DP-300 Practice Question: Plan and configure a high availability and disaster recovery environment
Your company has a compliance requirement to keep database backups for 10 years. You are using Azure SQL Database. Which backup retention feature should you use?
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
✓
Long-term retention (LTR) policy
Long-term retention (LTR) policy is the correct feature for keeping database backups for 10 years, as it supports retention of full backups for up to 10 years. Point-in-time restore (PITR) is limited to a maximum of 35 days and cannot meet the 10-year requirement. Geo-redundant storage (GRS) provides geographic redundancy for backups but does not extend the retention period. Automated backups are retained for a maximum of 35 days by default and cannot be configured for 10-year retention.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Long-term retention (LTR) policy
Why this is correct
Long-term retention stores full backups in Azure Blob storage for up to 10 years, beyond the default point-in-time and short-term retention windows. That satisfies the compliance requirement without relying on the standard automated backup retention period.
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Geo-redundant storage (GRS)
Why it's wrong here
Geo-redundant storage replicates backup data to a paired secondary region, but retention duration is governed by the backup retention policy, not the storage redundancy tier. GRS is the right choice when the requirement is regional durability of backups, not a ten-year retention period.
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Automated backups
Why it's wrong here
Automated backups are the default system-generated backups with a fixed short default retention period, configurable only up to the maximum the tier allows, so they cannot satisfy a ten-year requirement. They are correct when short-term recovery within days is sufficient.
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Point-in-time restore (PITR)
Why it's wrong here
Point-in-time restore is a recovery mechanism that rebuilds a database to a moment within the retention window; it does not extend how long backups are kept. It is the right choice when the requirement is recovering from accidental deletion or corruption within days.
Go deeper
Related to this question
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 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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