Backup & Disaster Recovery Flashcards

What does RTO stand for in disaster recovery planning?

Answer: Recovery Time Objective

RTO (Recovery Time Objective) defines the maximum acceptable downtime before business operations must be restored after a disaster.

Which backup strategy involves copying only the data that has changed since the last full backup?

Answer: Differential backup

A differential backup copies all data changed since the last full backup, making restoration faster than incremental since only the full and latest differential are needed.

What is the primary purpose of a hot site in disaster recovery?

Answer: To provide a fully operational duplicate environment for immediate failover

A hot site is a fully equipped, continuously running duplicate facility that allows near-instant failover when the primary site goes down.

A company performs a full backup every Sunday and incremental backups daily. If disaster strikes Thursday, which backups are needed to restore?

Answer: Sunday full + Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday incrementals

Incremental restores require the last full backup plus every incremental backup taken since, making the process longer but storage-efficient.

What does RPO measure in a disaster recovery plan?

Answer: The maximum tolerable data loss measured in time

RPO (Recovery Point Objective) defines the maximum age of data that must be recovered, determining how frequently backups must occur.

Which RAID level provides disk mirroring without parity, offering full redundancy?

Answer: RAID 1

RAID 1 mirrors data across two drives so that if one fails, the other contains an identical copy, providing full redundancy.

What is the 3-2-1 backup rule?

Answer: 3 copies of data, on 2 different media types, with 1 copy offsite

The 3-2-1 rule recommends keeping 3 copies of data on 2 different storage media with at least 1 copy stored offsite for robust protection.