Microsoft Azure Architect Design (AZ-304) Practice Test

What is the best business continuity solution for a payroll system in Azure that meets the requirements of minimizing costs and providing a recovery time objective (RTO) of 30 minutes?

1. Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM)

2. Azure Site Recovery

3. Unmanaged disks that use geo-redundant storage (GRS)

4. Azure Backup

The correct answer is: Unmanaged disks that use geo-redundant storage (GRS)

For a payroll system that prioritizes minimizing costs while ensuring a recovery time objective (RTO) of 30 minutes, using unmanaged disks with geo-redundant storage (GRS) indeed presents a practical solution. Unmanaged disks allow you to store your data without the overhead of managing the underlying storage infrastructure, thereby keeping operational costs lower. By leveraging GRS, your data is replicated to a secondary region, ensuring high availability and durability against localized failures. In terms of RTO, while GRS provides excellent data durability and protection against region-wide failures, the recovery time may not meet the 30-minute requirement for a payroll system that might need more immediate recovery options in case of failure or disaster scenarios. However, it is still a more cost-effective method for ensuring data availability compared to more complex solutions. Other options present capabilities that may exceed the budget constraints. For instance, solutions like Azure Site Recovery provide robust disaster recovery with failover capabilities but may involve higher costs associated with the infrastructure and configuration required to maintain readiness for failover within a stringent RTO. Similarly, Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) can ensure reliable data protection but also comes with licensing and operational costs that might not align with the goal of minimizing expenses. Azure