AZ-305 Question 68
Select 2You administer an Azure environment for a global retail company that experiences significant seasonal spikes in traffic. The database is currently a single Azure SQL Database that has grown to nearly 5 TB of data. During peaks, read-heavy workloads suffer performance bottlenecks. The business requires a solution that can scale up to at least 100 TB of storage and easily handle read-intensive operations with minimal downtime. Which two approaches should you recommend?
- A
Migrate to Azure SQL Database Hyperscale for larger storage capacity and rapid scaling
- B
Configure read replicas through active geo-replication for offloading read-heavy workloads
- C
Use Azure Synapse Analytics Dedicated SQL pool for handling online transactional (OLTP) workloads
- D
Continue to scale vertically on a single Azure SQL Database with higher compute tiers
- E
Migrate the database to Azure Table Storage for lower cost and simpler data structure
Show answer and explanation
Correct answers: A, B
Explanation
Azure SQL Database Hyperscale is designed to handle large databases of up to 100 TB with scale-out storage architecture, making it ideal for scenarios requiring high storage capacity and flexible scaling. Coupling Hyperscale with active geo-replication enables offloading read-intensive workloads to replica databases, reducing latency and load on the primary. In contrast, Azure Synapse Analytics is intended for analytical queries at scale rather than OLTP, and simply scaling up a single Azure SQL Database may still encounter performance constraints for heavy read workloads. Azure Table Storage lacks necessary relational capabilities. For more information, see Microsoft docs: https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/azure-sql/database/service-tier-hyperscale and https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/azure-sql/database/active-geo-replication-overview.
- A. Correct.
Option 1: Migrate to Azure SQL Database Hyperscale for larger storage capacity and rapid scaling. Correct. Azure SQL Database Hyperscale supports databases up to 100 TB and can handle bursts in traffic with minimal downtime. It offers flexible scaling of storage and compute, addressing both capacity and performance requirements.
- B. Correct.
Option 2: Configure read replicas through active geo-replication for offloading read-heavy workloads. Correct. Active geo-replication allows you to configure readable replicas in different regions. This approach helps reduce the load on the primary database, improving read performance during spikes.
- C. Incorrect.
Option 3: Use Azure Synapse Analytics Dedicated SQL pool for handling online transactional (OLTP) workloads. Incorrect. Azure Synapse Analytics (Dedicated SQL pool) primarily targets data warehousing and analytical workloads. It is not optimized for typical OLTP scenarios with many small, fast operations.
- D. Incorrect.
Option 4: Continue to scale vertically on a single Azure SQL Database with higher compute tiers. Incorrect. Merely scaling up vertically can provide additional performance, but it does not address the need to offload large read workloads nor does it meet the requirement of scaling to 100 TB effectively with minimal downtime.
- E. Incorrect.
Option 5: Migrate the database to Azure Table Storage for lower cost and simpler data structure. Incorrect. Azure Table Storage is a NoSQL key-value store and is not suitable for the relational transactions and complex queries typical of an OLTP workload. It also does not provide the same level of advanced features as Azure SQL Database.