Designing multi-region disaster recovery on AWS
A practical AWS disaster-recovery case study covering recovery objectives, Aurora Global Database, S3 durability, monitoring, runbooks and recovery testing.
The business problem
Business-critical platforms need recovery plans that distinguish durable source data, processed data and running services. A credible design must state what can be lost, how long recovery may take and how the organisation knows the plan works.
Architecture and approach
- Defined recovery-point and recovery-time objectives by data and service type
- Used multi-region application capability with controlled DNS failover
- Used Aurora Global Database for cross-region database resilience
- Protected raw data in versioned S3 with lifecycle-based archival
- Added replication monitoring, backup controls and recovery runbooks
Operational considerations
Replication is not a backup, and a backup is not a recovery plan. The design therefore combined replicated service capability with snapshots, durable source data, monitored recovery dependencies and scheduled exercises.
Outcome
The platform gained defined recovery paths, measurable controls and an evidence-based testing cycle supporting operational resilience and ISO 27001 governance.
Lesson
Start with business recovery requirements, then choose AWS services. Recovery architecture becomes easier to defend when every component maps to a specific failure scenario and test.