AZ-305 Question 111
Single answerYour organization hosts several critical line-of-business applications on Azure Virtual Machines and requires near-zero data loss if a region-wide outage occurs. They also need to retain older data for compliance purposes. You must design a solution that meets these requirements while minimizing overhead. Which solution should you implement?
- A
Configure daily Azure Backup for all VMs and store backups in a geo-redundant storage account in the primary region only.
- B
Use Azure Site Recovery for continuous replication to a secondary region, and configure daily Azure Backup for point-in-time restores.
- C
Enable Availability Zones for the VMs within the same region to handle potential zone failures.
- D
Use ephemeral OS disks on the VMs and take daily snapshots of the disks for backup.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B
Explanation
Combining Azure Site Recovery for continuous replication with Azure Backup for daily retention fulfills both the near-zero data loss requirement and the need for restoring older versions. Azure Site Recovery supports near-continuous replication to a secondary region, significantly reducing RPO and RTO. Daily Azure Backups enable compliance-driven retention and recovery from historical points in time. For more information, see the Azure Site Recovery documentation: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/site-recovery.
- A. Incorrect.
Option 1 is incorrect because daily backups alone cannot provide near-zero data loss. While geo-redundant storage helps protect data in the primary region, it will not enable rapid recovery of running workloads if an entire region goes down.
- B. Correct.
Option 2 is correct because Azure Site Recovery (ASR) continuously replicates VMs to a secondary region, enabling a near-zero or low RPO. Daily backups through Azure Backup provide point-in-time restores for compliance and data recovery in cases of data corruption or accidental deletions.
- C. Incorrect.
Option 3 is incorrect because Availability Zones are limited to a single region. A region-wide failure would still leave your workloads vulnerable, as all zones in that region could be impacted together.
- D. Incorrect.
Option 4 is incorrect because ephemeral OS disks are not persisted to Azure Storage, limiting their usefulness for disaster recovery. Daily snapshots also do not guarantee near-zero data loss or a quick failover process.