DP-300 Practice Question: Plan and configure a high availability and disaster recovery environment
You have an Azure SQL Database in the General Purpose service tier. The database must be available during a planned patching event that updates the underlying infrastructure. What high availability feature is provided by default?
⚠ Common exam trap
DP-300 often tests the difference between default built-in HA and optional features like zone redundancy or geo-replication, and candidates incorrectly select the more advanced feature when the question asks what is provided by default.
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
✓
Built-in high availability with a standby replica
Azure SQL Database in the General Purpose service tier includes built-in high availability with a standby replica, which is provisioned automatically and used to fail over during planned maintenance or unplanned outages. This built-in HA ensures the database remains available during patching events without requiring the customer to configure geo-replication or zone redundancy. The standby replica is maintained synchronously and failover is automatic.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Active geo-replication
Why it's wrong here
Active geo-replication is a manually configured disaster-recovery feature that asynchronously replicates to a secondary region. It is the right choice for regional outage failover, but it does not keep the primary database available during planned patching of the underlying infrastructure.
- ✗
Zone-redundant availability
Why it's wrong here
Zone-redundant availability replicates across availability zones and is an optional configuration, not the default for General Purpose. It is the right choice when you need resilience to a whole-zone datacentre outage, but it does not by itself address planned infrastructure patching.
- ✓
Built-in high availability with a standby replica
Why this is correct
The General Purpose service tier provides built-in high availability through automatic compute failover to a different node. While often described as a standby replica, the mechanism is actually compute failover with shared storage, ensuring availability during planned patching events.
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Business Critical service tier
Why it's wrong here
Business Critical is a different service tier that must be selected and provisioned; it is not a feature provided by default within General Purpose. It would be the correct choice when you need local SSD storage and the lowest latency, not merely availability during planned patching.
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.