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CCSP Practice Question: A cloud architect is designing a disaster…
A cloud architect is designing a disaster recovery plan for a financial application with RTO of 15 minutes and RPO of 5 minutes. Which recovery strategy is most appropriate?
⚠ Common exam trap
ISC2 often tests the distinction between RTO and RPO by presenting a scenario where candidates confuse warm standby (which can meet a low RTO but not a tight RPO) with active-active, leading them to choose warm standby despite its inability to guarantee the 5-minute RPO.
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
✓
Multi-region active-active
Multi-region active-active is the only strategy that can meet both a 15-minute RTO and a 5-minute RPO because it maintains synchronous or near-synchronous replication between two or more regions, allowing traffic to be instantly redirected with zero or minimal data loss. This approach eliminates the recovery time needed to spin up infrastructure or restore data, as the application is already fully operational in multiple regions.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Multi-region active-active
Why this is correct
Multi-region active-active provides continuous replication and instant failover, meeting both RTO and RPO.
- ✗
Backup and restore
Why it's wrong here
Backup and restore typically has RTO of hours and RPO of hours, far exceeding requirements.
- ✗
Pilot light
Why it's wrong here
Pilot light can achieve RPO of minutes but RTO is often longer than 15 minutes.
- ✗
Warm standby
Why it's wrong here
Warm standby can achieve RPO of minutes and RTO of minutes, but RPO may be close to 5 minutes and RTO may exceed 15 minutes.
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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.