DR Planning and Testing
DR only works if it’s documented, practiced, and kept up to date.
This page covers how to structure your DR strategy, what to put in DR runbooks, and how often to test so your team can execute when a disaster happens.
DR Strategy
Section titled “DR Strategy”Document the basics in a single place (a DR plan or runbook index):
- RTO and RPO — Per system or tier, as applicable. See RTO and RPO.
- Runbooks — Links to backup restore, failover, failback, and any other DR procedures.
- Roles — Who declares a disaster, who executes failover, who communicates. Align with Incident lifecycle roles (IC, OL, CL).
- Criteria — When to declare a disaster and trigger failover vs when to pursue other mitigation.
Keep it short and scannable. The detail lives in the runbooks.
DR Runbooks
Section titled “DR Runbooks”DR runbooks are step-by-step procedures for known scenarios: “Restore database from backup,” “Fail over to standby region,” “Fail back to primary.”
For structure and what makes runbooks effective, see Runbooks and Playbooks.
Include:
- Prerequisites (access, tools, credentials).
- Step-by-step instructions with verification points.
- Rollback or abort conditions if something goes wrong.
- Contact or escalation info.
Link DR runbooks from your incident playbooks so on-call can find them quickly.
Testing Cadence
Section titled “Testing Cadence”| Test type | Cadence | What it validates |
|---|---|---|
| Backup restore | Quarterly (minimum) | Backups are usable; restore time meets RTO |
| Failover drill | Annually or when architecture changes | Standby works; runbook is accurate; team knows the steps |
| Full DR exercise | Annually (or as business requires) | End-to-end: declare, failover, verify, communicate, failback |
Adjust for criticality. High-availability systems may test failover quarterly; less critical systems may test restore only.
Game-Days and Fire-Drills
Section titled “Game-Days and Fire-Drills”Game-days are scheduled exercises where you simulate a disaster and walk through the runbooks.
They validate that runbooks work, tools are accessible, and people know what to do.
- Phase 0 (Preparation) in the Incident lifecycle calls out “regular game-days & tool fire-drills.”
- Run a drill for a high-impact scenario (e.g. “database failover” or “full region failover”) and update the runbook when you find gaps.
- See Runbooks and Playbooks — “Connection To Game-Days and Fire-Drills.”
Post-DR Review
Section titled “Post-DR Review”After a real disaster or a major DR test, run a Post-incident review. Capture what worked, what didn’t, and what to change in runbooks, architecture, or process.
Turn lessons into action items so the next disaster goes better.
Chaos Engineering and DR Testing
Section titled “Chaos Engineering and DR Testing”Chaos engineering is about injecting controlled failures to validate resilience. DR testing is a form of that—you’re validating that your system (and your runbooks) can recover from a major failure.
Use chaos experiments in pre-prod to test failover and recovery paths before relying on them in production. For structured team exercises beyond DR-specific drills, see Game-Days and Drills.