---
# source: src/content/services/en/disaster-recovery.md
# route:  /en/services/disaster-recovery/
title: Disaster Recovery
group: infrastructure
audience: [enterprise, provider]
order: 7
tags: [backup-recovery, architecture, migration]
vendors: [hpe, veeam]
summary: RPO and RTO first, technology after. And a plan that has never been tested is a hope.
photoNeed: "A failover rehearsal in progress: two engineers at a screen with a runbook open beside them, mid-test rather than posed"
stub: false
draft: false
---

## What it protects against

Power failure, water, fire and earthquake, all rare and all possible. And ransomware, where
a properly thought-through disaster recovery plan is the difference between days and weeks.

And against hardware defects.

## Where we start

With two numbers. **RPO**, how much data loss is acceptable, and **RTO**, how long it may
take to be running again. Both have to be verified and signed off with the stakeholders,
because they carry the whole architecture and are not a technical quantity.

After that we classify and prioritise data and systems. Not everything needs the same
number, and trying to treat everything alike is the most common reason a plan becomes
unaffordable.

## How the design comes together

It accounts for the workloads in your datacentres and in your public clouds, along with
availability and performance requirements. Site choice feeds in too: where your datacentres
and cloud regions sit partly determines what is possible at all.

## Implementation and testing

We build on Zerto and Veeam. Both allow the real event to be rehearsed: virtual servers can
be started in a sandbox at the recovery site and checked without touching production.

We schedule those tests regularly, with the system administrators and the affected
departments. Without them it stays open whether recovery works inside the agreed time.

The recovery itself runs automated: order, network switch-over and system start are stored
in the tool and are not carried out by hand in an emergency. The goal is that the company
can keep working after the event.