Plan and configure a high availability and disaster recovery environment →mediumMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
DP-300 Practice Question: Plan and configure a high availability and disaster recovery environment
You have an Azure SQL Database configured with active geo-replication. The primary region experiences an outage that lasts longer than the recovery time objective (RTO) of 5 minutes. You need to initiate a failover to the secondary region with minimal data loss. What should you do?
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
✓
Force a failover to the secondary region using a PowerShell script.
When the primary region is offline, a planned failover is not possible because it requires synchronization with the primary. A forced failover (option C) is the only way to promote the secondary to primary without the primary being online. While it may result in some data loss, it provides the fastest failover, meeting the RTO of 5 minutes. Option B is incorrect because auto-failover groups have a grace period and may not fail over automatically within the RTO. Option D describes geo-restore from backups, which is not a failover operation.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Initiate a planned failover to the secondary region using the Azure portal.
Why it's wrong here
Planned failover requires the primary database to be online to synchronize data before switching. Since the primary is down, this option is not available.
- ✗
Configure an auto-failover group and let it fail over automatically.
Why it's wrong here
An auto-failover group would provide automatic failover, but the time to detect the outage and the grace period may exceed the 5-minute RTO. Also, the question states you need to initiate failover, not wait for automatic failover.
- ✓
Force a failover to the secondary region using a PowerShell script.
Why this is correct
Correct. Forced failover initiates the failover immediately without waiting for synchronization, making it the only viable option when the primary is unavailable. It uses the latest available data on the secondary, minimizing data loss under the circumstances.
- ✗
Use geo-restore to recover the database from the most recent geo-replicated backup.
Why it's wrong here
Geo-restore is used to recover a database from the most recent geo-replicated backup, which is a point-in-time restore operation, not a failover. It would result in significant data loss and longer recovery time.
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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.