DP-900 Practice Question: Identify considerations for relational data on Azure
Which TWO features are supported by Azure SQL Database to provide high availability?
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
✓
Active geo-replication
Options C and D are correct. Active geo-replication enables creating readable secondary databases in different regions for failover, while auto-failover groups manage the failover of a group of databases with automatic initiation. Option A is incorrect because Always On availability groups are an on-premises SQL Server feature, not directly used in Azure SQL Database. Option B is incorrect because point-in-time restore is a backup feature for recovery to a specific time, not for high availability. Option E is incorrect because log shipping is an on-premises disaster recovery technique not natively supported in Azure SQL Database.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Always On availability groups
Why it's wrong here
Always On availability groups are a SQL Server enterprise feature that you configure manually on Windows Server Failover Clustering, typically in IaaS or on-premises. In Azure SQL Database, a PaaS service, the platform automatically manages multiple synchronous replicas in the background to provide built-in high availability, but you do not get access to configure an Always On group. Thus Always On is not a feature you can directly use as a tenant in Azure SQL Database.
- ✗
Point-in-time restore
Why it's wrong here
Point-in-time restore (PITR) is a backup and recovery capability that lets you revert a database to any earlier time within the configured retention period, using automatic backups. It is designed to rescue data from accidental deletion, corruption, or logical errors, not to keep the service available during an outage or regional failure. Because it requires a restore operation and downtime, it does not satisfy the high availability and disaster recovery requirement.
- ✓
Active geo-replication
Why this is correct
Active geo-replication is a built-in Azure SQL Database feature that continuously replicates committed transactions to readable secondary databases in a different Azure region. It supports up to four secondaries per primary, and you can manually initiate failover or configure read workloads to query the secondaries for load balancing. These secondaries are real database endpoints, making the feature a direct high-availability and disaster-recovery mechanism with no need to set up any external infrastructure.
- ✓
Auto-failover groups
Why this is correct
Auto-failover groups extend active geo-replication by adding an automatic failover policy, a listener endpoint, and the ability to fail over an entire logical server (including multiple databases) as a unit. When a primary becomes unreachable, the group automatically promotes the geo-secondary to become the new primary, preserving the same connection string. This is a higher-level HA/DR capability that offers automatic, coordinated failover, unlike pure active geo-replication which only supports manual, per-database failover.
- ✗
Log shipping
Why it's wrong here
Log shipping is a legacy SQL Server technique that periodically backs up transaction logs and restores them to a secondary server, typically outside of Azure SQL Database. Azure SQL Database does not expose transaction log files or the ability to schedule these jobs; the service uses Always On technology and geo-replication internally for resilience. Because log shipping cannot be configured against a database hosted in Azure SQL Database, it is not a supported high-availability feature in this context.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
This DP-900 question is part of Courseiva's 820-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DP-900 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-900 exam.