AZ-305 Question 136
Single answerA financial services company needs to ensure minimal downtime and data loss for its mission-critical Azure SQL Database. They want a solution that automatically recovers from regional outages and allows read-only workloads in a secondary region. Which design should you recommend?
- A
Deploy an Azure SQL Database in a single region with locally redundant backups enabled
- B
Use Azure SQL Database with Active geo-replication, set up an auto-failover group, and configure a secondary replica in another region
- C
Run Azure SQL on Azure Virtual Machines in a single region and rely on Azure Backup for disaster recovery
- D
Implement Azure Site Recovery to replicate Azure SQL Database from one region to another
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B
Explanation
The recommended high availability solution in this scenario is to use Azure SQL Database with Active geo-replication and auto-failover groups. This approach automatically replicates data to a secondary region, provides read-only access to the secondary replica, and can seamlessly fail over the primary database in the event of an outage. By combining geo-replication with an auto-failover group, you minimize downtime and ensure consistent data replication for mission-critical workloads. For more details, refer to Microsoft documentation: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/azure-sql/database/auto-failover-group-overview.
- A. Incorrect.
Option 1 is incorrect. While locally redundant backups protect against data corruption, they do not provide automatic failover or cross-region redundancy. If the primary region goes down, you cannot restore it instantly in another region.
- B. Correct.
Option 2 is correct. Active geo-replication and auto-failover groups allow you to have a geographically replicated read-only secondary, which can automatically become the primary in case of a regional failure. This design addresses both high availability and disaster recovery needs.
- C. Incorrect.
Option 3 is incorrect. Relying solely on Azure Backup for disaster recovery can lead to longer recovery times and manual intervention. Running SQL on a single VM does not offer an end-to-end high availability solution without additional measures such as failover clustering or Always On availability groups, and it does not seamlessly cover cross-region failover.
- D. Incorrect.
Option 4 is incorrect. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is typically used to replicate entire virtual machines or specific workloads rather than natively replicating Azure SQL Databases. Azure SQL Database has built-in geo-replication features, making ASR less appropriate in this scenario.