Disaster Recovery & Backup Strategies Cheat Sheet
Explains RTO/RPO, common DR strategies from backup-restore to multi-site active-active, and backup best practices in the cloud.
2 PagesIntermediateFeb 8, 2026
Key Metrics
Metrics used to define disaster recovery objectives.
- RTO (Recovery Time Objective)- Maximum acceptable time to restore service after an outage
- RPO (Recovery Point Objective)- Maximum acceptable amount of data loss, measured in time since last backup
- MTTR- Mean Time To Recovery, the average time taken to restore service
- SLA- Service Level Agreement defining committed uptime and response guarantees
DR Strategies (cost vs recovery speed)
Common patterns ordered from cheapest/slowest to most expensive/fastest.
- Backup and Restore- Lowest cost, highest RTO/RPO; regularly back up data, restore on demand
- Pilot Light- Minimal core infrastructure always running in DR region, scaled up during failover
- Warm Standby- Scaled-down but fully functional copy of production running in DR region
- Multi-Site Active-Active- Full production capacity running simultaneously in multiple regions, near-zero RTO/RPO
AWS Backup Plan (CLI)
Creating a scheduled backup plan with a retention rule.
bash
aws backup create-backup-plan --backup-plan '{ "BackupPlanName": "daily-backups", "Rules": [{ "RuleName": "DailyRule", "TargetBackupVaultName": "Default", "ScheduleExpression": "cron(0 5 * * ? *)", "Lifecycle": { "DeleteAfterDays": 30 } }]}'
Backup Best Practices
Guidelines to make backups actually useful in a crisis.
- 3-2-1 Rule- 3 copies of data, on 2 different media types, 1 stored offsite/off-region
- Immutable Backups- Write-once storage (e.g. S3 Object Lock) to protect against ransomware deleting backups
- Test Restores- Regularly perform actual restore drills, not just verify backup jobs completed
- Cross-Region Replication- Replicate backups to a separate region to survive a full region outage
Pro Tip
A backup you have never restored from is not a backup — schedule quarterly restore drills and measure actual RTO against your target, since untested backups routinely fail silently.
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