DP-300 Practice Question: Plan and configure a high availability and disaster recovery environment
You have an Azure SQL Database that uses the General Purpose service tier. The database is critical and you need to ensure that it remains available during a planned patching event that updates the underlying hardware. What does Azure SQL Database provide to maintain availability during such events?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap is thinking that zone redundancy is required for high availability during patching, when in fact the built-in standby replica handles it even without 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
✓
Automated failover to a built-in standby replica with minimal downtime.
Azure SQL Database provides automated failover to a built-in standby replica with minimal downtime during planned patching events. This is part of the built-in high availability architecture, where the database runs on a primary replica and maintains a secondary replica. During patching, a failover occurs to the secondary, ensuring continuity.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The database is taken offline during patching and restored afterward.
Why it's wrong here
General Purpose tier maintains availability through automatic failover to a standby replica during patching; the database is not taken offline and restored. It is tempting as a description of basic single-instance behaviour, but Azure SQL Database's built-in HA specifically prevents this outage during planned maintenance.
- ✗
You must manually fail over to a secondary database to avoid downtime.
Why it's wrong here
General Purpose tier already includes built-in high availability; Azure performs the failover automatically during planned maintenance, so manual intervention is unnecessary and would add avoidable downtime. Manual failover is tempting when using geo-secondary replicas for regional disaster recovery, not for routine platform patching.
- ✗
Zone-redundant replicas that ensure zero downtime.
Why it's wrong here
Zone-redundant configuration is a Business Critical tier capability; General Purpose does not provide zone-redundant replicas, and no Azure SQL tier guarantees zero downtime during patching. It is tempting because zone redundancy genuinely protects against zone failures, but that is a different scenario from planned hardware maintenance.
- ✓
Automated failover to a built-in standby replica with minimal downtime.
Why this is correct
The General Purpose tier uses remote storage with locally attached compute and maintains a built-in standby replica. During planned hardware patching, Azure performs automated failover to that standby, keeping the database online with minimal downtime, satisfying the availability requirement without manual intervention.
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
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