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Difficulty: EasyBusiness Continuity and Disaster Recovery

A network administrator needs to perform a complete system restoration following a server failure on Thursday morning. The backup schedule performs a full backup every Sunday night and cumulative backups of all data changed since Sunday on each subsequent night. To restore the server, the administrator restores Sunday's full backup followed immediately by Wednesday night's backup. Which type of backup was restored alongside the full backup?

  1. Differential backupAnswer
  2. B
    Incremental backup
  3. C
    Full backup
  4. D
    Continuous data protection

Answer

Differential backup
A differential backup captures all data that has changed since the most recent full backup. Because each differential backup accumulates all changes made since the full backup, a full system restore requires only two items: the baseline full backup and the single most recent differential backup file.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the restoration process described in the scenario.
The administrator restored the initial full backup from Sunday and only one subsequent file from Wednesday night.
Determining the number of backup sets required for recovery differentiates differential backups from incremental backups.
2
Apply backup strategy definitions.
Because Wednesday's file contained all cumulative changes since Sunday, restoring Sunday's full backup plus Wednesday's file completes recovery. This defines a differential backup strategy.
An incremental backup strategy would have required restoring Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday backups in sequential order.

Key Concept

Differential vs. Incremental Backup Restoration Strategies
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Topics

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

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