Disaster recovery (DR) is the practice of preparing for, responding to, and recovering from events that disrupt business operations — from hardware failures and data corruption to ransomware and natural disasters. A good DR plan reduces downtime, limits data loss, and makes recovery predictable instead of chaotic.
Key components:
Recovery objectives: Define Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) per application — these drive architecture and cost decisions.
Backups & replication: Combine immutable, tested backups with continuous replication for critical systems so you can restore files or fail over VMs quickly.
DR site & offsite copies: Maintain offsite or cloud-based recovery targets (hot/warm/cold) and ensure at least one copy is air-gapped or immutable against ransomware.
Runbooks & communication: Maintain step-by-step recovery runbooks, an incident response playbook, and a clear communication tree for stakeholders and customers.
Testing & validation: Regularly run tabletop exercises and failover tests; validate restores end-to-end, not just that backups exist.
Security & compliance: Encrypt backups, enforce least privilege, rotate credentials, and keep retention aligned with legal/audit requirements.
Practical tips:
Prioritize workloads by business impact — protect critical services first.
Automate failover where safe; keep manual fallback procedures documented.
Track and version runbooks; test them with actual restores quarterly or semiannually.
Learn from tests: update RTO/RPO, tooling, and procedures after each exercise.
Bottom line: Disaster recovery is a mix of policy, people, and technology. Invest time in clear objectives, repeatable procedures, and regular testing — so when the unexpected happens, you recover quickly and confidently.
