You plan to deploy an Azure SQL managed instance. You need to restore database backups across regions. Which type of storage account should you use?

Question

Options

• Alocally-redundant storage (LRS)
• Bzone-redundant storage (ZRS)
• Cgeo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS)
• Dgeo-redundant storage (GRS)

• B
  6% (1)
• C
  6% (1)
• D
  89% (16)

Explanation

Geo-redundant storage (GRS) replicates your data to a secondary region hundreds of miles away from the primary region, making it the right choice when you need to restore Azure SQL Managed Instance database backups across regions - it ensures your backups are accessible even if an entire region goes down.

Why the others are wrong:

• LRS (A) only replicates data within a single datacenter in one region - no cross-region capability at all.
• ZRS (B) replicates across availability zones but stays within a single region, so cross-region restores are not possible.
• GZRS (C) combines zone-redundancy with geo-replication, which sounds appealing, but Azure SQL Managed Instance specifically supports GRS (not GZRS) for cross-region backup restore scenarios; GZRS is also more costly and typically used for other workloads.

Memory tip: Think "Geo = Go across regions" - any storage option starting with "Geo" (GRS or GZRS) replicates across regions, but for Azure SQL Managed Instance backup/restore cross-region scenarios, GRS is the supported and expected answer on the exam. If the question mentions SQL Managed Instance + cross-region backups, always default to GRS.

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