Domain: Design Business Continuity Solutions
15–20% of the exam. Skills outline as of April 17, 2026.
Domain Progress
Topics
| Topic | Covers | Tips | Practice |
|---|---|---|---|
| RPO, RTO & BC Strategy | Recovery objectives · HA vs DR vs Backup · Picking the right tool | Quiz | |
| Azure Backup Vaults & Security | Recovery Services vault · Backup vault · Soft delete · Immutability · MUA | Quiz | |
| VM & Compute Backup | Standard vs Enhanced policy · Instant restore · Restore options · Cross Region Restore | Quiz | |
| Azure Site Recovery | Region-to-region · Zone-to-zone · Recovery plans · Test failover | Quiz | |
| Database Backup & DR | SQL PITR · LTR · Geo-restore · Failover groups · Geo-replication · Cosmos DB · SQL on VMs | Quiz | |
| Storage & Unstructured Data Protection | Blob backup · Azure Files backup · Storage account failover | Quiz | |
| High Availability for Compute | VM SLAs · Zones · Scale sets · Load balancing · PaaS HA | Quiz | |
| Regions & Multi-Region Design | Region pairs · Nonpaired regions · Active-active vs active-passive | Quiz | |
| Top domain traps (below) | Highest-yield rules |
Top Domain Traps
“Connection string must not change” → SQL failover group. Trap: Active geo-replication has no listener.
“Fail over VMs to another region” → Azure Site Recovery; restore data = Azure Backup.
“Blobs/disks/PostgreSQL backup” → Backup vault; VMs/Files/SQL-in-VM/on-prem = Recovery Services vault.
“Admins can't delete backups alone” → Multi-user authorization (Resource Guard) + immutable vault.
“VM backups every 4 h, Ultra/PSSD v2” → Enhanced backup policy.
“Restore backups in paired region anytime” → Cross Region Restore.
“SQL backups for years” → LTR up to 10 years; PITR 1–35 days.
“Cosmos self-service restore” → Continuous backup (7/30/35 days).
“Highest VM SLA” → Zones 99.99%; availability set 99.95%; single Premium SSD 99.9%.
“Region pairs give automatic failover?” → False: design your own DR.
⚠️ Retirement Watch
Older question banks may still use these. If a current replacement is offered as an option, pick the replacement. The full list is on the Retirement Timeline page.
| Retired / retiring | Date | Exam answer now |
|---|---|---|
| Standard HDD as VM OS disk (single-VM SLA only 95%) | Sep 8, 2028 | Premium SSD / Standard SSD |
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Original study notes based on the public Microsoft skills outline and Microsoft Learn documentation. Not affiliated with Microsoft; not actual exam content.