Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect Expert AZ-305 Practice Question

ExpressRoute creates a dedicated, private Layer-3 connection between an on-premises edge router and Microsoft's backbone network. Private peering allows workloads in a virtual network to exchange traffic with on-premises subnets by using private RFC-1918 addresses, keeping the data off the public Internet and satisfying the regulatory requirement. The Standard SKU supports bandwidths of 50 Mbps to 10 Gbps (and higher with ExpressRoute Direct) and requires two physically diverse connections for high availability.

A VPN Gateway uses IPsec tunnels over the public Internet and, even in active-active mode, cannot guarantee 10 Gbps throughput. Azure Bastion provides secure RDP/SSH administration, not data replication connectivity. Application Gateway is a Layer-7 load balancer for HTTP(S) traffic and does not establish private WAN links to on-premises networks. Therefore, the ExpressRoute circuit with private peering is the only option that meets all requirements.