Question

Difficulty: MediumDesign Azure Backup Solutions

You are designing a backup solution for an Azure Virtual Machine that hosts a critical enterprise resource planning (ERP) application. The virtual machine is configured with Premium SSD v2 managed disks.

Your design must meet the following requirements:
* The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) for restoring backups from the last 7 days must be minimized by using local snapshots.
* Backups must remain available even if an entire Azure region experiences an outage.
* Daily backups must be retained in the vault for 180 days.
* Administrative effort and cost must be minimized.

Which two configurations should you include in the backup design? (Select two.)

  1. An Enhanced backup policy with the instant restore retention set to 7 daysAnswer
  2. A Recovery Services vault configured with Geo-redundant storage (GRS) and Cross Region Restore enabledAnswer
  3. C
    A Standard backup policy with the instant restore retention set to 7 days
  4. D
    A Recovery Services vault configured with Locally redundant storage (LRS)

Answer

The correct configurations are using an Enhanced backup policy with the instant restore retention set to 7 days, and using a Recovery Services vault configured with Geo-redundant storage (GRS) and Cross Region Restore enabled.
To support local snapshot retention of 7 days (instant restore) and back up a VM using Premium SSD v2 managed disks, you must use an Enhanced backup policy. Standard backup policies only support up to 5 days of instant restore retention and do not support Premium SSD v2 disks. To ensure backup availability during a regional outage, the Recovery Services vault must be configured with Geo-redundant storage (GRS) and Cross Region Restore (CRR) enabled, allowing you to restore data in the secondary region.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Evaluate the virtual machine disk configuration and the operational recovery requirements.
The virtual machine uses Premium SSD v2 managed disks and requires 7 days of instant recovery (local snapshot retention).
Standard backup policies only support up to 5 days of instant restore retention and do not support Premium SSD v2 managed disks. Therefore, an Enhanced backup policy must be used, with the instant restore retention set to 7 days.
2
Analyze the regional resiliency and disaster recovery requirements.
Backups must remain available if an entire Azure region fails, and they must be restorable in the secondary paired region.
A Recovery Services vault must be configured with Geo-redundant storage (GRS) and Cross Region Restore (CRR) enabled to allow restores in the paired region even while the primary region is offline.
3
Combine the selected configurations to form the complete backup design.
Choose the Enhanced backup policy with 7 days of instant restore and the Recovery Services vault configured with GRS and CRS.
This combination fulfills all constraints regarding disk compatibility, RTO, regional disaster recovery, and retention.

Key Concept

Designing Azure Virtual Machine backup solutions using Recovery Services vaults and backup policies, aligning snapshot and vault-level retention with recovery objectives and storage redundancy constraints.
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