DP-300 Practice Question: Plan and configure a high availability and disaster recovery environment
You are designing a disaster recovery strategy for a group of Azure SQL Databases hosted on a logical server in the East US region. The solution must provide automatic failover to a secondary region, support read-only access to the secondary during normal operations, and minimize application connection string changes during failover. You plan to use an auto-failover group. Which two actions should you perform? (Choose two.)
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is thinking that active geo-replication is needed in addition to an auto-failover group; the failover group already handles replication.
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
✓
Create a secondary logical server in a different Azure region and add the databases to the failover group.
To implement an auto-failover group, you must create a secondary server in another region and add the databases to the failover group. You should also configure the read-write and read-only listener endpoints to provide stable connection strings and read-only access to the secondary. Zone redundancy is for intra-region HA, active geo-replication is redundant, and manual failover policy contradicts the automatic failover requirement.
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 each database with active geo-replication to the secondary server.
Why it's wrong here
Active geo-replication is a separate feature that can be used independently, but it does not provide automatic failover or listener endpoints. Auto-failover groups already include replication; adding active geo-replication would be redundant and could cause conflicts. The failover group manages replication internally.
- ✗
Set the failover policy to manual to avoid unexpected failovers.
Why it's wrong here
The requirement is for automatic failover. Setting the failover policy to manual would require human intervention during a disaster, which could increase downtime and does not meet the automatic failover requirement. The failover policy should be set to automatic.
- ✓
Create a secondary logical server in a different Azure region and add the databases to the failover group.
Why this is correct
An auto-failover group requires a secondary server in a different region. You must create the secondary server and add the databases to the failover group. This enables replication and automatic failover. The secondary server must be in a paired region for optimal performance, but any region works.
- ✓
Configure the failover group to use a read-write listener endpoint and a read-only listener endpoint.
Why this is correct
Auto-failover groups provide listener endpoints that remain constant during failover. The read-write listener points to the current primary, and the read-only listener points to the secondary. Using these endpoints minimizes connection string changes because the application connects to the listener, not the server directly.
- ✗
Enable zone redundancy on the primary databases.
Why it's wrong here
Zone redundancy provides high availability within a region, not disaster recovery across regions. While it is a good practice for high availability, it does not fulfill the cross-region automatic failover requirement. The question specifically asks for actions to implement the auto-failover group for disaster recovery.
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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
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