DP-300 Practice Question: Plan and configure a high availability and disaster recovery environment
Which THREE components are required to configure a failover group for Azure SQL Database? (Choose three.)
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
✓
At least one database on the primary server.
Options B, C, and D are correct. A failover group requires a primary server, a secondary server, and at least one database on the primary server. Option A is incorrect because the failover group listener is automatically created and does not need to be separately configured. Option E is incorrect because an elastic pool is optional; failover groups can contain individual databases or elastic pools.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Failover group listener.
Why it's wrong here
A failover group listener is not a component you configure; Azure provisions read-write and read-only listeners automatically as part of the failover group itself. It is tempting because listeners are the connection endpoints applications use, and they matter when designing client connection strings for automatic redirection after failover.
- ✓
At least one database on the primary server.
Why this is correct
Failover groups replicate databases, so at least one database must exist on the primary server before the group can be created. Without a database to replicate, there is nothing for the secondary server to receive.
- ✓
Secondary server.
Why this is correct
A failover group requires a secondary server to host the replicated databases, satisfying the geo-replication constraint. The secondary server must reside in a different Azure region from the primary, and Microsoft Entra ID authentication is configured independently on each server, since logins and users are not replicated automatically.
- ✓
Primary server.
Why this is correct
A failover group requires a primary server to host the read-write database and act as the active endpoint. Azure SQL Database failover groups pair this primary with a secondary server in a different region, so the primary server is a mandatory component.
- ✗
An elastic pool.
Why it's wrong here
An elastic pool allocates shared compute and storage across multiple databases on one server; it plays no part in failover group topology, which instead requires a secondary server, a secondary database, and a failover group resource. Elastic pools are tempting because they reduce cost for many databases with unpredictable usage, but that is a scaling concern, not geo-replication.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Implementing High Availability for Azure SQL Databases
Key term
Azure SQL Performance Tuning
Azure SQL Performance Tuning is the process of optimizing the speed and efficiency of queries and database operations in Microsoft Azure SQL Database or SQL Managed Instance to reduce latency and improve throughput.
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