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CCSP Practice Question: A cloud architect is designing a disaster…
A cloud architect is designing a disaster recovery (DR) plan for a financial services application hosted on a public cloud. The plan must meet a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 4 hours and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 1 hour. The application uses a relational database and stores files in object storage. Which TWO strategies should the architect recommend to meet these objectives?
⚠ Common exam trap
ISC2 often tests the distinction between replication strategies (synchronous vs. asynchronous) and recovery environments (hot, warm, cold), tricking candidates into choosing synchronous replication alone without considering the RTO impact or the need for a fully provisioned standby.
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
✓
Deploy a hot standby environment in a different availability zone with automated failover.
A hot standby in a different availability zone with automated failover can achieve an RTO of 4 hours and an RPO of 1 hour. The standby environment is fully operational and synchronized, allowing near-instant failover to meet the RTO, while automated replication keeps data loss within the 1-hour RPO window. This strategy is suitable for financial services requiring high availability and minimal data loss.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Take daily snapshots of the database and object storage.
Why it's wrong here
Daily snapshots exceed RPO.
- ✓
Deploy a hot standby environment in a different availability zone with automated failover.
Why this is correct
Hot standby with automation meets RTO.
- ✗
Maintain a cold standby server that is provisioned only during a disaster.
Why it's wrong here
Cold standby has high RTO.
- ✗
Use asynchronous replication for the database to reduce latency.
Why it's wrong here
Asynchronous replication may not achieve 1-hour RPO.
- ✓
Configure synchronous database replication to another cloud region.
Why this is correct
Synchronous replication provides near-zero RPO.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CCSP practice question is part of Courseiva's free ISC2 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 CCSP exam.