Question

A financial services company runs a production Azure SQL Database. Regulatory requirements mandate that a backup taken on the first day of each month be retained for 7 years, while the standard automated backups only cover a 35-day window. The DBA must implement this without deploying additional infrastructure or custom scripts. What should the DBA configure?

Accepted Answer

A long-term retention (LTR) policy on the database specifying a monthly backup retention of 7 years (W=0, M=1, Y=7 with a WeekOfYear value)

Answer

Increase the point-in-time restore (PITR) retention period to its maximum value on the database

Answer

An Azure Automation runbook that copies a full backup to a storage account on the first of each month

Answer

Configure active geo-replication to a secondary region and keep the replica indefinitely