Which items are the key components of disaster recovery planning?

• A. RTO (recovery time objective), RPO (recovery point objective), backups, failover plans, and testing.
• B. SLA, maintenance window, change management, runbooks.
• C. Asset tags, inventory, lifecycle, maintenance.
• D. SNMP, monitoring, performance.

Answer: (A)

Disaster recovery planning focuses on how to resume operations after a disruption, balancing data protection with timing. The best answer includes defining the Recovery Time Objective and Recovery Point Objective, which set the maximum allowable downtime and data loss, guiding how you design backups and replication. Backups provide the actual data copies you restore from, while failover plans describe how to switch to an alternate system or site to keep services running. Testing is crucial to verify that the plan works, that backups are usable, and that failover procedures will execute smoothly during an incident. Together, these elements establish the targets for recovery and the concrete steps to meet them.

The other options cover general IT operations rather than the specific components needed to recover from a disaster. Service-level agreements, maintenance windows, change management, and runbooks relate to service expectations and process control. Asset tags, inventory, lifecycle, and maintenance focus on asset management. SNMP, monitoring, and performance deal with detecting and measuring system health, not the actual recovery strategy.