ops-disaster-recovery

Disaster recovery planning starts with business impact analysis to define RTO and RPO objectives, then selects a strategy and maps architecture across primary and DR regions. This ensures formalized recovery objectives and failover procedures are established before testing.

DR runbooks should use structured templates that define explicit failover criteria and decision points for critical services. This approach ensures clear, phase-based governance and standardized failover procedures across primary and disaster recovery regions.

Testing DR readiness involves structured test campaigns and tabletop drills using provided runbook templates. This validates failover procedures and ongoing readiness across primary and DR regions, maintaining recovery capabilities through regular testing cadence.

The disaster recovery planning process is designed for organizations needing formalized DR runbooks and phase-based governance. While it provides comprehensive architecture designs and maintenance checks, it may be more structured than small teams without formal governance requirements need.

A phase-based disaster recovery planning process includes business impact analysis, strategy selection, architecture design, runbook templates, failover criteria, testing cadence, and maintenance checks. It covers the full lifecycle from planning through ongoing readiness validation.

Business continuity planning requires separate runbooks because each critical service has unique architecture, failover criteria, and recovery objectives. Formalized DR runbooks ensure phase-based governance and accurate failover procedures tailored to each service's specific requirements.