Among disaster recovery strategies, which one delivers the shortest recovery time and the smallest data loss, while also carrying the greatest ongoing expense?
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B
Multi-site active-active keeps full production capacity running in multiple Regions and serves users from all of them at once. Because every Region is already live and data is replicated continuously, failover requires little or no recovery work, which gives the lowest RTO and RPO. The trade-off is that every Region runs at full scale all the time, making it the most expensive option. Pilot light, warm standby, and backup and restore each trade some recovery speed for lower spending.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Pilot light keeps only core components, such as replicated databases, running while the rest is provisioned during recovery. It is cheaper than active-active, and recovery takes noticeably longer.
- C. Backup and restore is the cheapest approach, storing only backups until a disaster occurs. Rebuilding the environment takes hours, so it has the longest recovery time of the four.
- D. Warm standby runs a scaled-down but functional copy of production in another Region. It recovers faster than pilot light, but it does not match the near-zero recovery times of active-active.