DP-900 Practice Question: Identify considerations for relational data on Azure
A financial services company runs a critical application on Azure SQL Managed Instance. They need to ensure that in the event of a regional outage, the database can be failed over to a secondary region with minimal data loss and automatic failover. The secondary region should not be used for read traffic during normal operations. Which configuration meets these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse failover groups with active geo-replication, assuming that automatic failover requires readable secondaries, but failover groups can be configured with non-readable secondaries to meet specific read-traffic restrictions.
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 failover group with automatic failover policy and set the secondary to non-readable
A failover group with an automatic failover policy and a non-readable secondary meets all requirements: it provides automatic failover to a secondary region during an outage, minimizes data loss through synchronous replication (within the same region) and asynchronous replication across regions, and ensures the secondary is not used for read traffic during normal operations by disabling the readable secondary option.
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 an automatic failover group with readable secondary enabled
Why it's wrong here
Readable secondary would allow read traffic, which is not desired.
- ✗
Use Azure SQL Database backup to blob storage and restore to another region
Why it's wrong here
Backup restore is manual and has higher RPO/RTO.
- ✗
Implement active geo-replication and manually initiate failover
Why it's wrong here
Geo-replication makes secondary readable and requires manual failover.
- ✓
Configure a failover group with automatic failover policy and set the secondary to non-readable
Why this is correct
Failover groups with automatic failover and readable secondary disabled meet the requirements.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Data Roles and Core Concepts
Key term
SQL Managed Instance
SQL Managed Instance is a cloud database service from Azure that gives you most of the features of a full SQL Server instance without you having to manage the underlying hardware or software patches.
Key term
Data
Data is raw, unprocessed information, like numbers, words, or measurements, that can be stored, processed, and analyzed by computers.
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