DP-300 Practice Question: Plan and configure a high availability and disaster recovery environment
You administer an Azure SQL Database named SalesDB that uses the Business Critical service tier. The database is deployed in the West US 2 region, which does not support availability zones. The application requires a recovery time objective (RTO) of less than 30 seconds for a zonal failure within the region. You need to meet the RTO requirement with minimal administrative effort. What should you do?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is assuming that any Business Critical database can enable zone redundancy regardless of the region's support for availability zones.
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
✓
Migrate the database to a region that supports availability zones and enable zone redundancy.
Zone redundancy in the Business Critical tier provides automatic failover across availability zones with an RTO of less than 30 seconds. Because West US 2 lacks availability zone support, the database must be moved to a region that supports them. Configuring cross-region replication or read replicas does not address zonal failures with the required RTO. Migrating and enabling zone redundancy is the correct solution.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Enable zone redundancy on the database.
Why it's wrong here
Zone redundancy requires the region to support availability zones. West US 2 does not support availability zones, so this feature cannot be enabled. Even if it were available, it provides automatic failover within the region, but the region must support it. This option is not feasible for the given region.
- ✗
Create a read-scale out replica in the same region.
Why it's wrong here
Read-scale out replicas are for offloading read-only workloads; they are not designed for automatic failover. They do not provide a high availability guarantee or an RTO. This option does not meet the requirement for rapid failover on zonal failure.
- ✗
Configure an auto-failover group with a secondary in East US 2.
Why it's wrong here
An auto-failover group provides cross-region disaster recovery, not protection against a zonal failure within the same region. Failover to another region typically takes longer than 30 seconds and does not address a local zone outage. This option does not meet the low RTO for a zonal failure.
- ✓
Migrate the database to a region that supports availability zones and enable zone redundancy.
Why this is correct
To achieve an RTO of less than 30 seconds for a zonal failure, zone redundancy is required. Since West US 2 does not support availability zones, migrating to a supported region and enabling zone redundancy is the only way to meet the requirement with minimal administrative effort. This provides automatic failover within the region.
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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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Microsoft exam blueprint
This DP-300 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the DP-300 exam.