DP-300 Practice Question: Plan and configure high availability and disaster recovery
A company runs SQL Server 2019 on Azure Virtual Machines in an availability set. They need to achieve high availability for a critical database with automatic failover and no shared storage. The solution must minimize downtime during planned maintenance. What should they implement?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse Failover Cluster Instances (which require shared storage) with Always On Availability Groups (which do not), or they overlook that Database Mirroring is deprecated and lacks the listener feature for seamless client redirection.
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
✓
Create an Always On Availability Group with an availability group listener
An Always On Availability Group (AG) with a listener provides high availability with automatic failover at the database level without requiring shared storage. This solution meets the requirement for automatic failover and minimizes downtime during planned maintenance by allowing manual failover to a synchronized secondary replica with minimal disruption.
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 Log Shipping to a secondary VM
Why it's wrong here
Log shipping copies transaction logs to a secondary VM but failover is manual, so it cannot meet the automatic failover requirement. It suits disaster recovery with tolerance for manual intervention and data loss, not high availability with minimal planned-maintenance downtime.
- ✗
Deploy a Failover Cluster Instance using Azure Shared Disks
Why it's wrong here
A Failover Cluster Instance using Azure Shared Disks depends on shared storage, which the scenario explicitly excludes. It would be correct where shared disk resources are available and instance-level protection is needed, rather than the no-shared-storage requirement stated.
- ✓
Create an Always On Availability Group with an availability group listener
Why this is correct
An Always On Availability Group with a listener provides automatic failover across separate nodes without shared storage, satisfying the no-shared-storage constraint, while planned maintenance triggers a manual failover to the secondary replica, minimising downtime for the critical database.
- ✗
Use Database Mirroring with automatic failover
Why it's wrong here
Database Mirroring with automatic failover requires a witness server and is deprecated in SQL Server 2019, so it cannot deliver supported automatic failover here. It would suit legacy synchronous mirroring scenarios, not a new highly available deployment on Azure VMs.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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