CSA Backup & Disaster Recovery 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which type of disaster recovery site has hardware ready but requires software and data restoration before use?
- Hot site
- Cold site
- Warm site (Correct answer)
- Mobile site
Correct answer: Warm site
A warm site has pre-installed hardware and network connectivity but requires data restoration from backups, offering a balance between cost and recovery speed.
Question 2: What is a cold site in disaster recovery?
- A site in a cold climate for natural cooling
- A backup location with only basic infrastructure such as power and cooling (Correct answer)
- An encrypted offline backup vault
- A cloud region with no active workloads
Correct answer: A backup location with only basic infrastructure such as power and cooling
A cold site provides only the physical space and basic utilities; all hardware, software, and data must be brought in and configured after a disaster.
Question 3: What is the key advantage of cloud-based backup over traditional tape backup?
- Lower data capacity limits
- Faster physical transportation of data
- On-demand scalability and remote accessibility (Correct answer)
- No encryption requirements
Correct answer: On-demand scalability and remote accessibility
Cloud backup offers virtually unlimited scalability and allows data to be accessed and restored from anywhere with an internet connection, unlike physical tapes.
Question 4: What does a business continuity plan (BCP) address that a disaster recovery plan (DRP) does not?
- Server restoration procedures
- Maintaining business operations during and after a disruption, not just IT recovery (Correct answer)
- Database backup schedules
- Hardware replacement costs
Correct answer: Maintaining business operations during and after a disruption, not just IT recovery
A BCP covers the continuation of all critical business functions during a disruption, while a DRP focuses specifically on restoring IT systems and data.
Question 5: Which backup media is most vulnerable to data loss from strong magnetic fields?
- Optical discs (DVD/Blu-ray)
- Solid-state drives (SSD)
- Magnetic tape (Correct answer)
- Flash drives
Correct answer: Magnetic tape
Magnetic tape stores data using magnetic particles, making it susceptible to erasure or corruption when exposed to strong magnetic fields.
Question 6: What is a 'snapshot' in the context of data backup?
- A photograph of server rack layout for insurance
- A point-in-time copy of data or a system state (Correct answer)
- A compressed archive of all files
- A log of user activity for auditing
Correct answer: A point-in-time copy of data or a system state
A snapshot captures the state of a system or dataset at a specific moment, enabling rapid restoration to that exact point in time.
Question 7: When conducting a disaster recovery test, what does a 'tabletop exercise' involve?
- Physically cutting over to the DR site
- A discussion-based simulation where team members talk through their response to a hypothetical disaster (Correct answer)
- Restoring data from backup to verify integrity
- Stress-testing servers to identify failure points
Correct answer: A discussion-based simulation where team members talk through their response to a hypothetical disaster
A tabletop exercise is a low-cost, discussion-based walkthrough that identifies gaps in DR plans without disrupting production systems.
CSA Backup & Disaster Recovery 3
Which type of disaster recovery site has hardware ready but requires software and data restoration before use?