AWS disaster recovery services that get tested
Most recovery plans are documents. They describe a failover nobody has run, against an environment that has drifted since it was written. The first real test is the outage.
We size RTO and RPO per workload and build the standby region in Terraform, so it can be provisioned on demand rather than maintained by hand. Databases and Kubernetes drive the design; stateless services follow.
Delivered standalone, or alongside AWS managed services and SRE. Then we run the drill and measure the result.
What's Included in Our AWS Disaster Recovery Services
Grouped by the phase they belong to, from first assessment through to the drill you run every quarter.
Business Impact Analysis
Workload-by-workload RTO and RPO targets agreed with the business, not assumed by engineering. Dependency mapping so recovery order is known before it matters.
Baseline Failover Drill
A drill against whatever plan exists today. Produces a measured starting RTO and RPO, and surfaces the stale AMIs, missing IAM roles, and undocumented dependencies that a paper review never finds.
DR Strategy Per Workload
Backup and restore, pilot light, warm standby, or active-active — chosen per workload against its RTO and RPO, so a reporting service is not funded like a payments API.
In practice: the multi-account foundation we designed for EyeControl.
Recovery Environment as Code
The standby region defined in Terraform — VPC, IAM, EKS, data stores, and secrets. Provisioned on demand rather than maintained by hand and left to drift.
In practice: Terraform provisioning that cut Tompkins Robotics onboarding time 80%.
Data Replication
Aurora global databases or cross-region read replicas for RDS, S3 Cross-Region Replication with versioning, and AWS Backup vaults with retention and encryption policies enforced by Config rules.
In practice: 12TB+ of MongoDB and Elasticsearch moved onto AWS for BatchService.
Traffic Cutover
Route 53 health checks and failover records with TTLs tuned for the target RTO. Connection draining, session handling, and a documented rollback path if the failover itself goes wrong.
Runbooks and Ownership
Written for the engineer on call at 3 AM, not for the auditor. Who declares an incident, what order services come back, and the exact commands — with observability wired in to confirm each step landed.
Quarterly Game Days
Scheduled drills against the real runbook, in the same spirit as stress testing for resilience. Every drill measures achieved RTO and RPO, and every gap is fixed in the Terraform code so the next drill is faster than the last.
In practice: 24×7 operations we run for OurShopee.
Top Challenges We Solve
The plan has never been run
A recovery document written two years ago, against an architecture that has changed twice since. Nobody knows whether it works, and the first test will be a real outage.
Our Solution
A baseline drill in week one against the existing plan, producing a measured RTO and RPO. Remediation is then prioritised against real gaps rather than a redesign from scratch.
Backups exist, recovery does not
Snapshots run nightly and land in a vault nobody has restored from. Backup is data; recovery is a provisioned environment, a cutover, and an owner. The gap between them is measured in hours.
Our Solution
The standby environment codified in Terraform and provisioned on demand, with restore paths tested per data store and the whole sequence written into a runbook.
Audit asks for evidence you cannot produce
SOC 2 and ISO 27001 want a tested recovery capability. Screenshots taken during audit week prove configuration on one day, not a capability you hold.
Our Solution
Drill records with measured RTO and RPO, retention and encryption enforced by Config rules, and configuration evidence that is the Terraform code itself.
How a Disaster Recovery Engagement Works
Five stages from first assessment to a drill you run every quarter without us.
Most engagements run four to eight weeks. Estates with many stateful services take longer, and we scope that during stage one rather than discovering it mid-project.
Assess & Measure
Business impact analysis, dependency mapping, and a baseline drill against the existing plan. You leave stage one knowing your real RTO, not the documented one.
Design
A strategy chosen per workload against agreed RTO and RPO targets, with the cost of each tier priced so the business can trade recovery speed against spend.
Build
Recovery environment codified in Terraform, replication configured per data store, and Route 53 failover wired with health checks.
Drill & Validate
A live failover against the real runbook. Achieved RTO and RPO are measured, gaps are fixed in code, and the drill is repeated until the numbers hold.
Operate & Rehearse
Quarterly game days, drift detection against the Terraform state, and audit evidence produced as a by-product rather than assembled before each review.
Ready to find out what your real RTO is?
Get a free DR readiness review — we drill your existing plan and give you a measured baseline.
Talk to a DR EngineerAWS Disaster Recovery by Workload Type
Recovery design changes with the data store. These are the five patterns that cover most AWS estates.
Relational Databases
Aurora global databases for sub-minute RPO, or cross-region read replicas for RDS where seconds of loss are acceptable. Promotion is scripted and rehearsed, never manual.
Kubernetes Workloads
The EKS cluster defined in Terraform and provisioned in the recovery region on demand, with GitOps reconciling workloads and persistent volumes replicated by snapshot policy.
Object Storage & Static Assets
S3 Cross-Region Replication with versioning and Object Lock where retention is a compliance requirement. CloudFront origins failover automatically on health check.
Stateful Services & Queues
MSK, ElastiCache, and self-managed stateful services — the hardest part of any DR design. Replication strategy and acceptable message loss are agreed explicitly, not discovered during failover.
Identity, Secrets & Networking
The layer most plans forget. IAM roles, KMS keys, Secrets Manager entries, and VPC peering all present in the recovery region before the drill, with security controls matching production.
Measurable Recovery Outcomes
What changes once recovery is codified and rehearsed rather than documented.
Measured RTO and RPO
A measured number from a real drill replaces an estimate in a document. Sales, legal, and auditors all get the same figure, and it holds up because it was observed.
No Standby Drift
Because the recovery region is provisioned from the same Terraform modules as production, it cannot silently fall behind. Drift is a failed plan, not a discovery during an outage.
Audit Evidence By Default
Drill records, retention policies, and encryption settings are produced by the process itself. Audit week stops being a scramble for screenshots.
