Plan and configure a high availability and disaster recovery environment →mediumMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
DP-300 Practice Question: Plan and configure a high availability and disaster recovery environment
Your company runs a financial application on Azure SQL Managed Instance. The primary instance is deployed in North Europe. You need to implement a disaster recovery solution that meets the following requirements: automatic failover to a secondary region in case of a regional outage; the secondary must be readable during normal operations to serve read-only queries; the RPO must be less than 10 seconds; the RTO must be less than 30 seconds; and you must minimize compute costs by using the smallest possible secondary instance size. The primary instance uses the Business Critical service tier. What should you do?
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
✓
Create a failover group between the primary and a secondary Business Critical instance in a paired region, and use a smaller compute size for the secondary.
A failover group between two Azure SQL Managed Instances in different regions provides automatic failover and a readable secondary. The secondary must be in the Business Critical service tier, matching the primary's tier, but you can use a smaller compute size (fewer vCores) to reduce costs while still supporting read-only workloads. Option A is incorrect because you cannot change the secondary's service tier to General Purpose in a failover group; it must match the primary. Option C is incorrect because the secondary must be in a different region for disaster recovery. Option D is incorrect because active geo-replication is not supported for SQL Managed Instance; failover groups are the appropriate DR solution.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Create a failover group with a General Purpose secondary instance in a different region to reduce costs.
Why it's wrong here
Failover groups require both instances to be the same service tier (Business Critical).
- ✓
Create a failover group between the primary and a secondary Business Critical instance in a paired region, and use a smaller compute size for the secondary.
Why this is correct
Failover groups support different compute sizes for secondary, reducing costs.
- ✗
Deploy a secondary Business Critical instance in the same region and configure a failover group.
Why it's wrong here
This does not protect against regional outages.
- ✗
Configure active geo-replication to a secondary managed instance in a different region.
Why it's wrong here
Active geo-replication is not supported for SQL Managed Instance.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Overview of Azure Data Platform Options
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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