Outages, human error, ransomware and natural disasters can all interrupt business operations. Cloud platforms make disaster recovery (DR) more accessible, but they do not make it automatic. You still need a plan, regular backups and tested procedures.
Backup vs Disaster Recovery
Backups are copies of data that let you restore files, databases or systems to an earlier point in time. Disaster recovery is the broader plan for restoring entire services, including infrastructure, networking and applications, after a major disruption. You need both.
Two Key Metrics
- Recovery Time Objective (RTO): how long you can afford to be down.
- Recovery Point Objective (RPO): how much data loss, measured in time, you can tolerate.
An RPO of one hour means you must be able to recover data no older than one hour. Setting these targets for each application drives every other decision, and lower targets usually cost more.
Common Cloud DR Strategies
Backup and Restore
Store backups in another region and rebuild when needed. This is the lowest cost option, but recovery is slower.
Pilot Light
Keep a minimal version of the core environment, such as replicated databases, always running in a secondary region. In a disaster, you scale up the rest quickly.
Warm Standby
Run a scaled-down but fully functional copy of the environment. Recovery is faster because services are already running and only need to scale.
Multi-Site Active-Active
Run the workload in multiple regions at the same time. This offers the fastest recovery and highest availability, with the highest cost and complexity.
Best Practices
- Follow the 3-2-1 rule: keep three copies of data, on two different types of storage, with one copy offsite.
- Use immutable backups: make backups that cannot be altered or deleted for a set period, which protects against ransomware.
- Replicate across regions: do not keep backups in the same location as production.
- Automate backups: schedule them and monitor for failures.
- Encrypt everything: protect data in storage and in transit.
- Define infrastructure as code: rebuild environments quickly and consistently.
- Document runbooks: write clear, step-by-step recovery procedures with assigned roles.
Test Your Plan
A backup that has never been restored is only an assumption. Run recovery drills at least once or twice a year, measure actual recovery times against your RTO and RPO, and update the plan after each test or major system change.
Do Not Forget SaaS Data
Under the shared responsibility model, providers keep their services running, but you are usually responsible for protecting your own data. Consider separate backups for critical SaaS applications such as email and document platforms.
Final Thoughts
Good disaster recovery balances cost against the real impact of downtime. Define your objectives, choose a strategy that fits each workload, automate what you can and test regularly.
