DP-300 Failover group Practice Question
You manage an Azure SQL Database that uses the General Purpose tier. The database has a failover group with a secondary in a paired region. During a regional outage, you initiate a forced failover. After the outage is resolved, you want to bring the original primary region back online without data loss. What should you do?
⚠ Common exam trap
DP-300 often tests the difference between forced and planned failover, and candidates mistakenly think any failover can be used to switch back without considering data synchronization requirements.
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
✓
Wait for data synchronization, then initiate a planned failover.
After a forced failover, the original primary becomes the secondary and enters a state where it may have diverged data. To restore it as primary without data loss, you must wait for geo-replication to catch up and re-synchronize, then perform a planned (graceful) failover. A planned failover ensures no data loss by confirming the secondary is fully synchronized 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.
- ✗
Initiate a forced failover from the new primary to the old primary.
Why it's wrong here
A forced failover back to the old primary risks data loss because the old primary was never resynchronised after the outage; forced failover accepts potential data loss by design. It is tempting as a quick reversal, and would be right only when the old primary is unrecoverable and data loss is acceptable.
- ✗
Perform a forced failover again to switch back.
Why it's wrong here
Forced failover again discards unsynchronised changes, because forced failover is the data-loss-accepting operation; it does not resynchronise the old primary first. It is tempting as a symmetric reversal, and would be correct only when the current primary is unavailable and you accept losing recent transactions.
- ✓
Wait for data synchronization, then initiate a planned failover.
Why this is correct
After a forced failover the original primary becomes the secondary and must resynchronise. Waiting for synchronisation to complete, then running a planned failover, returns workloads to the original region with no data loss, satisfying the stated requirement.
- ✗
Delete the failover group and recreate it with the original primary as primary.
Why it's wrong here
Deleting and recreating the failover group drops the replication relationship and forces a fresh seed, and the recreated primary would not automatically hold the newer data from the current primary. Recreating suits initial deployment or topology redesign, not preserving data during a controlled failback.
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Related to this question
Learn chapter
Securing Data at Rest and in Transit
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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