ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity (CC)Business Continuity (BC), Disaster Recovery (DR) & Incident Response (IR) ConceptsHard
A global enterprise needs to ensure that its critical applications and data are continuously available across geographically dispersed data centers. They require a solution that automatically fails over to a secondary site in case of a primary site outage, with virtually no data loss and minimal downtime. Which technology would best support these requirements?
- ADaily incremental backups
- BTape backups with offsite storage
- CAsynchronous data replication
- DSynchronous data replication
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: D. Synchronous data replication
Synchronous data replication ensures that data is written to both the primary and secondary sites simultaneously. This guarantees virtually no data loss (RPO near zero) and enables rapid failover, making it ideal for continuous availability and minimal downtime, especially for geographically dispersed centers with high-speed links.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Daily incremental backups result in significant data loss (up to 24 hours) and require a restoration process, which does not provide continuous availability or minimal downtime.
- B. Tape backups are typically for archival and long-term recovery, not continuous availability or minimal downtime/data loss for immediate failover.
- C. Asynchronous replication allows for some data loss (non-zero RPO) because data is written to the secondary site after the primary, not simultaneously.
Synchronous Data Replication
A method of data replication where data is written to both the primary and secondary storage locations simultaneously, ensuring data consistency and near-zero data loss (RPO) but potentially introducing latency.
- Data written simultaneously to primary and secondary
- Ensures near-zero RPO (virtually no data loss)
- Requires high-bandwidth, low-latency network connections
- Enables rapid failover
Memory trick: Sync for Zero Loss, Async for Speed.