AZ-305 Question 117
Single answerA company hosts a line-of-business application on multiple Azure Virtual Machines in a production environment. They require a cost-effective backup solution with daily backups, long-term retention, and the ability to quickly recover individual files if needed. They also want minimal effort to configure policies and automatic encryption at rest. Which approach should you recommend?
- A
Configure Azure Backup for the VMs using a Recovery Services vault and enable file-level recovery when needed
- B
Perform daily snapshots of each VM’s OS and data disks and store them in an Azure Storage blob container
- C
Install a third-party backup software agent on each VM to manually configure backup schedules and encryption keys
- D
Use Azure Disk Encryption to encrypt the VM disks and rely on Azure Site Recovery to asynchronously replicate the VMs to another region
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
Azure Backup in a Recovery Services vault is the recommended approach for protecting Azure Virtual Machines. It provides a centralized backup management system, supports file-level recovery, offers automated backup scheduling, and handles encryption at rest without extra overhead. For more details, refer to Microsoft’s documentation on Azure Backup for VMs (https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/backup/backup-azure-vms).
- A. Correct.
Option 1 is correct. Azure Backup can protect VMs by using a Recovery Services vault and offers file-level recovery capabilities. It also manages backup schedules, retention, and at-rest encryption with minimal manual configuration, aligning well with the requirements.
- B. Incorrect.
Option 2 is incorrect. While snapshots can provide point-in-time images of disks, managing them manually for daily backups, retention policies, and file-level recovery is cumbersome. Snapshots alone do not provide an efficient, centrally managed backup solution with built-in encryption.
- C. Incorrect.
Option 3 is incorrect. While third-party solutions can be valid, they introduce manual overhead in managing backup schedules, retention, and encryption keys. Azure Backup is simpler, integrates natively with Azure, and automates these tasks.
- D. Incorrect.
Option 4 is incorrect. Azure Disk Encryption encrypts the data but does not, by itself, provide a backup solution or file-level recovery. Azure Site Recovery focuses on business continuity through replication rather than file-level backup and restore.