How do organizations handle database recovery in DR?

Organizations handle database recovery in disaster recovery (DR) by combining backups, replication, and failover strategies to restore data and maintain availability. The process typically starts with regular backups stored in geographically separate locations. For example, a company might use full daily backups supplemented by incremental backups every hour. These backups are often stored in offsite cloud storage or secondary data centers. Replication techniques like log shipping or synchronous/asynchronous database mirroring are also used to maintain near-real-time copies of the database in a standby environment. Tools like AWS RDS Multi-AZ deployments or SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Groups automate replication to minimize data loss (measured by Recovery Point Objective, or RPO) and ensure quick recovery (Recovery Time Objective, or RTO).

When a disaster occurs—such as a server failure, data corruption, or regional outage—the organization activates its DR plan. This involves failing over to the standby database, which is already synchronized with the primary system. For instance, cloud-based services like Azure SQL Database offer geo-restore features that rebuild databases from backups in a different region. If replication isn’t fully up-to-date, administrators might need to apply transaction logs to fill gaps. Validation steps, such as checksum verification or consistency tests, ensure the recovered database is intact. In cases where backups are the only option, organizations restore the most recent backup and replay transaction logs to reach the latest consistent state. This process is often guided by runbooks that outline step-by-step recovery procedures.

Testing and maintenance are critical to ensuring DR readiness. Organizations conduct regular DR drills to simulate failures and validate recovery steps. For example, a team might intentionally shut down a primary database cluster to test automated failover to a secondary site. Backups are periodically tested for integrity—tools like pgBackRest for PostgreSQL or Oracle RMAN can validate backup files. Monitoring tools track replication lag and backup success rates, alerting teams to issues before they escalate. Documentation is updated to reflect changes in infrastructure, such as new database schemas or dependencies. Without consistent testing, backups might be incomplete, replication could fall behind, or configuration mismatches could delay recovery. A well-maintained DR strategy balances automation with human oversight to address edge cases and ensure resilience.