Quiz: Backup & Restore¶
5 questions
L1 (4 questions)¶
1. How do you validate that your backups actually work?
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Regular restore tests — schedule them quarterly at minimum. Restore to a separate environment and verify: data integrity, app functionality, RTO (time to restore), RPO (data freshness). Untested backups are just hope. Automate restore tests in CI where possible.2. What is the 3-2-1 backup rule?
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3 copies of data, on 2 different media types, with 1 copy offsite. Modern version adds: 1 copy offline/immutable (protects against ransomware). Cloud snapshots alone don't count as offsite if the attacker has your cloud credentials.3. What is the difference between a backup and a snapshot?
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Snapshot: point-in-time copy, usually on the same storage (fast, but shares failure domain). Backup: independent copy on separate media/location (slower, but survives hardware failure). Snapshots complement but do not replace backups.4. How do you validate that a backup is restorable?
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Regularly perform test restores to a non-production environment. Verify data integrity (checksums, row counts). Confirm application can start and serve traffic on restored data. Automate restore tests on a schedule. An untested backup is not trustworthy.L2 (1 questions)¶
1. What are the differences between full, incremental, and differential backups?