🥽 AZ-305: Migration, HA & BCDR — Deep Dive
Study Notes & Exam Prep — 2026 Edition
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- 🎯 Purpose: Deep-dive study notes covering High Availability, Backup, Disaster Recovery, and Migration for the AZ-305: Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions exam — including Azure VMware Solution for hybrid migration scenarios.
- 📅 Version: 2026
- ✍️ Author: Marco Grimaldi
- 🌐 Published: 🥽 AZ-305: Migration, HA & BCDR — Deep Dive
- 🔗 Companion repos: 📘 AZ-305 Study Notes · 🥽 AZ-305: Azure Compute Services — Deep Dive · 🥽 AZ-305: Azure Messaging Services — Deep Dive · 🥽 AZ-305: Data & Analytics Services — Deep Dive · 📘 AZ-104 Study Notes
🗺 What’s in This Repository?
| File | Coverage |
|---|---|
| 🏗️ 01 — High Availability Design | HA vs DR, region pairs, AZs, SLA composition, load balancing, global routing |
| 💾 02 — Azure Backup | Recovery Services Vault, Backup Vault, agents, policies, soft delete, immutable vault |
| 🔄 03 — Azure Site Recovery | Replication scenarios, Recovery Plans, RTO/RPO, test failover, agents |
| 🔭 04 — Azure Migrate | Migrate Hub, discovery & assessment, DMS, appliance, dependency analysis |
| 🌿 05 — Azure VMware Solution | AVS SDDC, HCX, connectivity, SKUs, stretched clusters, integration |
| 🗺️ 06 — Migration Strategies | The 7 Rs, CAF phases, Landing Zones, tool selection per workload |
| 📊 07 — Feature Comparison | HA vs DR, Backup vs ASR, migration tools, RTO/RPO spectrum |
| 🎯 08 — Exam Caveats & Cheatsheet | Decision trees, exam traps, must-memorise numbers, final checklist |
🔑 Why Migration, HA & BCDR Matters for AZ-305
This domain is explicitly tested across two exam skill areas and touches every layer of Azure architecture design:
- Design for High Availability (15–20%): Region pairs, Availability Zones, redundant services, SLA composition, global load balancing
- Design for Backup and Disaster Recovery (10–15%): RTO/RPO targets, Backup vs Site Recovery selection, vault configuration, cross-region restore
- Design Migrations (10–15%): Migration strategy selection, Azure Migrate tooling, database migration, VMware workload migration via AVS or HCX
⚠️ The most common exam trap in this domain: Confusing High Availability (staying up during failures) with Disaster Recovery (recovering after a failure). HA is about eliminating single points of failure. DR is about restoring service when HA has already failed. These require different services, different RPO/RTO targets, and different cost profiles.
⚡ Quick Navigation
| I need to know… | Go to |
|---|---|
| HA vs DR — the key distinction | 01 — HA § HA vs DR |
| Recovery Services Vault vs Backup Vault | 02 — Backup § Vault Types |
| ASR replication scenarios | 03 — ASR § Supported Scenarios |
| Azure Migrate tooling overview | 04 — Migrate § Migrate Hub |
| AVS connectivity options | 05 — AVS § Connectivity |
| 7 Rs migration strategies | 06 — Strategies § The 7 Rs |
| Backup vs ASR — which to use | 07 — Comparison § Backup vs ASR |
| All exam traps in one place | 08 — Exam Caveats |
©️ Credits & Acknowledgements
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