DP-300 Practice Question: Plan and configure a high availability and disaster recovery environment
Your company runs a mission-critical Azure SQL Database in the East US region. To meet an RPO of 5 seconds and an RTO of 30 minutes in the event of a regional outage, which deployment option should you choose?
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
✓
Failover groups with auto-failover policy
Failover groups with auto-failover policy provide automatic failover with an RPO of 5 seconds (default) and RTO of 30 minutes. Active geo-replication requires manual failover, which does not meet the RTO. Zone-redundant configuration only protects within a region. Backup restore has much higher RPO/RTO.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Failover groups with auto-failover policy
Why this is correct
Failover groups with an auto-failover policy replicate databases asynchronously to a secondary region, typically achieving an RPO under 5 seconds, and automatically redirect connections after an outage. This satisfies both the 5-second RPO and the 30-minute RTO, unlike geo-restore, which can take hours.
- ✗
Zone-redundant configuration
Why it's wrong here
Zone-redundant configuration only protects within a region, not against regional outage.
- ✗
Point-in-time restore
Why it's wrong here
Point-in-time restore rebuilds a database from backups within the same region and typically takes hours, exceeding both the 5-second RPO and 30-minute RTO. It suits recovering from accidental deletion or corruption, not a regional outage, which requires continuous geo-replication to another region.
- ✗
Active geo-replication with manual failover
Why it's wrong here
Manual failover requires an administrator to initiate the switch, so recovery time depends on human response and cannot reliably meet a 30-minute RTO. It is tempting because active geo-replication does provide the 5-second RPO; the automatic failover group variant is what delivers both targets.
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Same concept, more angles
1 more way this is tested on DP-300
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Variation 1. Your company has an Azure SQL Database in the East US region. You need to configure a disaster recovery solution that provides a readable secondary in the West US region with an RPO of 5 seconds. The solution must support automatic failover from the application. What should you configure?
easy- A.Enable zone-redundant replicas in the same region.
- B.Enable geo-redundant backup storage and perform geo-restore.
- C.Configure active geo-replication to a secondary server in West US.
- ✓ D.Create an auto-failover group with a secondary server in West US using synchronous replication.
Why D: An auto-failover group in Azure SQL Database provides a readable secondary in a paired or chosen region, uses asynchronous replication with an RPO typically under 5 seconds, and includes a read-write and read-only listener endpoint that enables automatic application failover. This matches the requirement for a readable secondary in West US, 5-second RPO, and automatic failover.
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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.