Disaster Recovery

Purpose

Provide comprehensive guidance for designing disaster recovery (DR) strategies, implementing backup systems, and validating recovery procedures across databases, Kubernetes clusters, and cloud infrastructure. Enable teams to define RTO/RPO objectives, select appropriate backup tools, configure automated failover, and test DR capabilities through chaos engineering.

When to Use This Skill

Invoke this skill when:

• Defining recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO)
• Implementing database backups with point-in-time recovery (PITR)
• Setting up Kubernetes cluster backup and restore workflows
• Configuring cross-region replication for high availability
• Testing disaster recovery procedures through chaos experiments
• Meeting compliance requirements (GDPR, SOC 2, HIPAA)
• Automating backup monitoring and alerting
• Designing multi-cloud disaster recovery architectures

Core Concepts

RTO and RPO Fundamentals

Recovery Time Objective (RTO): Maximum acceptable downtime after a disaster before business impact becomes unacceptable.

Recovery Point Objective (RPO): Maximum acceptable data loss measured in time. Defines how far back in time recovery must reach.

Criticality Tiers:

• Tier 0 (Mission-Critical): RTO < 1 hour, RPO < 5 minutes
• Tier 1 (Production): RTO 1-4 hours, RPO 15-60 minutes
• Tier 2 (Important): RTO 4-24 hours, RPO 1-6 hours
• Tier 3 (Standard): RTO > 24 hours, RPO > 6 hours

3-2-1 Backup Rule

Maintain 3 copies of data on 2 different media types with 1 copy offsite.

Example implementation:

• Primary: Production database
• Secondary: Local backup storage
• Tertiary: Cloud backup (S3/GCS/Azure)

Backup Types

Full Backup: Complete copy of all data. Slowest to create, fastest to restore.

Incremental Backup: Only changes since last backup. Fastest to create, requires full + all incrementals to restore.

Differential Backup: Changes since last full backup. Balance between storage and restore speed.

Continuous Backup: Real-time or near-real-time backup via WAL/binlog archiving. Lowest RPO.

Quick Decision Framework

Step 1: Map RTO/RPO to Strategy

RTO < 1 hour, RPO < 5 min
→ Active-Active replication, continuous archiving, automated failover
→ Tools: Aurora Global DB, GCS Multi-Region, pgBackRest PITR
→ Cost: Highest

RTO 1-4 hours, RPO 15-60 min
→ Warm standby, incremental backups, automated failover
→ Tools: pgBackRest, WAL-G, RDS Multi-AZ
→ Cost: High

RTO 4-24 hours, RPO 1-6 hours
→ Daily full + incremental, cross-region backup
→ Tools: pgBackRest, Velero, Restic
→ Cost: Medium

RTO > 24 hours, RPO > 6 hours
→ Weekly full + daily incremental, single region
→ Tools: pg_dump, mysqldump, S3 versioning
→ Cost: Low

Step 2: Select Backup Tools by Use Case

Use Case	Primary Tool	Alternative	Key Feature
PostgreSQL production	pgBackRest	WAL-G	PITR, compression, multi-repo
MySQL production	Percona XtraBackup	WAL-G	Hot backups, incremental
MongoDB	Atlas Backup	mongodump	Continuous backup, PITR
Kubernetes cluster	Velero	ArgoCD + Git	PV snapshots, scheduling
File/object backup	Restic	Duplicity	Encryption, deduplication
Cross-region replication	Aurora Global DB	RDS Read Replica	Active-Active capable

Database Backup Patterns

PostgreSQL with pgBackRest

Use Case: Production PostgreSQL with < 5 minute RPO

Quick Start: See examples/postgresql/pgbackrest-config/

Configure continuous WAL archiving with full/differential/incremental backups to S3/GCS/Azure. Schedule weekly full, daily differential backups. Enable PITR with pgbackrest --stanza=main --delta restore.

Detailed Guide: references/database-backups.md#postgresql

MySQL with Percona XtraBackup

Use Case: MySQL production requiring hot backups

Quick Start: See examples/mysql/xtrabackup/

Perform full (xtrabackup --backup --parallel=4) and incremental backups with binary log archiving for PITR. Restore requires decompress, prepare, apply incrementals, and copy-back steps.

Detailed Guide: references/database-backups.md#mysql

MongoDB Backup

Quick Start: Use mongodump --gzip --numParallelCollections=4 for logical backups or MongoDB Atlas for continuous backup with PITR.

Detailed Guide: references/database-backups.md#mongodb

Kubernetes Disaster Recovery

Velero for Cluster Backups

Quick Start: velero install --provider aws --bucket my-backups

Configure scheduled backups (daily full, hourly production namespace) with PV snapshots. Restore with velero restore create --from-backup <name>. Support selective restore (namespace mappings, storage class remapping).

Examples: examples/kubernetes/velero/ Detailed Guide: references/kubernetes-dr.md

etcd Backup

Quick Start: ETCDCTL_API=3 etcdctl snapshot save /backups/etcd/snapshot.db

Create periodic etcd snapshots for control plane recovery. Restore requires cluster recreation with snapshot data.

Examples: examples/kubernetes/etcd/

Cloud-Specific DR Patterns

AWS

Key Services:

• RDS: Automated backups (30-day retention), PITR, Multi-AZ
• Aurora Global DB: Cross-region active-passive with automatic failover
• S3 CRR: Cross-region replication with 15-min SLA (Replication Time Control)

Examples: examples/cloud/aws/ Detailed Guide: references/cloud-dr-patterns.md#aws

GCP

Key Services:

• Cloud SQL: PITR with 7-day transaction logs, 30-day retention
• GCS Multi-Regional: Automatic replication across 100+ mile separation
• Regional HA: Synchronous replication within region

Detailed Guide: references/cloud-dr-patterns.md#gcp

Azure

Key Services:

• Azure Backup: VM backups with flexible retention (daily/weekly/monthly/yearly)
• Azure Site Recovery: Cross-region VM replication with 4-hour app-consistent snapshots
• Geo-Redundant Storage: Automatic replication to secondary region

Detailed Guide: references/cloud-dr-patterns.md#azure

Cross-Region Replication Patterns

Pattern	RTO	RPO	Cost	Use Case
Active-Active	< 1 min	< 1 min	High	Both regions serve traffic
Active-Passive	15-60 min	5-15 min	Medium	Standby for failover
Pilot Light	10-30 min	5-15 min	Low	Minimal secondary infra
Warm Standby	5-15 min	5-15 min	Med-High	Scaled-down secondary

Implementation Examples:

• PostgreSQL streaming replication (Active-Passive)
• Aurora Global Database (Active-Active)
• ASG scale-up automation (Pilot Light)

Detailed Guide: references/cross-region-replication.md

Testing Disaster Recovery

Chaos Engineering

Purpose: Validate DR procedures through controlled failure injection.

Test Scenarios:

• Database failover (stop primary, measure promotion time)
• Region failure (block network, trigger DNS failover)
• Kubernetes recovery (delete namespace, restore from Velero)

Tools: Chaos Mesh, Gremlin, Litmus, Toxiproxy

Examples: examples/chaos/db-failover-test.sh, examples/chaos/region-failure-test.sh Detailed Guide: references/chaos-engineering.md

Automated DR Drills

Run Monthly Tests:

./scripts/dr-drill.sh --environment staging --test-type full
./scripts/test-restore.sh --backup latest --target staging-db

Compliance and Retention

Regulation	Retention	Requirements
GDPR	1-7 years	EU data residency, right to erasure
SOC 2	1 year+	Secure deletion, access controls
HIPAA	6 years	Encryption, PHI protection
PCI DSS	3mo-1yr	Secure deletion, quarterly reviews

Implement with S3/GCS lifecycle policies: 30d→Standard-IA, 90d→Glacier, 365d→Deep Archive

Immutable backups: Use S3 Object Lock or Azure Immutable Blob Storage for ransomware protection.

Detailed Guide: references/compliance-retention.md

Monitoring and Alerting

Key Metrics: Backup success rate, duration, time since last backup, RPO breach, storage utilization

Prometheus Alerts: VeleroBackupFailed, VeleroBackupTooOld, BackupSizeTrend

Validation Scripts:

./scripts/validate-backup.sh --backup latest --verify-integrity
./scripts/check-retention.sh --report-violations
./scripts/generate-dr-report.sh --format pdf

Automation and Runbooks

Automate Backup Schedules: Cron for pgBackRest (weekly full, daily differential), Velero schedules (K8s)

DR Runbook Steps: Detect failure → Verify secondary → Promote → Update DNS → Notify → Document

Detailed Guide: references/runbook-automation.md

Integration with Other Skills

Related Skills

Prerequisites:

• infrastructure-as-code: Provision backup infrastructure, DR regions
• kubernetes-operations: K8s cluster setup for Velero
• secret-management: Backup encryption keys, credentials

Parallel Skills:

• databases-postgresql: PostgreSQL configuration and operations
• databases-mysql: MySQL configuration and operations
• observability: Backup monitoring, alerting
• security-hardening: Secure backup storage, access control

Consumer Skills:

• incident-management: Invoke DR procedures during incidents
• compliance-frameworks: Meet regulatory requirements

Skill Chaining Example

infrastructure-as-code → secret-management → disaster-recovery → observability
       ↓                        ↓                   ↓                ↓
  Create S3 buckets      Store encryption     Configure backups   Monitor jobs
  Provision databases    keys in Vault        Set up replication  Alert failures
  Setup VPCs             Manage credentials   Test DR drills      Track metrics

Best Practices

Do

✓ Test restores regularly (monthly for critical systems) ✓ Automate backup monitoring and alerting ✓ Encrypt backups at rest and in transit ✓ Implement 3-2-1 backup rule ✓ Define and measure RTO/RPO ✓ Run chaos experiments to validate DR ✓ Document recovery procedures ✓ Store backups in different regions ✓ Use immutable backups for ransomware protection ✓ Automate DR testing in CI/CD

Don't

✗ Assume backups work without testing ✗ Store all backups in single region ✗ Skip retention policy definition ✗ Forget to encrypt sensitive data ✗ Rely solely on cloud provider backups ✗ Ignore backup monitoring ✗ Perform backups only from primary database under high load ✗ Store encryption keys with backups

Reference Documentation

• RTO/RPO Planning: references/rto-rpo-planning.md
• Database Backups: references/database-backups.md
• Kubernetes DR: references/kubernetes-dr.md
• Cloud DR Patterns: references/cloud-dr-patterns.md
• Cross-Region Replication: references/cross-region-replication.md
• Chaos Engineering: references/chaos-engineering.md
• Compliance Requirements: references/compliance-retention.md
• Runbook Automation: references/runbook-automation.md

Examples

• Runbooks: examples/runbooks/database-failover.md, examples/runbooks/region-failover.md
• PostgreSQL: examples/postgresql/pgbackrest-config/, examples/postgresql/walg-config/
• MySQL: examples/mysql/xtrabackup/, examples/mysql/walg/
• Kubernetes: examples/kubernetes/velero/, examples/kubernetes/etcd/
• Cloud: examples/cloud/aws/, examples/cloud/gcp/, examples/cloud/azure/
• Chaos: examples/chaos/db-failover-test.sh, examples/chaos/region-failure-test.sh

Scripts

• scripts/validate-backup.sh: Verify backup integrity
• scripts/test-restore.sh: Automated restore testing
• scripts/dr-drill.sh: Run full DR drill
• scripts/check-retention.sh: Verify retention policies
• scripts/generate-dr-report.sh: Compliance reporting