Disaster recovery infrastructure reduces the time between an outage and a return to normal operation, and limits how much data is lost when failures occur. The infrastructure side covers backup automation, failover routing, database resilience, and the cross-region architecture that makes recovery possible at all.
Strategy decisions – what recovery time is acceptable, what data loss is tolerable, which workloads are critical – belong to the business. The infrastructure work translates those decisions into AWS configuration and Terraform that behaves as expected when it is needed.
Backup and Data Protection
Centralised backup management using AWS Backup, covering EC2, RDS, EFS, DynamoDB, and S3 across accounts and regions from a single policy framework. Backup plans define frequency, retention, and vault destination. Cross-region backup copies ensure recovery is possible even if an entire AWS region is unavailable.
S3 cross-region replication for object storage, configured with appropriate replication rules, IAM policies, and destination bucket configuration. Versioning and lifecycle rules sit alongside replication to manage storage costs and retention.
Database Resilience
RDS Multi-AZ deployments provide automatic failover within a region, with a synchronous standby replica maintained by AWS. Failover is automatic and DNS-based, requiring no manual intervention.
For cross-region database recovery, RDS automated backups copied to a secondary region provide a defined recovery point. Recovery time depends on database size and the restore process, which is established as part of the infrastructure build.
DNS and Failover Routing
Route 53 health checks monitor application endpoints and trigger DNS-based failover when primary infrastructure is unhealthy. Failover routing policies direct traffic to secondary infrastructure automatically, with TTL configuration balancing propagation speed against DNS caching behaviour.
Latency-based and geolocation routing policies support active/active architectures where traffic is distributed across regions under normal operation rather than concentrated in a single primary region.
Multi-Region Infrastructure
Cross-region DR architecture comes in several patterns. Pilot light keeps minimal infrastructure running in a secondary region, scaled up only during a recovery event. Warm standby runs a reduced-capacity copy continuously, ready to scale to full capacity quickly. Active/active distributes traffic across regions simultaneously, removing the need for a discrete failover step.
The appropriate pattern depends on RTO and RPO requirements and the cost tolerance for running secondary infrastructure continuously. Each pattern carries different infrastructure complexity, ongoing cost, and recovery time characteristics. Where the organisation has not yet settled on an approach, part of the engagement can cover presenting the options with realistic cost and recovery time estimates, so the decision is made on known trade-offs before infrastructure is built.
Infrastructure as Code for DR
Multi-region DR infrastructure is managed entirely in Terraform. With the Terraform AWS provider v6, primary and secondary region resources are defined in a single configuration using per-resource region attributes and the new @regionID import syntax, removing the need for multiple provider blocks and aliases. This simplifies state management, reduces configuration drift between regions, and makes the relationship between primary and recovery infrastructure explicit in code.
Approach
DR engagements start from an existing strategy or from a discussion about options. Where a strategy is defined, the work is implementing it in AWS using Terraform. Where options are still being evaluated, the engagement can cover the trade-offs between DR patterns, realistic RTO and RPO estimates for different approaches, and cost modelling so the organisation has the information needed before implementation begins.
Engagements are hands-on build work, delivered either embedded within a client team or independently.
Technologies and Tools
Backup: AWS Backup for centralised policy-driven backup management, S3 cross-region replication for object storage.
Database resilience: RDS Multi-AZ for automatic within-region failover, RDS cross-region backup copies for cross-region recovery point establishment.
Failover routing: Route 53 health checks, failover routing policies, latency-based routing for active/active architectures.
Infrastructure as code: Terraform and OpenTofu, using Terraform AWS provider v6 per-resource region attributes for multi-region configurations.
AWS infrastructure: VPC, EC2, RDS, S3, EFS, IAM, CloudWatch, and the supporting services that DR architecture depends on.
When You Need This
The clearest prompt is when there is no defined path from failure to recovery. Backups exist but have never been restored. Secondary infrastructure is assumed to exist but has not been validated. Recovery depends on steps that live only in someone’s memory.
DR infrastructure addresses this by making recovery a defined process rather than an improvised one. The infrastructure exists, it is configured, and the recovery path is known before it is needed.
Other prompts include compliance or contractual requirements for defined RTO and RPO commitments, audit findings identifying gaps in business continuity capability, and organisational growth that has made the consequences of extended outages more significant than when existing DR arrangements were last reviewed.
For disaster recovery engagements, contact Digital Endeavours to discuss your recovery requirements and current AWS infrastructure.
