ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity (CC)Business Continuity (BC), Disaster Recovery (DR) & Incident Response (IR) ConceptsEasy
A small e-commerce business relies heavily on its online storefront. They want to ensure that if their primary server fails, a backup system can take over immediately with minimal disruption to customer orders. Which of the following backup strategies would best meet this requirement?
- ASynchronous replication to a redundant server
- BDifferential backup to an external hard drive monthly
- CFull backup to tape, stored offsite weekly
- DIncremental backup to a network-attached storage (NAS) device daily
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: A. Synchronous replication to a redundant server
Synchronous replication ensures that data is written to both the primary and redundant systems simultaneously, providing immediate failover capability with virtually no data loss. This directly addresses the need for minimal disruption and immediate takeover.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. Differential backups capture changes since the last full backup, still requiring the full backup and the latest differential for restoration, which is too slow for immediate takeover.
- C. This strategy involves significant recovery time and potential data loss, as it's not real-time.
- D. Incremental backups require a full backup and all subsequent incremental backups for restoration, increasing recovery time and potential data loss.
Synchronous Replication
A data replication method where data is written to a primary storage system and simultaneously to a secondary, redundant system. A write operation is not considered complete until it has been confirmed by both systems.
- Provides near-zero Recovery Point Objective (RPO).
- Offers immediate failover capability.
- Requires low-latency network connections between systems.
Memory trick: Sync 'n' Share: Data's always there!