IT Glossary · Data Protection

Disaster Recovery (DR) — IT Business Continuity Planning

Disaster Recovery is the plan and technology that allows a business to restore its IT systems and data after a major disruption — ransomware attack, server failure, fire, or flood — and resume operations within a defined timeframe.

IT Disaster Recovery (DR) encompasses the policies, tools, and procedures to enable recovery of IT infrastructure and data following a disruptive event. A DR plan defines what systems must be recovered, in what order, within what timeframe (Recovery Time Objective — RTO), and with what maximum data loss (Recovery Point Objective — RPO). Modern DR leverages cloud infrastructure — replicating servers and databases to AWS or Azure so that in the event of a physical disaster, operations can be resumed from the cloud within hours rather than days or weeks waiting for new hardware.

RTO (Recovery Time Objective): How quickly you must restore IT operations after a disaster — e.g., "we must be back online within 4 hours."
RPO (Recovery Point Objective): The maximum acceptable amount of data loss — e.g., "we can tolerate losing at most 1 hour of transactions."
Backup Strategy: The foundation of DR — regular, tested backups stored offsite (cloud) ensure you have data to restore from.
Failover Environment: A standby infrastructure (cloud DR site) that can take over operations when the primary environment fails.

Related terms: RTO, RPO, Business Continuity Plan, Cloud Backup, High Availability, Failover

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between backup and disaster recovery?

Backup is copying data. Disaster Recovery is the complete plan and infrastructure to restore operations — including servers, applications, network configuration, and data. You need backup as a component of DR, but backup alone is not DR. Without DR planning, restoring from backup can take days or weeks.

How much does cloud disaster recovery cost for an Indian business?

Cloud DR (using AWS or Azure as a DR site) for a small Indian business (5–10 servers) typically costs ₹15,000–₹60,000/month in cloud infrastructure plus setup costs. This is a fraction of what it would cost to rebuild from scratch after a major incident.

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