DP-203 Practice Question: Secure, monitor, and optimize data storage and data processing
You are designing a disaster recovery plan for an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool. The primary region becomes unavailable. You need to fail over to a secondary region with minimal data loss. The recovery point objective (RPO) is 1 hour. What should you configure?
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
✓
Enable geo-backup on the dedicated SQL pool.
Geo-backup is a built-in feature for Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pools that automatically takes full backups at regular intervals and replicates them to a paired region. The default recovery point objective (RPO) is 1 hour, meeting the requirement. Option A is incorrect because active geo-replication is a feature for Azure SQL Database, not for Synapse dedicated SQL pools. Option B is incorrect because automatic restore points are local and not automatically replicated; copying them via Azure Data Factory adds complexity and does not guarantee the RPO. Option D is incorrect because user-defined restore points are manual and would require additional orchestration to store them in a secondary region, making it less reliable and harder to meet the 1-hour RPO consistently.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Configure active geo-replication to the secondary region.
Why it's wrong here
Active geo-replication is a feature of Azure SQL Database, not dedicated SQL pools; Synapse dedicated pools cannot configure it. It would be the right choice for an Azure SQL Database requiring a readable secondary with a low RPO in another region.
- ✗
Use automatic restore points and copy them to the secondary region using Azure Data Factory.
Why it's wrong here
Automatic restore points are retained only within the primary region and cannot be copied cross-region by Data Factory; the pool would be unrecoverable if that region is lost. Data Factory copying is for data movement and transformation pipelines, not for restoring a dedicated SQL pool elsewhere.
- ✓
Enable geo-backup on the dedicated SQL pool.
Why this is correct
Geo-backup restores a dedicated SQL pool in a paired Azure region from the latest geo-replicated backup, giving an RPO of up to eight hours. It satisfies the stem's failover requirement, though the one-hour RPO demands more frequent backups than the default.
- ✗
Create user-defined restore points every hour and store them in the secondary region.
Why it's wrong here
User-defined restore points exist only in the primary region; they cannot be stored in a secondary region, so a regional outage destroys them. They are intended for local point-in-time recovery before risky operations such as data loads or schema changes.
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Implement Azure Synapse Analytics
Key term
Azure Data Factory
Azure Data Factory is a cloud-based data integration service that lets you create, schedule, and orchestrate data pipelines to move and transform data from various sources to destinations.
Key term
Azure Synapse Analytics
Azure Synapse Analytics is a cloud-based data integration, warehousing, and analytics service that brings together big data and data warehouse capabilities under one platform.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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