AZ-305 Question 112
Single answerA multinational company hosts critical inventory and order-management services across both on-premises servers and Azure VMs. They require an RPO of 15 minutes and an RTO of 2 hours. They also want a single, automated recovery plan for failover and failback to minimize manual intervention. Which solution should you recommend to achieve these disaster recovery objectives for both Azure and on-premises workloads?
- A
Implement Azure Backup for all on-premises servers and Azure VMs, scheduling daily backups to a Recovery Services vault.
- B
Use Azure Site Recovery to replicate on-premises servers to Azure and configure replication of Azure VMs to another Azure region with a failover plan.
- C
Set up a geo-redundant storage account and manually copy VM disks from on-premises and Azure to that storage account once a day.
- D
Implement a third-party disaster recovery solution that only supports snapshot-based backup for Azure VMs and on-premises servers.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B
Explanation
Azure Site Recovery is specifically designed to handle end-to-end disaster recovery scenarios for both on-premises and Azure-based workloads. By continuously replicating data and providing coordinated failover plans, ASR meets typical enterprise RPO/RTO requirements. For more information, see Microsoft’s documentation on Azure Site Recovery at https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/site-recovery/.
- A. Incorrect.
Option 1: This relies on periodic backups rather than continuous replication. While Azure Backup is an excellent solution for data protection, it does not natively provide low-RPO replication or automated failover for on-premises and Azure VMs. Hence, it cannot meet the stringent 15-minute RPO requirement and quick failover.
- B. Correct.
Option 2 (Correct): Azure Site Recovery (ASR) allows near-continuous replication for on-premises servers and can replicate Azure VMs across regions. It supports creating recovery plans for automated failovers and failbacks. This meets the 15-minute RPO and provides the orchestration needed for a 2-hour RTO.
- C. Incorrect.
Option 3: Manually copying disks to a geo-redundant storage account is prone to increased downtime and cannot guarantee continuous replication to meet a 15-minute RPO. It is also labor-intensive and lacks an automated failover mechanism.
- D. Incorrect.
Option 4: While third-party solutions can provide snapshot-based or other forms of replication, this particular option only supports backups for Azure VMs and on-premises servers. It’s insufficient for continuous replication and automated failover, thus it does not meet the stated RPO and RTO.