What is a disaster recovery plan?
A disaster recovery plan is a documented set of procedures for restoring technology services after a major disruption — infrastructure, applications, data, networks, identity systems, backup systems, recovery locations, technical responsibilities and the return to normal operation.
NIST defines a disaster recovery plan as a written plan for recovering information systems at an alternate facility following major hardware failure, software failure or facility destruction. Modern plans may also cover recovery into cloud infrastructure, a second data centre, replacement hardware or a rebuilt local platform.
The document should be specific enough that another qualified person can follow it when the normal administrator, building, network or management system is unavailable.
Disaster recovery versus backup
A company may have complete backups and still lack replacement infrastructure, recovery credentials, network configuration, dependency information, recovery priorities or decision authority. Backups are an essential input to disaster recovery — they are not the complete plan.
Disaster recovery versus business continuity
Disaster recovery focuses mainly on restoring technology. Business continuity focuses on keeping essential organizational functions operating during disruption — manual workarounds, alternative office space, emergency staffing, supplier arrangements, customer communication. The disaster recovery plan should support the wider continuity plan.
Start with a business impact analysis
A disaster recovery plan should not treat every system as equally urgent. A business impact analysis identifies essential business functions, supporting systems, impact of downtime and data loss, dependencies, acceptable recovery times, and required people and suppliers.
NIST guidance places business impact analysis near the beginning of contingency planning because it helps determine system requirements, priorities and recovery strategies.
For each workload, ask: what process stops if this system fails? When does the outage become serious? Which other services depend on it? What minimum functionality must return first?
What events should the plan cover?
A useful plan is built around loss of capability, not just named disasters. Create recovery procedures for capabilities that may be lost — production compute unavailable, primary storage unavailable, normal credentials untrusted, local backups unavailable, primary location inaccessible — rather than a separate plan for every imaginable event.
The maximum acceptable gap between the latest usable recovery point and the disruption — acceptable data loss in time.
The maximum acceptable delay between disruption and restoration of usable service — acceptable downtime.
AWS recommends defining RPO and RTO for each workload according to business impact and risk, then selecting a recovery strategy capable of meeting those objectives.
Recovery tiers and dependencies
Recovery tiers simplify planning by grouping systems with similar requirements.
Recovery tiers should reflect dependencies as well as business importance — a low-visibility DNS or identity server may need to recover before a more visible application.
Map service dependencies
Applications rarely operate alone. Create a dependency map for each critical service — identity, DNS, network routing, storage, databases, secrets, certificates, external APIs. If the database recovers before DNS and identity, the service may still be unusable. Recovery sequencing should follow these relationships.
Roles, authority and activation criteria
A plan should name roles rather than depending only on individual people.
Each role should have a primary contact, backup contact, authority, required access and escalation path. Do not assume the normal system administrator will always be reachable.
Define activation criteria
State when normal incident handling becomes disaster recovery — the expected outage exceeds the approved RTO, production infrastructure cannot be restored normally, the primary site is unavailable, or ransomware affects production. Also define who can activate the plan. Avoid vague wording such as "activate when necessary."
Choosing a recovery strategy
The recovery strategy should match the workload's RPO, RTO, risk and budget.
AWS describes backup and restore, pilot light, warm standby and multi-site approaches as progressively more prepared recovery strategies, with different cost, complexity, RPO and RTO characteristics. No architecture guarantees recovery without regular testing.
Recovery environment, credentials and documentation
Design the recovery environment
Document where workloads will be restored — spare hardware, another cluster, a remote data centre, hosted virtualization, or public cloud. For the recovery environment, document available compute, storage, network ranges, connectivity, firewall rules, identity method, DNS strategy and capacity limits. A recovery site that cannot run the critical workload at minimum capacity is not a usable recovery site.
Protect recovery credentials
The normal identity environment may be unavailable or compromised during a disaster. Protect backup administrator accounts, cloud emergency accounts, hypervisor credentials, encryption keys and password manager recovery information — stored outside the systems they are intended to recover, using separate accounts and multifactor authentication.
Protect the recovery documentation
The only copy of the disaster recovery plan should not be stored on the production file server. Maintain controlled copies in more than one location so the plan remains available when the primary network is down, single sign-on is unavailable, or the normal administrator account is locked.
Build recovery runbooks
The main plan provides coordination; a runbook provides detailed technical instructions for one recovery task — restore the backup server, rebuild the cluster, restore identity, recover DNS. Each runbook should contain purpose, preconditions, required access, ordered steps, validation checks, expected duration, rollback steps and escalation point.
A practical Proxmox disaster recovery plan
Consider a small environment with three Proxmox VE nodes, local ZFS or shared storage, one local Proxmox Backup Server, a remote backup copy, and identity, database, application and file server VMs. A suggested recovery priority sequence:
CISA recommends maintaining offline encrypted backups, testing them in disaster recovery scenarios, and restoring critical services according to prioritized recovery plans while avoiding reinfection of clean systems.
The PBS backups supply the VM and container data. The disaster recovery plan supplies the rest of the process — see the Proxmox Backup Server guide for the backup side.
Minimum viable recovery and returning to normal
The first recovery goal does not always need to be complete normal operation. Define a minimum viable service — for example, an online store may initially require customer authentication, product catalogue, order placement and payment processing, while temporarily operating without analytics, recommendations or historical reporting. Restoring a smaller service footprint can shorten the effective RTO.
Communication during recovery
Technical restoration and communication should run in parallel. Define internal status channels, an employee notification method, a customer status page and supplier escalation contacts. Use timestamps and clearly separate confirmed information from assumptions.
Returning to normal operation
Recovery does not end when the application first becomes available. Confirm data consistency, monitor performance, reconnect integrations, rotate emergency credentials, and return traffic gradually. If service was recovered at an alternate site, plan the return to the preferred environment — this process is sometimes called failback, and should be tested and approved rather than improvised.
Testing the plan
Testing should progress from discussion to technical recovery: documentation review, tabletop exercise, component recovery, parallel recovery, failover exercise, and full recovery exercise.
AWS recommends regularly testing disaster recovery implementation and failover to confirm that recovery environments operate correctly and that RPO and RTO are met.
Disaster recovery plan template
A complete plan document should cover ten sections: document control, purpose and scope, activation criteria, recovery objectives, system inventory, dependency map, recovery strategy, roles and contacts, recovery procedures, and testing and maintenance.
Common disaster recovery planning mistakes
A backup platform cannot decide recovery priority, communication, authority or application validation. Document the full process.
Applications may fail because identity, DNS, storage or databases aren't available yet. Map dependencies.
Objectives that have never been measured are assumptions. Run timed recovery tests.
The plan may disappear during the incident it was created to manage. Keep protected independent copies.
That person may be unavailable. Assign backup roles and document procedures.
Encrypted backups and cloud systems may be inaccessible without protected keys and accounts. Test emergency access.
Attempting to recover all systems at once creates conflict and wastes limited capacity. Use recovery tiers.
A reduced service may return much faster than the complete environment. Document both targets.
A VM restore does not test decision making, dependencies, communication or recovery order. Run broader exercises.
Infrastructure, staff, suppliers and applications change. Review after major changes and every exercise.
Temporary recovery systems may become permanent through neglect. Document the return to normal operation.
A server that boots may still have inconsistent data or missing security controls. Use agreed validation criteria.
Disaster recovery plan checklist
0 / 34Frequently asked questions
A disaster recovery plan is a documented process for restoring technology services, applications, data and supporting infrastructure after a major disruption.
It should include scope, activation criteria, recovery priorities, RPO, RTO, system inventory, dependencies, roles, backup locations, recovery infrastructure, technical runbooks, communication, validation, testing and failback.
No. A backup plan explains how data copies are created and protected. A disaster recovery plan explains how complete services will be restored and returned to operation.
Disaster recovery focuses mainly on restoring technology. Business continuity covers the wider process of keeping essential organizational functions operating during disruption.
A named plan owner should coordinate maintenance, but workload owners, technical teams, security, management, communications and business representatives should contribute.
Review documentation regularly, test technical components throughout the year, conduct tabletop exercises periodically, and run a broader recovery exercise according to workload importance and organizational risk.
RPO defines acceptable data loss measured in time. RTO defines acceptable downtime before usable service must be restored.
No. High availability can reduce interruption from selected failures, but it may not protect against corruption, ransomware, administrator error, site loss or replicated deletion.
A runbook contains detailed technical steps for a specific recovery task, including prerequisites, credentials, commands, validation, timing, rollback and escalation.
It is the smallest set of functions required to resume an essential service. Additional features and capacity can be restored after the core service is operating.
Protect VM and container backups on separate infrastructure, maintain an offsite or protected copy, document replacement cluster configuration, prioritize foundational VMs, protect encryption keys, and test restoration to alternate hardware.
Yes. The plan should address untrusted credentials, unavailable local backups, selection of a clean recovery point, isolated restoration, credential resets, validation and controlled reconnection.
Keep controlled copies in multiple locations, including at least one location that remains available when the production network, identity platform or office is unavailable.
Document the failure, identify the cause, assign corrective actions, update the plan or architecture, and schedule a retest.
Build a plan another person can execute
A disaster recovery plan should reduce uncertainty during the worst part of an outage. It should identify recovery priorities, protect the required credentials, show the dependencies, provide tested procedures, and give authorized people a clear sequence to follow.
Start with the most important service. Define its RPO and RTO, map what it depends on, identify the usable backup copy, choose the recovery location, write the runbook, restore the service in an isolated test, and measure the result. Then fix every assumption that failed.