Cloud & Infrastructure · 5 min
Disaster recovery and business continuity
Disaster recovery is the set of procedures for restoring systems and data after a failure or incident; business continuity is the broader ability to keep the company operating during and after a critical event. Together they answer a fundamental question: what happens if the systems go down, and how quickly do you get back up and running?
Key points
- Disaster recovery (technical) and business continuity (organisational) are complementary.
- RTO and RPO define how much time and how much data you can lose.
- Backups must be isolated and tested periodically.
- A tested plan is worth more than a plan that is only written.
Two complementary concepts
Business continuity looks at the whole organisation: people, processes and technology, in order to keep operating in the event of a crisis. Disaster recovery is the technical part: how systems and data are recovered. You need both: restoring the servers is not enough if the business processes do not know how to continue.
RTO and RPO: the two key metrics
Two parameters guide planning: the RTO (Recovery Time Objective), that is, how long you can tolerate being down, and the RPO (Recovery Point Objective), that is, how much data you can afford to lose. Defining them for each critical system guides technical and investment choices.
- RTO: maximum acceptable downtime.
- RPO: maximum acceptable amount of lost data.
- Isolated and tested backups as the foundation of recovery.
A tested plan is worth more than a written one
A disaster recovery plan that has never been tested often fails when needed. Backups must be tested, procedures simulated, roles clarified. The cloud greatly facilitates continuity (replication, fast recovery), but even there the rule remains: what has not been tested is not reliable.
FAQ
Are disaster recovery and backup the same thing? +
No. A backup is a copy of the data; disaster recovery is the complete plan for restoring systems and operations. The backup is a component of disaster recovery.
Does even a small company need a plan? +
Yes, proportionate. Even a few measures — tested backups, clear roles, minimal procedures — make the difference between a manageable incident and a prolonged outage.
Does the cloud make disaster recovery unnecessary? +
No, but it greatly facilitates it with replication and fast recovery. You still need plans, tested backups and defined procedures.
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