Which recovery option should be used for restoring an Azure VM in a secondary region that is paired with the primary region?

The most appropriate recovery option for restoring an Azure VM in a secondary region, which is paired with the primary region, is Cross Region Restore. This option enables the replication and restoration of virtual machines to a different Azure region.

When Azure resources are in a paired region, they are designed to support disaster recovery scenarios. In the event of an issue in the primary region, such as an outage or data loss, you can utilize the Cross Region Restore functionality to recover your VM in the paired secondary region. This process ensures that your data and services remain accessible, thereby enhancing your disaster recovery strategy.

The other options, while they have their uses, do not apply specifically to the scenario of a secondary region recovery following an incident in the primary region. For example, Cross Subscription Restore relates to restoring VMs that are in different Azure subscriptions, while Snapshot Restore typically deals with restoring a VM from a saved snapshot within the same region, which does not facilitate recovery across regions. Cross Zonal Restore pertains to high availability and redundancy within the same region rather than across different regions. Therefore, utilizing Cross Region Restore is the most effective and appropriate method for this scenario.