Question 1
A manufacturing firm uses a legacy SCADA system that runs on a physical server with a specialized PCI card. The Business Impact Analysis (BIA) has established a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 4 hours. The current DR plan involves shipping tape backups to a cold site. During a recent test, the team discovered that sourcing and configuring a compatible server with the required PCI card would take at least 48 hours. Which of the following is the MOST cost-effective solution to meet the RTO?
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: B
The most effective solution is to perform a P2V conversion. This decouples the legacy operating system and application from the specific underlying hardware. Once virtualized, the VM can be replicated to a warm site. This allows for rapid failover to dissimilar hardware, easily meeting the 4-hour RTO without the high cost of a full platform migration or a dedicated hot site. Migrating to a cloud-native platform is a major, expensive project, not a DR solution. A hot site would work but is very expensive. Improving logistics for the cold site doesn't solve the fundamental hardware dependency issue.