Plan and configure a high availability and disaster recovery environment practice questions

Deploy a General Purpose tier database with geo-replication.

Why wrong: General Purpose offers asynchronous geo-replication, which cannot guarantee zero data loss.

Deploy a Hyperscale tier database with zone redundancy.

Why wrong: Hyperscale supports zone redundancy but asynchronous replication for failover groups, not zero data loss.

Deploy a Serverless tier database with active geo-replication.

Why wrong: Serverless is not recommended for mission-critical and does not support synchronous replication.

Set up log shipping from West Europe to North Europe.

Why wrong: Log shipping is not a built-in feature of Managed Instance.

Configure active geo-replication between the instances.

Why wrong: Managed Instance does not support active geo-replication; it uses failover groups.

Create a failover group, but note the secondary is not readable.

Why wrong: The secondary in a failover group is readable when using Business Critical tier.

RTO of 5 minutes, RPO of 1 second.

Why wrong: Business Critical with failover groups has RPO of 0.

RTO of 30 seconds, RPO of 5 seconds.

Why wrong: RPO is 0, not 5 seconds.

RTO of 1 hour, RPO of 5 minutes.

Why wrong: These values are typical for General Purpose with geo-replication, not Business Critical.

Configure auto-failover groups between regions.

Why wrong: Auto-failover groups are not supported for Hyperscale.

Use geo-restore of automated backups.

Why wrong: Geo-restore has a higher RPO and does not provide a readable secondary.

Create a failover group with manual failover.

Why wrong: Failover groups are not supported.

Hyperscale tier with geo-replication and auto-failover group.

Why wrong: Auto-failover groups are not supported for Hyperscale.

Hyperscale tier with zone redundancy.

Why wrong: Zone redundancy provides availability within region, not automatic failover across regions.

General Purpose tier with active geo-replication.

Why wrong: General Purpose has asynchronous replication, RPO > 5 seconds.

Set up log shipping to a secondary VM.

Why wrong: Log shipping does not provide automatic failover.

Use database mirroring with automatic failover.

Why wrong: Database mirroring is deprecated and not supported on Azure VMs.

Deploy a Windows Server Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) using Azure Shared Disks.

Why wrong: FCI requires shared storage, which adds complexity.

Increase the backup retention period to 35 days.

Why wrong: Backup retention does not affect replication RPO.

Enable zone redundancy on the database.

Why wrong: Zone redundancy does not change geo-replication RPO.

Increase the DTU or vCore count.

Why wrong: Performance level does not change replication mode.

Configure a failover group to another region.

Why wrong: Failover groups provide cross-region, not zonal, availability.

Deploy the instance in General Purpose tier with zone redundancy.

Why wrong: General Purpose tier does not support zone redundancy.

Use a Hyperscale tier instance with zone redundancy.

Why wrong: Hyperscale is not available for Managed Instance.

SELECT * FROM sys.dm_continuous_copy_status;

Why wrong: This DMV is deprecated.

SELECT * FROM sys.dm_database_copies;

Why wrong: This DMV is for copy operations, not geo-replication.

SELECT * FROM sys.dm_replication_status;

Why wrong: This DMV is for transactional replication.

Scale up the primary database to a higher service objective.

Why wrong: Scaling up does not reduce failover downtime.

Terminate all active connections to the primary database.

Why wrong: Connections are automatically terminated during failover.

Disable automatic failover on the failover group.

Why wrong: Automatic failover is not related to planned failover.

Failover group listener.

Why wrong: The listener is automatically provisioned; not a separate configuration step.

An elastic pool.

Why wrong: Elastic pools are optional; databases can be standalone.

Database mirroring.

Why wrong: Database mirroring is deprecated.

Always On availability groups.

Why wrong: Availability groups are for SQL Server on VMs.

Log shipping.

Why wrong: Log shipping is not supported in Azure SQL Database.

The database has one high-availability replica.

Why wrong: highAvailabilityReplicaCount is 0.

The database uses locally-redundant backup storage.

Why wrong: BackupStorageRedundancy is Geo, not Local.

The database is in General Purpose tier and supports zone redundancy.

Why wrong: General Purpose does not support zone redundancy.

3

Why wrong: The primary is not used for read-only queries.

1

Why wrong: There are 2 replicas.

4

Why wrong: Too many; only 2 replicas are provisioned.

1

Why wrong: There are 4 replicas.

3

Why wrong: The count is 4, not 3.

5

Why wrong: The primary is not readable.

Automatically re-establish geo-replication by waiting for the outage resolution.

Why wrong: Incorrect: Geo-replication does not automatically re-establish after failover.

Restore the original primary from a backup and then re-establish geo-replication.

Why wrong: Incorrect: No need to restore; the database is still available.

Delete the original primary database and create a new secondary from the new primary.

Why wrong: Incorrect: The original primary can still be used as a secondary.

Perform a planned failover back to the original primary region.

Why wrong: Incorrect: The original primary is currently a secondary; a planned failover would fail.

Create a new SQL Managed Instance in the original region and add it to the failover group.

Why wrong: Incorrect: The original instance still exists.

Perform a forced failover to the original primary region.

Why wrong: Incorrect: A forced failover is not needed; the original primary is already a secondary.

Create an auto-failover group using Azure CLI and set cross-geography replication.

Why wrong: Incorrect: Auto-failover is inherent in failover groups, but cross-geography requires explicit configuration.

Configure active geo-replication and set auto-failover policy.

Why wrong: Incorrect: Active geo-replication does not support auto-failover.

Configure an always failover group with Microsoft Entra ID authentication.

Why wrong: Incorrect: Always failover group is not a valid concept.

Zone-redundant configuration within the primary region.

Why wrong: Incorrect: Does not protect against regional disaster.

Active geo-replication with manual failover.

Why wrong: Incorrect: Manual failover increases RTO beyond 30 seconds.

Automated backups with geo-restore.

Why wrong: Incorrect: RPO and RTO are much higher.

The failover group uses Microsoft Entra ID authentication, which adds latency.

Why wrong: Incorrect: Authentication method does not affect failover time.

The secondary database is configured with asynchronous commit, causing delay.

Why wrong: Incorrect: Failover groups use synchronous commit for data synchronization.

The secondary database is not seeded and needs to be restored.

Why wrong: Incorrect: The secondary is already created and seeded.