DP-203 Design and implement data storage Practice Question
You are designing a data storage solution for a healthcare organization that stores patient records. The solution must comply with HIPAA and support point-in-time restore (PITR) for the last 35 days. The data is frequently accessed for reporting. Which Azure data service should you use?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse Azure Blob Storage's point-in-time restore (which only applies to container-level recovery of blobs) with the transactional point-in-time restore needed for relational patient records, or they assume Cosmos DB's multi-model capabilities make it suitable for structured healthcare data despite its lack of ACID compliance and limited backup retention.
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 SQL Database
Azure SQL Database is the correct choice because it natively supports point-in-time restore (PITR) for up to 35 days (configurable from 7 to 35 days) and is a HIPAA-eligible service when configured with encryption, auditing, and network security. It provides transactional consistency required for patient records and supports frequent reporting workloads with features like columnstore indexes and read replicas.
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 Cosmos DB
Why it's wrong here
Cosmos DB has PITR but the default retention is up to 30 days, not 35.
- ✗
Azure Blob Storage with point-in-time restore
Why it's wrong here
Blob Storage has PITR but it is for storage accounts, not optimized for relational reporting.
- ✓
Azure SQL Database
Why this is correct
Azure SQL Database supports PITR up to 35 days and is HIPAA-eligible when configured properly.
- ✗
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2
Why it's wrong here
Data Lake Storage supports soft delete but not point-in-time restore for individual records.
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