AZ-305 Question 115
Select 2You are designing a recovery solution for a company that runs both on-premises virtual machines in a local datacenter and IaaS virtual machines in Azure. They need to meet an RPO of 15 minutes and an RTO of two hours to ensure minimal downtime. The company also wants to keep operational costs low, maintain application-consistent backups, and periodically test disaster recovery procedures with minimal production impact. Which two solutions should you recommend to meet these requirements?
- A
A. Enable Azure Site Recovery replication for on-premises VMs to Azure, and set up replication of Azure VMs to a secondary region
- B
B. Use Azure Backup with a Recovery Services vault for both on-premises and Azure workloads
- C
C. Configure geo-redundant storage (GRS) for managed disks to automatically fail over your VMs
- D
D. Only implement local backups on dedicated NAS storage in the on-premises datacenter
Show answer and explanation
Correct answers: A, B
Explanation
To meet both the RPO and RTO goals across on-premises and Azure workloads, combining Azure Site Recovery for replication and failover orchestration with Azure Backup for point-in-time data recovery is the recommended approach. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) assists in achieving near-real-time replication and controlled DR drills, while Azure Backup ensures cost-effective, application-consistent backups. Per Microsoft’s documentation, ASR supports various on-premises hypervisors and Azure VMs, and Azure Backup integrates with on-premises and cloud environments (see https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/site-recovery and https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/backup).
- A. Correct.
A. Correct. Azure Site Recovery allows near real-time replication of both on-premises VMs to Azure and Azure VMs to another region, helping maintain an RPO of as low as a few minutes. It also supports test failovers without impacting production, aligning with the company’s DR testing requirement.
- B. Correct.
B. Correct. Azure Backup (using the Recovery Services vault) can protect both on-premises servers (via MARS agent or Microsoft Azure Backup Server) and Azure VMs. It provides application-consistent backups and a cost-effective way to store restore points for quick recovery, contributing to a shorter RTO.
- C. Incorrect.
C. Incorrect. While GRS stores data redundantly across regions for durability, it does not provide a full disaster recovery or orchestration solution. GRS alone does not meet the desired RPO or RTO objectives nor does it allow for controlled failover testing.
- D. Incorrect.
D. Incorrect. Relying solely on local on-premises backups on a NAS does not provide the necessary DR capability in the event of a significant on-premises failure and cannot protect Azure-based workloads. It also does not meet the company’s cross-region replication and quick failover needs.