Which recovery plan scenario provides the best protection for critical applications during a disaster?

The scenario that offers the best protection for critical applications during a disaster involves real-time data replication to a hot site located just 500 meters away. This arrangement provides immediate access to both data and applications, ensuring minimal disruption in the event of a disaster. The hot site enables organizations to maintain continuous operations, as it is equipped and synchronized to take over as soon as an outage or disaster occurs.

In contrast to the option of daily offsite backups with a hot site located 140 kilometers away, while such a setup would still provide a robust recovery mechanism, the distance could result in higher latency and potential delays in restoring data and applications. The closer proximity in the correct answer allows for quicker failover and easier management of resources.

Other options, such as daily onsite backups in a fireproof safe, do not account for more catastrophic scenarios where the physical site could be compromised, which would risk losing the data stored onsite. Similarly, daily offsite backups with a warm site, while safer than onsite backups, typically involve longer recovery times because the environment needs to be set up and data must be restored from the backups, rather than being immediately ready for operation.

Real-time data replication not only ensures that the latest data is always available but also greatly simplifies the recovery process