Exam AZ-305 topic 3 question 1 discussion

Answer is C Automated failover is needed. Azure site recovery does not support it https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/site-recovery-faq Is failover automatic? Failover isn't automatic. You initiate failovers with single click in the portal, or you can use Site Recovery PowerShell to trigger a failover. Failing back is a simple action in the Site Recovery portal.

SQL Server on an Azure IaaS VM or at on-premises. Replication with Azure Site Recovery RTO is typically less than 15 minutes. RPO- One hour for application consistency and five minutes for crash consistency.

For a cost-effective disaster recovery solution that meets your SQL Server on Azure VM requirements, I recommend using: 1. Azure Backup with Geo-Redundant Storage (GRS) ✅ Automated nightly database backups ensuring 24-hour RPO ✅ Geo-redundant copies allow recovery in case of regional failure ✅ Cost-effective compared to continuous replication solutions 2. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) for Fast Failover ✅ Supports automated recovery (failover within 15 minutes) ✅ Replicates VM disks to a secondary region for quick restoration ✅ Ensures minimal downtime with application-consistent recovery How It Works Azure Backup retains daily backups with point-in-time recovery Azure Site Recovery enables automatic failover to a secondary region, ensuring quick restoration in case of outage Alternative: SQL Always On Availability Groups If higher availability and real-time replication are needed, SQL Server Always On with asynchronous replication to a DR region is an alternative—though at a higher cost.

The answer is correct, but the question is kind of pointless. Unless you deal in a daily basis with SQL failover configuration, you won't know this answer right away. In real life, you will simply google and research what the best approach will be. In other words, this type of questions doesn't check if you really know the subject.

This question appeared in the exam, August 2024, I gave this same answer listed here. I scored 870

Given answer D is correct Azure Site Recovery provides BCDR features for your applications in Azure, on-premises, and in other cloud providers. The service offers plans to help automate your disaster recovery. You can define how your virtual machines are failed over, and the order in which they're restarted after successful failover. Things to consider when using Site Recovery Azure Site Recovery provides a simple BCDR solution with management support from the Azure portal. Set up and manage replication, fail over, and failback for your virtual machines from a single location. Set up disaster recovery of your Azure virtual machines, and fail over from a primary region to a secondary region. Automate your BCDR tasks and further reduce your recovery time objective. You can use Azure Site Recovery to set up automatic periodic test failovers, and monitor the overall effectiveness of the recovery process.

question is about Recovery not HA, not restore

Replication with Azure Site Recovery. RTO is typically less than 15 minutes. RPO: One hour for application consistency and five minutes for crash consistency. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/site-recovery-sql

Site Recovey because An Always On availability group is a high-availability and disaster recovery solution that provides automatic failover to a secondary replica in the same or a different data center. It can meet the RTO and RPO requirements, but it requires more resources and higher costs compared to the option of Azure Site Recovery

Always-On supports both Sync & Async replication and "C" should the be correct anwer

The only solutions making sense in this context are C and D: As we are talking about an SQL DB on an Azure VM (IaaS), there are NO cross-regional disaster recovery capabilities. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/virtual-machines/windows/availability-group-overview?view=azuresql#deployment-options:~:text=All-,DR%20with%20multiple%20regions,Yes,-Multisubnet%20support As we need to cover the scenario for a regional outage (which means all 3 data centers of an Azure region), the only option available to achieve this is Azure Site Recovery (with the help of runbooks if you must)

Very interesting insite why it cant be azure backup? I was wondering because RPO of 24 hrs is supported by azure backup, however after some re-searched realized that RTO of 15 mins will not be supported by Azure Backup, so my second option was automatically Azure Site Recovery.

D. Azure Site Recovery Azure Site Recovery is a disaster recovery service that allows you to protect your Azure virtual machines by orchestrating replication, failover, and recovery. It helps you meet the RTO and RPO requirements, automates recovery, and provides protection against regional outages. While it may not be the lowest cost solution, it meets all the other requirements, including automated recovery and support for the specified RTO and RPO.

D is the answer. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/azure-to-azure-enable-global-disaster-recovery#disaster-recovery-for-global-azure-regions Azure Site Recovery now supports global disaster recovery. You can now replicate and fail over your applications from any Azure region, across continents.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/site-recovery-sql#combining-bcdr-technologies-with-site-recovery. Check last option in the table

If I look at RPO, it's D. But I wouldn't call using the SDK for automation = support automated recovery. And if comparing the workload for cross regions, then the ans is def. D!!

D because regional outage