DP-300 Practice Question: Plan and configure a high availability and disaster recovery environment
You manage an Azure SQL Database named OrderDB in the Business Critical service tier. A compliance requirement mandates that the database must remain available even if an entire Azure availability zone fails within the primary region. You need to configure the database to meet this requirement with the least administrative effort. What should you do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse cross-region disaster recovery features like failover groups with intra-region high availability mechanisms such as 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 the database.
Zone redundancy in the Business Critical tier replicates the database across multiple availability zones, ensuring automatic failover and continuous availability during a zone outage. It is the simplest configuration change that meets the requirement without application modifications or manual intervention.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Enable zone redundancy for the database.
Why this is correct
Zone redundancy in the Business Critical tier automatically provisions replicas across multiple availability zones, so the database remains online if one zone fails. It requires no application changes and minimal configuration, fulfilling the compliance requirement with least effort.
- ✗
Create a failover group with an automatic failover policy.
Why it's wrong here
Failover groups are designed for cross-region disaster recovery, not for intra-region zone redundancy. While they provide automatic failover between regions, they do not address a single availability zone failure and add unnecessary complexity for the stated requirement.
- ✗
Increase the database compute size to the maximum vCore limit.
Why it's wrong here
Scaling compute does not provide zone redundancy or protect against zone failures. It only increases resources for performance, and the database would still be unavailable if the zone hosting its primary replica fails, so this does not satisfy the compliance mandate.
- ✗
Configure active geo-replication to a secondary region.
Why it's wrong here
Active geo-replication protects against regional outages, not availability zone failures within the same region. It also requires manual failover and does not automatically keep the database online during a zone outage, so it does not meet the requirement efficiently.
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.