Guide
What to Include in a Disaster Recovery Plan
Disaster recovery planning defines what matters most, how it is backed up, who owns recovery steps, and how restore processes are tested.
By Austin Hadley, Founder and Chief Executive Officer Published Updated
Disaster recovery planning defines what matters most, how it is backed up, who owns recovery steps, and how restore processes are tested.
Critical systems
Start with the business processes that must continue or resume, then map the technology that supports them. Include applications, servers, cloud services, identity providers, networks, internet circuits, devices, vendors, facilities, and the people with essential knowledge. Record owners and dependencies so the recovery order reflects how systems actually work together.
Classify the impact of an outage in plain business terms: safety, customer service, revenue, contractual obligations, privacy, operations, and reputation. This prevents the plan from treating every system as equally urgent and helps leadership approve realistic recovery priorities.
- Maintain a current inventory with system owner, technical owner, location, and vendor contact.
- Document identity, DNS, network, power, data, and third-party dependencies.
- Identify manual workarounds and the maximum practical duration for each.
Backups
For each data set, define what is backed up, how often, where copies are stored, how long they are retained, and who can restore them. Keep recovery credentials and instructions available when primary identity or documentation systems are down. At least one protected copy should resist deletion or encryption through ordinary production access.
A successful backup job is not proof that recovery will work. Monitor job failures, capacity, retention, and unauthorized changes, then perform restores into an isolated location. Verify application consistency and usable records, not only that files can be downloaded.
- Include cloud data, configurations, encryption keys, certificates, and software needed for restoration.
- Separate backup administration from routine production accounts where practical.
- Record restore duration and evidence from recurring tests.
Recovery priorities
A recovery time objective describes the target time to restore a service. A recovery point objective describes the acceptable amount of data loss measured in time. Set both with business owners, then compare them with the actual capabilities of backups, vendors, staffing, connectivity, and replacement equipment.
Write recovery runbooks in dependency order. Include the decision to activate the plan, communications, access requirements, commands or procedures, validation, escalation, and return to normal operations. Assign primary and alternate owners so the plan does not depend on one unavailable person.
- Approve recovery objectives based on business impact and achievable cost.
- List prerequisites and acceptance checks for every recovery step.
- Keep contact lists and essential instructions available outside affected systems.
Testing
Use several forms of testing. A tabletop exercise checks decisions and communications; a technical restore validates data and procedures; a controlled failover tests a working service. Choose a safe scope, define success criteria, and avoid assuming that one type of exercise proves every part of the plan.
Record actual recovery time, data loss, errors, undocumented dependencies, and decisions. Give every finding an owner and due date, update the runbook, and retest material corrections. Repeat tests after major application, infrastructure, vendor, or staffing changes.
- Schedule exercises according to system criticality and rate of change.
- Include business users in validation, not only infrastructure administrators.
- Close the exercise with tracked improvements and an approved updated plan.