DP-300 Configure and manage automation of tasks Practice Question
You are a database administrator for a retail company that uses Azure SQL Database with the Serverless compute tier. The database experiences unpredictable idle periods, and you want to minimize costs by automatically pausing the database when it is idle for more than 60 minutes and resuming it when a connection is attempted. However, you also need to ensure that a critical reporting job that runs every hour can connect even if the database is paused. What should you do?
⚠ Common exam trap
DP-300 often tests the misconception that auto-pause requires an external keep-alive or that a paused database cannot be woken by an incoming connection — candidates over-engineer with Automation runbooks when the native resume-on-connect behavior already solves the problem.
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 the serverless auto-pause feature with a delay of 60 minutes. No additional action is needed; the reporting job will automatically resume the database upon connection.
Azure SQL Database serverless auto-pause suspends the database after a configurable idle period (minimum 15 minutes, maximum 10,080 minutes) and automatically resumes it on the next connection attempt, with only a short resume latency billed at compute rates. Setting the auto-pause delay to 60 minutes meets the cost goal, and because the hourly reporting job's connection itself triggers the resume, no additional mechanism is required. This is the native, supported behavior of the serverless tier and requires no external orchestration.
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 the serverless auto-pause feature with a delay of 60 minutes. No additional action is needed; the reporting job will automatically resume the database upon connection.
Why this is correct
Azure SQL Database serverless auto-pause with a 60-minute delay suspends the database during idle periods, cutting compute cost. Any incoming connection, including the hourly reporting job, automatically triggers resume, so no extra configuration is required to keep the job working.
- ✗
Disable auto-pause for the database and use Azure Automation to scale down the database during idle periods.
Why it's wrong here
Disabling auto-pause removes the automatic resume-on-connection behaviour the scenario requires, and scaling down still bills for provisioned compute during idle periods. Azure Automation scale operations target provisioned-tier databases, where cost control comes from changing service objectives rather than pausing.
- ✗
Use Elastic Database Jobs to keep the database active by running a lightweight query every 59 minutes.
Why it's wrong here
Scheduling a query every 59 minutes prevents the 60-minute idle timer from ever expiring, so the database never pauses and no compute cost is saved. Elastic Database Jobs exist to run T-SQL across many databases on a schedule, which suits fleet-wide maintenance, not defeating auto-pause.
- ✗
Set the auto-pause delay to 0 minutes to minimize costs, and create an Azure Automation runbook to keep the database active during the reporting job.
Why it's wrong here
An auto-pause delay of 0 minutes is invalid; the minimum is 15 minutes, and pausing that aggressively would suspend the database between the hourly reporting runs. Azure Automation runbooks suit scheduled administrative tasks such as index maintenance, not holding a serverless database awake.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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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.