DP-300 Plan and implement data platform resources Practice Question
You are designing a disaster recovery plan for an Azure SQL Database that is used by a critical application. The database is currently in the West US region. You need to ensure that if a regional outage occurs, the database can be failed over to another region with minimal data loss. The solution must also minimize costs for the secondary replica. Which deployment option should you recommend?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often assume auto-failover groups are always the best choice for disaster recovery, but they fail to recognize that auto-failover groups require the secondary to have the same service tier, which conflicts with the cost minimization requirement.
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
✓
Configure active geo-replication to a secondary in East US using a lower service tier.
Active geo-replication allows you to create a readable secondary database in a different region (East US) with a lower service tier, which reduces costs while still providing a disaster recovery target. In the event of a regional outage, you can manually initiate a failover to the secondary, and because replication is asynchronous, data loss is limited to the replication lag (typically a few seconds). This meets the requirement of minimal data loss and cost minimization.
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 active geo-replication to a secondary in East US using a lower service tier.
Why this is correct
Active geo-replication allows different service tiers for secondary, reducing costs.
- ✗
Deploy an auto-failover group with a secondary in East US using the same service tier.
Why it's wrong here
Auto-failover groups enforce the same service tier on secondary, which may increase costs.
- ✗
Deploy a zone-redundant database in West US with a failover group to East US.
Why it's wrong here
Zone redundancy is intra-region and does not replace cross-region disaster recovery.
- ✗
Use a failover group with a secondary in East US and enable zone redundancy on both.
Why it's wrong here
Zone redundancy adds cost and does not allow different service tiers.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Overview of Azure Data Platform Options
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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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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.