The accounting department at your company migrates to a new financial accounting software. The accounting department must keep file-based database…

The primary requirements are long-term storage (seven years) for compliance, infrequent access, and minimal cost. The Azure Blob storage Archive tier is specifically designed for this purpose. It provides the lowest storage cost per gigabyte, making it the most economical option for large volumes of data that are rarely accessed. The higher retrieval costs and latency (retrieval can take several hours) are acceptable trade-offs given that the backups are unlikely to be used for data recovery.

B. Azure SQL Database is a relational database service (PaaS) and is not designed for storing file-based backups.

C. Azure Blob storage that uses the Cool tier is for infrequently accessed data, but its storage cost is higher than the Archive tier, making it less cost-effective for a seven-year retention period.

D. A Recovery Services vault is a management entity for Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery. While it can store long-term backups, it is a managed service that is typically more expensive for simple file archival than direct storage in the Archive tier.

1. Microsoft Documentation

"Access tiers for Azure Blob Storage - hot

cool

and archive."

Section: Archive tier. States

"The archive tier is an offline tier for storing data that is rarely accessed. The archive tier offers the lowest storage costs... Data in the archive tier is stored offline and can take several hours to retrieve." This directly matches the scenario's requirements for low cost and infrequent access over a long period.

2. Microsoft Documentation

"Access tiers for Azure Blob Storage - hot

cool

and archive."

Section: Cool tier. Mentions

"The cool tier is an online tier for storing data that is infrequently accessed or modified... The cool tier has lower storage costs and higher access costs compared to the hot tier." This confirms it is more expensive for storage than the Archive tier.

3. Microsoft Documentation

"What is Azure SQL Database?"

Section: Overview. Describes Azure SQL Database as a "fully managed platform as a service (PaaS) database engine." This clarifies that its purpose is to host and manage active databases

not to store backup files.

4. Microsoft Documentation

"Recovery Services vaults overview."

Section: Overview. Explains

"A Recovery Services vault is a storage entity in Azure that houses data... It makes it easy to organize your backup data

while minimizing management overhead." This highlights it as a managed service

which is generally not the most cost-effective solution for simply storing existing files compared to raw blob storage.