20 What is a cloud disaster recovery plan? A cloud disaster recovery plan is a documented process for restoring applications, infrastructure and data using cloud-based resources after an outage or other disruptive event. Depending on the architecture, the cloud can serve as: The primary production environment with recovery in another region or cloud A disaster recovery environment for on-premises infrastructure A secondary location for replicated applications and data A backup destination for data needed during recovery Part of a hybrid disaster recovery architecture The appropriate design depends largely on business requirements, application dependencies and two important recovery objectives: recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO). RTO defines the maximum acceptable amount of time required to restore a service after an interruption. RPO defines the maximum acceptable amount of data loss, expressed as a period of time. For example, an application with a four-hour RTO should be operational within four hours of a declared disaster. An RPO of 15 minutes means the recovery strategy should limit potential data loss to approximately 15 minutes. These objectives influence everything from backup frequency and replication to infrastructure costs and automation. Cloud disaster recovery plan example Consider a fictional company that operates a customer-facing application using a combination of on-premises infrastructure and cloud services. Its environment includes: Customer-facing web applications Application servers Production databases File and object data Identity and access services DNS and network services Backup infrastructure Cloud compute and storage resources The organization wants to maintain access to its most important services if its primary infrastructure becomes unavailable. Its disaster recovery plan could look like the following. 1. Define the scope Plan objective: Restore critical customer services and associated data following a major infrastructure outage, cyberattack or regional service disruption. Systems covered: SystemPriorityRTORPOIdentity and authenticationCritical30 minutes15 minutesCustomer applicationCritical1 hour15 minutesProduction databaseCritical1 hour15 minutesObject and file dataCritical2 hours1 hourInternal reportingMedium8 hours4 hoursDevelopment systemsLow24 hours24 hours These figures are examples rather than universal recommendations. Organizations should determine RTO and RPO requirements through business impact analysis and discussions with application owners. 2. Identify dependencies Applications rarely recover independently. The customer application in this example depends on: Network connectivity DNS Identity services Database services Object or file storage Application compute resources Security controls Monitoring The recovery plan should document these relationships so teams do not attempt to restore an application before the services it requires are available. A dependency map can also reveal single points of failure that may otherwise remain hidden during normal operations. 3. Define the disaster recovery architecture The company maintains recovery resources in a secondary cloud region. Critical data is protected using a combination of replication and backups. Infrastructure configurations are maintained using infrastructure-as-code templates so that required cloud resources can be recreated consistently. The recovery environment includes: Secondary compute capacity Replicated databases Protected object and file data Backup copies isolated from production Network and security configurations DNS failover capabilities Infrastructure deployment templates Monitoring and logging Not every resource needs to run continuously. Organizations can select different recovery approaches based on the importance of each workload. Backup and restore Applications and data are restored from backups after a disaster. This approach can reduce standby infrastructure costs but generally requires more recovery time. Pilot light Core services and data remain available in the recovery environment while additional infrastructure is started when recovery is required. Warm standby A reduced-capacity version of the production environment runs continuously and can scale when failover occurs. Active-active Applications operate across multiple locations simultaneously, allowing traffic to move between environments when a failure occurs. Lower RTO and RPO targets typically require greater infrastructure investment, automation and operational complexity. 4. Protect the recovery data A cloud disaster recovery plan depends on having usable recovery data. Backup copies should therefore be protected separately from production systems wherever possible. If an attacker can modify or delete production data and its backups using the same credentials or administrative path, the organization may have limited recovery options. The example organization uses multiple layers of protection: Regular backups Geographic separation Object immutability Restricted administrative access Separate credentials and security domains where appropriate Encryption Backup monitoring Periodic restore testing Immutable storage can be particularly important for cyber resilience because protected objects cannot be modified or deleted during the configured retention period. This provides an additional recovery option when production data has been encrypted, corrupted or intentionally deleted. 5. Establish disaster declaration criteria Teams need to know when an incident becomes a disaster recovery event. Example activation criteria might include: Primary infrastructure is expected to remain unavailable beyond the RTO A cloud region experiences a significant outage Production data has been corrupted Ransomware affects critical systems Backup or storage infrastructure has been compromised A major network failure prevents access to production services Physical infrastructure is unavailable following a facility incident The plan should identify who has authority to declare a disaster and initiate failover. For this example, the incident commander evaluates the situation with infrastructure, application and security teams before activating the DR process. 6. Assign disaster recovery roles A recovery plan should assign responsibilities before an incident occurs. RoleResponsibilityIncident commanderCoordinates the recovery and makes activation decisionsInfrastructure leadRestores compute, networking and cloud infrastructureStorage/backup leadValidates and restores protected dataApplication ownerVerifies application functionalitySecurity leadDetermines whether recovered systems and data are safeCommunications leadCoordinates internal and external communicationsExecutive sponsorProvides business-level decisions and escalation Alternates should also be assigned for critical roles. A disaster can occur outside normal business hours, during holidays or when individual team members are unavailable. 7. Follow the recovery sequence Once a disaster is declared, the organization begins its documented recovery runbook. Step 1: Assess the incident Determine: Which systems are affected? Is the problem operational or security-related? Is production data trustworthy? Are backup systems affected? Is the primary environment recoverable within the required RTO? For cyber incidents, teams may need to isolate compromised systems before beginning recovery. Step 2: Select a recovery point Identify the most recent verified recovery point that meets the required RPO. For a conventional infrastructure failure, this may simply be the latest synchronized copy. Following ransomware or data corruption, the organization may deliberately choose an earlier recovery point that predates the compromise. Step 3: Activate recovery infrastructure Provision or scale the secondary cloud environment. Automation can accelerate this stage by creating predefined compute, networking, storage and security resources rather than requiring administrators to configure them manually during an incident. Step 4: Restore data Restore or connect the required databases, object storage, file systems and application data. Validate: Data integrity Expected object or file counts Database consistency Permissions Encryption Application access Step 5: Restore applications Applications should be restored according to their documented dependencies and recovery priority. Foundational services such as networking, DNS, identity and storage may need to become operational before customer-facing applications can function correctly. Step 6: Validate the recovered environment Before redirecting users, test the environment. Validation might include: Authentication Database connectivity Read and write operations Application APIs Storage access Security controls Monitoring Logging Performance Recovery should be considered complete only when the service is functional and the recovered data has been validated. Step 7: Redirect production traffic Update DNS, load balancers or routing policies to send production traffic to the recovery environment. Continue monitoring the environment as traffic returns. Step 8: Communicate recovery status Provide stakeholders with information about: Services affected Current recovery status Expected availability Potential data impact Security considerations Next update Communication procedures should be documented in advance rather than created during an incident. 8. Plan for failback Disaster recovery does not end when the secondary environment becomes operational. Eventually, the organization may want to return workloads to the original environment or establish a new primary environment. The failback process should include: Rebuilding or validating the primary environment Establishing replication from the recovery environment Synchronizing changed data Testing the primary environment Scheduling the transition Redirecting traffic Verifying production services Re-establishing normal backup and replication processes Failback should be treated as a controlled migration rather than an automatic reversal of the failover process. Cloud disaster recovery plan template Organizations can use the following structure as a starting point for their own plan. Plan information Plan owner:Last reviewed:Next review:Scope:Primary environment:Recovery environment: Recovery objectives Critical service:Business owner:RTO:RPO:Recovery priority: Dependencies Application dependencies:Storage dependencies:Network dependencies:Identity dependencies:Third-party services: Data protection Backup frequency:Backup location:Replication method:Retention period:Immutability configuration:Encryption:Last successful restore test: Disaster activation Activation criteria:Person authorized to declare disaster:Incident commander:Escalation contacts: Recovery procedure Assess affected systems. Isolate compromised infrastructure when required. Determine the appropriate recovery point. Activate recovery infrastructure. Restore or connect protected data. Restore applications according to dependency order. Validate security and data integrity. Test application functionality. Redirect production traffic. Monitor the recovered environment. Communicate recovery status. Document actions and results. Failback procedure Primary environment validation:Data synchronization process:Failback owner:Traffic migration procedure:Post-failback validation: Testing Test frequency:Test scenario:Expected RTO:Actual recovery time:Expected RPO:Actual recovery point:Issues discovered:Remediation owner: How often should a cloud disaster recovery plan be tested? A DR plan should be tested regularly and whenever significant changes affect the environment. Testing can include several levels. A tabletop exercise walks teams through a simulated incident without changing production infrastructure. A restore test verifies that protected data can actually be recovered. A failover test activates recovery infrastructure and confirms that applications function in the secondary environment. A full disaster recovery exercise tests the broader process, including technical recovery, communications, decision-making and failback. Testing should measure actual recovery performance against documented RTO and RPO requirements. If an application has a two-hour RTO but requires six hours to recover during testing, either the recovery architecture needs to change or the business needs to reconsider its stated objective. Common cloud disaster recovery planning mistakes Treating backup as the entire DR plan Backups provide recovery data. They do not define application dependencies, recovery order, infrastructure provisioning, responsibilities, communications or failover procedures. Setting the same RTO and RPO for every workload Different systems have different business impacts. Prioritizing workloads allows organizations to direct recovery investments toward the services that need them most. Ignoring dependencies An application may be technically restored but unusable because DNS, authentication, networking or another service remains unavailable. Keeping recovery data accessible through production credentials Cyberattacks can target backup infrastructure as part of an effort to prevent recovery. Separating recovery data from production access paths can reduce this risk. Assuming replication replaces backup Replication can quickly reproduce changes between environments, including unwanted changes. Corruption or malicious deletion may therefore propagate to the replica. Maintaining independent recovery points provides another option when the most recent copy cannot be trusted. Failing to test restores A successful backup job confirms that data was written. Recovery testing determines whether the organization can actually restore the data and use it within the required timeframe. Building cyber resilience into cloud disaster recovery Traditional disaster recovery planning often focused on infrastructure outages. Current plans also need to consider situations where infrastructure remains operational but the data itself has become unavailable or untrustworthy. Ransomware is a good example. Simply failing over to another environment may not solve the problem if encrypted or corrupted data has already been replicated there. A cyber-resilient recovery strategy should therefore combine availability with data protection controls such as immutable storage, access separation, multiple recovery points and tested restore procedures. For object data in particular, immutability can preserve known recovery points by preventing protected objects from being changed or deleted during their retention period. Scality ARTESCA provides object storage designed for backup and cyber-resilience use cases, including data immutability capabilities that can support organizations building protected recovery repositories. The storage layer can form part of a broader disaster recovery architecture alongside backup software, cloud infrastructure and documented recovery processes. From cloud disaster recovery plan example to operational readiness A cloud disaster recovery plan should ultimately answer a practical set of questions: which systems must recover first, how quickly they need to return, how much data loss is acceptable, where trusted recovery data is stored and exactly how teams will restore services. The example above provides a starting framework, but the final plan should reflect each organization’s applications, dependencies, security requirements and business priorities. Regular testing is what turns those documented procedures into measurable recovery capability. By comparing actual recovery results against RTO and RPO targets, organizations can identify gaps and adjust their infrastructure, data protection strategy and recovery processes over time.
