220-1102 Operational Procedures Practice Question
A technician is preparing to replace a failed hard drive in a server. According to change management best practices, which step should be completed BEFORE implementing the change?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse the order of change management steps, mistakenly believing that creating a backout plan or notifying users should come before obtaining formal approval, when in fact approval is the prerequisite that enables all subsequent planning and communication activities.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Obtain approval from the change manager or CAB
Before implementing any change, change management best practices require obtaining formal approval from the change manager or Change Advisory Board (CAB) to ensure the change is authorized, risks are assessed, and resources are allocated. This step prevents unauthorized modifications that could lead to service disruption or security vulnerabilities. Without prior approval, the technician would be violating ITIL-based change management procedures, which mandate a documented authorization phase before any implementation work begins.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Obtain approval from the change manager or CAB
Why this is correct
In a managed IT environment, replacing a failed server hard drive is a standard change that nonetheless requires formal approval from the change manager or Change Advisory Board (CAB). This approval ensures the proposed action is reviewed for potential conflicts, the maintenance window is authorized, and any cross-team dependencies are identified before implementation begins. Skipping this step violates change management policy and can lead to unlogged outages, which compromises both auditability and rollback capability.
- ✗
Create a detailed backout plan
Why it's wrong here
Although a detailed backout plan is an essential element of a change request, it is part of the proposal documentation rather than the immediate gate for executing the replacement. The backout plan must be submitted and reviewed alongside the change request, but approval from the change manager or CAB is what grants the authorization to actually touch the production hardware. In other words, having a backout plan is necessary but not sufficient; without approval, even a perfect backout plan cannot justify starting the work.
- ✗
Notify all users of expected downtime
Why it's wrong here
Notifying users of expected downtime is an operational communication step that occurs only after the change has been approved and the maintenance window is officially scheduled. Prematurely informing users before approval risks broadcasting a false promise of a maintenance window that might be denied or rescheduled by the CAB. Furthermore, for a failed hard drive in a server, many systems have redundant RAID arrays, so user-visible downtime may actually be zero—making pre-approval notification speculative and unnecessarily alarming.
- ✗
Test the new hard drive in a different server
Why it's wrong here
Testing the new hard drive in a different server is not only unrelated to the change approval workflow, but it can actively introduce risks such as data contamination, mismatched RAID firmware, or potential OS boot complications on the donor server. It also misorders the proper sequence: obtaining approval is the prerequisite for any implementation activity, including test insertion into a production or staging server. The appropriate validation happens during the approved implementation window, using the server's own configuration and without repurposing another system as a test harness.
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Key term
Security
Security in IT is the practice of protecting systems, networks, and data from unauthorized access, damage, or theft.
Key term
Change management
Change management is the structured process of planning, approving, implementing, and reviewing changes to IT systems to minimize risk and disruption.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This 220-1102 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the 220-1102 exam.