DP-300 Practice Question: Plan and configure a high availability and disaster recovery environment
You have an Azure SQL Managed Instance configured with a failover group to a secondary region. During a regional outage, the failover group automatically fails over to the secondary. After the primary region is restored, you need to bring the primary back online and re-establish the failover relationship. What should you do?
⚠ Common exam trap
DP-300 often tests the misconception that after an automatic failover, you must recreate or reconfigure the failover group to restore the original primary, when in fact a planned failover is the correct and seamless method.
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
✓
Initiate a planned failover from the current primary to the original primary.
After an automatic failover, the original primary becomes the secondary. To restore the original configuration, you perform a planned failover from the current primary (the former secondary) back to the original primary. This re-establishes the original roles and the failover group remains intact. A planned failover ensures no data loss by synchronizing the databases before switching roles.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Delete the failover group and recreate it with the original primary as the primary.
Why it's wrong here
Deleting the failover group discards its configuration and forces manual recreation, whereas the restored primary rejoins by failing back or resuming replication through the existing group. Recreation is tempting when the group appears broken, but that suits building a fresh geo-replication pairing, not recovering an intact one.
- ✗
Add the original primary as a new secondary to the current primary.
Why it's wrong here
The original primary cannot simply be added as a secondary while it still holds the old primary role; it must first be recreated or re-registered, because the failover group's current primary already owns the writable role. Adding it as a new secondary is tempting because it mirrors normal geo-replication setup.
- ✓
Initiate a planned failover from the current primary to the original primary.
Why this is correct
A planned failover reverses roles without data loss, making the restored original primary the secondary again and re-establishing replication. Forced failover would risk divergence, so the planned operation is required to rebuild the relationship safely.
- ✗
Remove the original primary from the failover group and re-add it.
Why it's wrong here
Removing and re-adding the original primary instance necessitates a full data re-seeding operation, which is inefficient and unnecessary when the instance is intact after a temporary outage. The objective is to re-establish the failover relationship and bring the original primary back online efficiently, typically via a planned failover or failback. This option is tempting as a complete reset, and would be correct if the original primary was corrupted or permanently removed, requiring a new instance to be added and fully seeded as a secondary replica.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Migrating On-Premises Databases to Azure
Key term
Azure SQL Managed Instance
Azure SQL Managed Instance is a fully managed cloud database service that gives you nearly all the features of Microsoft SQL Server on your own server, without you having to manage the hardware or operating system.
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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.