DP-300 Practice Question: Plan and configure a high availability and disaster recovery environment
You have an Azure SQL Database named InventoryDB in the North Europe region. The database is in the General Purpose service tier. The business requires that InventoryDB remains available if a single availability zone within the North Europe region fails. You need to configure the database to meet this requirement with minimal downtime. What should you do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse zone redundancy with geo-replication or assuming that changing the service tier automatically enables zone redundancy.
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 zone redundancy for InventoryDB.
Zone redundancy is the feature designed to protect against availability zone failures within a region. It replicates databases synchronously across zones, ensuring automatic failover and minimal downtime. Other options either address regional disasters, require manual intervention, or do not provide zone-level protection.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Change the service tier to Business Critical.
Why it's wrong here
Changing to Business Critical alone does not enable zone redundancy; you must explicitly enable zone redundancy. Additionally, Business Critical provides local high availability through Always On availability groups, but without zone redundancy, it does not protect against a zone failure. The requirement is specifically for zone failure protection, which requires zone redundancy.
- ✗
Configure active geo-replication with a secondary database in the same region.
Why it's wrong here
Active geo-replication requires the secondary to be in a different region; it cannot be in the same region. Even if it could, it is asynchronous and designed for disaster recovery, not for automatic failover during a zone failure. It would not provide the seamless high availability required for a zone outage.
- ✗
Configure an auto-failover group with a secondary server in West Europe.
Why it's wrong here
An auto-failover group protects against regional outages, not a single availability zone failure within a region. It involves a secondary in another region and is designed for disaster recovery, not local high availability. While it provides high availability, it is overkill for zone failure and does not meet the specific requirement with minimal configuration.
- ✓
Enable zone redundancy for InventoryDB.
Why this is correct
Zone redundancy in the General Purpose service tier replicates the database across multiple availability zones within the same region. If one zone fails, the database remains available with automatic failover to another zone. This meets the requirement for high availability within a region with minimal downtime and no application changes.
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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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.