AZ-305 Question 138
Select 2A financial services company needs a high availability and disaster recovery strategy for its mission-critical Azure SQL Database. The team requires minimal downtime, global coverage to serve multiple regions, and an automated failover mechanism in the event of a regional outage. Which two solutions should you recommend?
- A
Deploy Azure SQL Database in a single availability zone with zone redundancy configured
- B
Configure Active Geo-Replication for Azure SQL Database with a secondary in another region
- C
Use Azure Site Recovery to replicate the Azure SQL Database to a secondary region
- D
Implement Auto-Failover Groups for Azure SQL Database across primary and secondary regions
Show answer and explanation
Correct answers: B, D
Explanation
Azure SQL Database supports high availability and global disaster recovery through features like Active Geo-Replication and Auto-Failover Groups. Active Geo-Replication enables you to create secondary replicas in different regions for manual failover. Auto-Failover Groups build on that capability by adding automated, policy-based failover for mission-critical applications. According to Microsoft documentation, these features are recommended to ensure minimal downtime, data protection, and global coverage for Azure SQL Database deployments (see Microsoft Docs: 'Configure and use auto-failover groups' and 'Active geo-replication for Azure SQL Database').
- A. Incorrect.
Option 1: Deploying Azure SQL Database in a single availability zone with zone redundancy only protects against a single datacenter (zone) failure within the same region. It does not provide cross-region failover, so it does not meet the requirement for global coverage and minimal downtime in a regional outage.
- B. Correct.
Option 2 (Correct): Configuring Active Geo-Replication for Azure SQL Database lets you create readable secondary databases in different regions for disaster recovery. In the event of a primary region failure, you can manually switch the secondary to primary with minimal downtime, which aligns with the company’s high availability and global coverage needs.
- C. Incorrect.
Option 3: Azure Site Recovery is not designed to replicate Azure SQL Database PaaS instances. It is typically used for replicating virtual machines and other workloads. Therefore, it is not a viable option for directly replicating Azure SQL Database in PaaS form.
- D. Correct.
Option 4 (Correct): Implementing Auto-Failover Groups across primary and secondary regions provides automated failover and read-write capabilities in both regions. This solution simplifies management, ensures high availability, and offers near-zero downtime when a region-wide outage occurs.