What strategy should be used for complete recovery of a critical database in a disaster scenario?

In a disaster scenario, the goal is to ensure that a critical database can be fully restored with minimal data loss and downtime. Real-time replication to a remote site offers a strategy that addresses these needs effectively. This approach continuously copies data from the primary database to a secondary location, ensuring that changes are reflected almost instantly.

This method allows for immediate failover to the replica database if the primary database becomes unavailable, thereby significantly reducing recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO). In situations where every second counts—such as critical business operations—this strategy is ideal as it minimizes potential data loss while enabling continuity of service.

Other options, while they may offer certain recovery capabilities, involve inherent limitations that do not align with the requirements for complete recovery in a critical scenario. For example, daily backup to tape relies on scheduled intervals for data capture, which could lead to considerable data loss during the gap between backups. Similarly, hard disk mirroring to a local server provides redundancy but does not safeguard against site-wide disasters since both the primary and mirrored data reside in the same location. Real-time data backup to local storage, while offering rapid recovery, still poses a risk of data loss in the event of a local disaster. Therefore, real