DR strategy planning and implementation

Question

The project is in initial phase, where have to work in DR strategy and implementation, could you please suggest what questions we have to ask from customer to right align on the expectations and get the task of DR planning and implementation delivered.

Takahiro Nozaki · Accepted Answer

The following questions for customer interviews—essential for formulating a DR strategy—have been organized in alignment with the Reliability pillar of the Well-Architected Framework.

1. Confirming Business Requirements and Priorities
* What is the maximum acceptable time to resume operations if the system goes down? (RTO: Recovery Time Objective)
* What is the maximum acceptable amount of data loss? (RPO: Recovery Point Objective)
* What is the estimated business loss per hour resulting from a system outage?
* Which systems or functions are the most business-critical?
* Are there any systems that can tolerate downtime ranging from a few hours to a few days?
* Are there any regulatory or compliance requirements regarding data retention or system availability?

2. Understanding the Current State
* How are backups currently performed? (Frequency, retention period, storage location)
* Have there been any system failures or outages in the past? If so, what was the impact and how long did recovery take?

3. DR Strategy Direction
* Is it necessary to prepare for a region-wide failure, or is handling a single Availability Zone (AZ) failure sufficient?
* Regarding the trade-off between cost and recovery speed, what is your expected budget range for the following approaches?

- Backup & Restore (Lowest cost; RTO: hours)
- Pilot Light (Minimal always-on infrastructure; RTO: tens of minutes)
- Warm Standby (Scaled-down always-on infrastructure; RTO: minutes)
- Multi-Site Active/Active (Highest cost; RTO: near-zero)

4. Operations and Organization
* Who decides when to initiate DR procedures in the event of a failure? Is there a 24/7 support structure in place?
* What is the envisioned approval workflow for initiating DR?
* How frequently do you wish to conduct DR plan testing (e.g., Game Days)?
* Do you prefer to perform the DR failover process manually or via automation?

5. Data and Security
* Does the data include personal or confidential information? Are equivalent security requirements needed for the DR site?
* Are there any restrictions regarding the geographic location where data is stored? (e.g., restrictions to specific regions)

aws-network · Answer

Hello Team,

Would you please help to suggest some practical suggestions to interact with customer and ask questions before starting this project?

Riku_Kobayashi · Answer

Hello.

I believe that by initially asking customers about the information provided in AWS re:Post Agent's AI-generated responses, you can cover a significant portion of their disaster recovery requirements.  
I think it's best to confirm the system configuration the client envisions before the project starts.  
Based on that structure, I think it will be easier to proceed with the project if you consider which parts require disaster recovery measures and which do not.

By the way, if you're designing a disaster recovery (DR) on AWS, I recommend reading the Well-Architected Framework documentation.  
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/reliability-pillar/welcome.html  
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/disaster-recovery-workloads-on-aws/disaster-recovery-workloads-on-aws.html

re:Post Agent · Answer

When planning and implementing a disaster recovery (DR) strategy for a customer, you should ask questions that help you understand their recovery requirements and constraints. Here are the key questions to align expectations:

**Recovery Objectives:**
- What is your maximum acceptable downtime (Recovery Time Objective - RTO)?
- What is your maximum acceptable data loss (Recovery Point Objective - RPO)?
- Are these objectives consistent across all workloads, or do different workloads have different requirements?

**Business and Cost Considerations:**
- What is your budget or cost limit for implementing the DR solution?
- What are the business impacts of downtime and data loss for each workload?
- Do you have a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) that defines these requirements?

**Current Architecture:**
- What are the critical components and resources of your workload?
- What data needs to be protected and replicated?
- Are you currently using multiple Availability Zones within your AWS Region?
- What dependencies exist between different components of your workload?

**Recovery Region Preferences:**
- Which AWS Region would you prefer as your recovery region?
- Do you have any compliance or data residency requirements that affect region selection?

**Operational Capabilities:**
- Do you prefer automated or manual failover procedures?
- What is your team's experience with DR testing and execution?
- How frequently can you test your DR procedures?

Understanding these factors will help you recommend the appropriate DR strategy—whether backup and restore, pilot light, warm standby, or multi-region active-active—that balances their RTO/RPO requirements with cost and complexity constraints.  
**Sources**  
[REL13-BP02 Use defined recovery strategies to meet the recovery objectives - AWS Well-Architected Framework (2022-03-31)](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/2022-03-31/framework/rel_planning_for_recovery_disaster_recovery.html)  
[REL13-BP02 Use defined recovery strategies to meet the recovery objectives - AWS Well-Architected Framework](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/framework/rel_planning_for_recovery_disaster_recovery.html)  
[REL13-BP02 Use defined recovery strategies to meet the recovery objectives - Reliability Pillar](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/reliability-pillar/rel_planning_for_recovery_disaster_recovery.html)

DR strategy planning and implementation

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