Question

You manage an Azure SQL Database (Business Critical) that uses active geo-replication with a readable secondary in a paired region. Compliance requires an annual disaster recovery drill that validates the application can operate fully against the secondary region, including write operations, while producing an auditable record of the exercise. The production database must return to its original primary region afterward with no data loss. Which approach should you use for the drill?

Accepted Answer

Perform a planned failover of the geo-replication link to the secondary, run the application workload against it, then perform another planned failover back to the original region.

Answer

Trigger a forced (unplanned) failover to the secondary, run the workload, then re-establish geo-replication back to the original region.

Answer

Point the application connection string to the read-only secondary endpoint and execute the full workload there without failing over.

Answer

Run a geo-restore of the latest backup into the secondary region, direct the application to the restored copy, then delete it after the drill.