ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity (CC)Business Continuity (BC), Disaster Recovery (DR) & Incident Response (IR) ConceptsMedium
A critical server in a data center experiences a hardware failure. To ensure business continuity, a standby server immediately takes over its functions, and users experience no interruption of service. This scenario demonstrates the successful implementation of which concept?
- ALoad Balancing
- BData Archiving
- CDisaster Recovery
- DFailover
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: D. Failover
Failover is the process of automatically switching to a redundant or standby system upon the failure or abnormal termination of the previously active system. The key here is the immediate takeover with no interruption, which is the hallmark of a successful failover mechanism.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Load balancing distributes traffic across multiple servers to optimize resource utilization, not primarily for immediate failure recovery.
- B. Data archiving is the process of moving old data to long-term storage, unrelated to immediate system continuity.
- C. Disaster recovery is a broader concept involving the restoration of operations after a major disaster, which can include failover but is not the specific mechanism described.
Failover
A backup operational mode in which the functions of a system component (e.g., server, network) are assumed by a secondary system component when the primary component becomes unavailable.
- Typically automatic and transparent to users.
- Ensures high availability and business continuity.
- Requires redundant hardware and often real-time data synchronization.
Memory trick: Failover: When one 'fails', the other 'takes over' seamlessly.