What should a cloud disaster recovery plan include?
A cloud disaster recovery plan should define critical workloads, RTO/RPO targets, recovery topologies, identity/network dependencies, backup integrity testing, runbooks, and regular recovery exercises—not only the existence of snapshots.
Architecture checklist
Classify workloads and dependencies
Set explicit RTO/RPO targets
Design recovery regions and failover paths
Protect identity and DNS as first-class dependencies
Test restores and failover on a cadence
Backups are one dependency among many
Recovery needs identity, DNS, networking, secrets, infrastructure and application data to work together. Classifying those dependencies helps avoid a restore plan that brings back storage but leaves the business service inaccessible.
An exercise should record observed restore and recovery behavior against the chosen targets. Use the evidence to fix gaps, update runbooks and clarify who can authorize failover and return to normal operation.
Questions and answers
What should a cloud disaster recovery plan include?
A cloud disaster recovery plan should define critical workloads, RTO/RPO targets, recovery topologies, identity/network dependencies, backup integrity testing, runbooks, and regular recovery exercises—not only the existence of snapshots.
#How should we apply this to our environment?
Recovery needs identity, DNS, networking, secrets, infrastructure and application data to work together. Classifying those dependencies helps avoid a restore plan that brings back storage but leaves the business service inaccessible.
#What is a useful next step?
An exercise should record observed restore and recovery behavior against the chosen targets. Use the evidence to fix gaps, update runbooks and clarify who can authorize failover and return to normal operation.
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