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.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
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.
Clue confirmation
The clue word "primary" in the question point toward this answer.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Azure Backup
Why it's wrong here
Azure Backup provides backup and restore, not automated failover.
Azure Traffic Manager
Azure Load Balancer
Why it's wrong here
Load Balancer distributes traffic within a region, not across regions for disaster recovery.
Common exam traps
The trap here is that candidates 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.
Detailed technical explanation
Azure Site Recovery uses a replication policy that can be set to as low as 30 seconds of crash-consistent recovery points, or 5 minutes for app-consistent snapshots via the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). During failover, ASR creates the replica VMs in the secondary region using the replicated managed disks, and you can test failover in an isolated network without impacting production. In a real-world scenario, you would combine ASR with Azure Traffic Manager to redirect user traffic to the secondary region after failover, but Traffic Manager alone cannot replicate or fail over the VMs.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
An e-commerce site experiences heavy traffic on Black Friday and near-zero traffic during off-peak weeks. Rather than provisioning permanent large VMs, the team uses auto-scaling groups that add capacity automatically under load and reduce it overnight. Questions like this test whether you understand elasticity, availability zones, and cloud compute scaling patterns.
What to study next
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FAQ
Describe Azure architecture and services — This question tests Describe Azure architecture and services — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: 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.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Yes — watch for: "primary". Asks for the main purpose or function, not a secondary benefit. Eliminate answers that describe side-effects or partial functions.
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 11, 2026
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.
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