CompTIA DataSys+ (DS0-001)Business ContinuityMedium
A data engineer is implementing a data archiving strategy. The business requires that historical data, older than two years, be moved to a lower-cost storage tier. This archived data must still be accessible for auditing and reporting, but with a longer retrieval time (e.g., 24-48 hours). Which backup type is most suitable for this archiving requirement?
- AIncremental backup to tape library
- BFull backup to local disk
- CDifferential backup to cloud object storage
- DArchival backup to cold storage (e.g., tape or specialized cloud tier)
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: D. Archival backup to cold storage (e.g., tape or specialized cloud tier)
Archival backups are specifically designed for long-term retention of data that is infrequently accessed but must be preserved for compliance, historical analysis, or legal reasons. Cold storage tiers (like tape libraries or specialized cloud archival services such as AWS Glacier or Azure Archive Storage) offer very low cost per GB but with higher retrieval latency, perfectly matching the described requirements of lower cost and longer retrieval times for historical data.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Incremental backups are for operational recovery and are complex to restore for long-term archives. Tape libraries can be used for archives, but incremental is not the most suitable backup type for this purpose.
- B. Full backups to local disk are for operational recovery, not typically for long-term, low-cost archiving with slow retrieval.
- C. Differential backups are for operational recovery; cloud object storage can be used for archives but not typically with differential backups as the primary archiving method.
Archival Backup
A backup type focused on long-term data retention for compliance or historical purposes, often to low-cost, high-latency storage.
- For infrequently accessed historical data.
- Optimized for low cost per GB.
- Accepts longer retrieval times.
Memory trick: Archive is for the 'Ancient' data.