DP-300 Long-term retention (LTR) Practice Question
Your Azure SQL Managed Instance is configured with a long-term backup retention policy of 10 years. You need to reduce storage costs while still meeting a compliance requirement to retain monthly backups for 7 years. What should you do?
⚠ Common exam trap
DP-300 often tests the confusion between PITR retention (max 35 days) and LTR retention (up to 10 years), tricking candidates into thinking PITR can be extended to meet long-term compliance windows.
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
✓
Configure a new long-term retention policy that retains monthly backups for 7 years.
Azure SQL Managed Instance long-term retention (LTR) policies are defined per-database and specify separate weekly, monthly, and yearly retention periods; you can set the monthly retention to 7 years while removing or shortening the other tiers. This directly satisfies the compliance requirement (monthly backups kept 7 years) while eliminating the storage cost of the unnecessary 10-year policy. LTR backups are stored in Azure Blob storage and billed separately from the instance, so right-sizing the policy is the correct cost-optimization action.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Configure a new long-term retention policy that retains monthly backups for 7 years.
Why this is correct
Replacing the 10-year policy with a 7-year monthly retention schedule satisfies the compliance requirement while eliminating three years of unnecessary stored backups. Long-term retention policies are configurable per database, so the change directly reduces storage consumption without affecting the mandated retention window.
- ✗
Disable long-term backup retention and rely solely on point-in-time restore backups.
Why it's wrong here
Disabling long-term retention removes the only mechanism storing monthly backups beyond the 35-day point-in-time window, so the seven-year compliance requirement fails. The policy must instead be shortened to seven years. Relying on PITR alone suits short recovery windows, not regulatory retention.
- ✗
Set the point-in-time restore retention period to 7 years.
Why it's wrong here
Point-in-time restore retention governs short-term recoverability, capped at 35 days for Azure SQL Managed Instance, and cannot hold monthly backups for seven years. Long-term retention policies control that. Extending PITR suits frequent accidental-deletion recovery windows, not multi-year compliance archiving.
- ✗
Migrate the database to Azure SQL Database and use geo-redundant storage.
Why it's wrong here
Geo-redundant storage replicates backups across regions for durability, not retention duration, and migrating to Azure SQL Database changes the platform without altering the ten-year policy. The requirement is a seven-year long-term retention policy on the existing managed instance. Geo-redundancy suits regional outage resilience.
Quick reference
Azure Blob Storage Tier Comparison
| Tier | Storage Cost | Retrieval Cost | Latency | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hot | Highest | Lowest | Immediate | Active data, frequent reads |
| Cool | Lower | Higher | Immediate | Data accessed < once / month |
| Cold | Lower still | Higher | Immediate | Data accessed < once / quarter |
| Archive | Lowest | Highest + rehydration delay | Hours | Long-term compliance retention |
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Deploying and Configuring Azure SQL Managed Instance
Key term
Azure SQL Database Backup
Azure SQL Database Backup is a fully managed, automated service that creates and stores copies of your SQL database data and transaction logs in Azure storage, enabling point-in-time recovery and long-term retention for data protection and business continuity.
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.