¶ Backup and Disaster Recovery in Cloud
¶ 1. What is Backup and Disaster Recovery (DR)?
Backup and Disaster Recovery (DR) in cloud is a strategy to protect data and applications from:
- Accidental deletion
- Hardware failure
- Cyberattacks
- Natural disasters
Backup ensures data is copied and stored safely.
Disaster Recovery ensures systems can be restored quickly after failure.
Cloud Backup is the process of automatically copying:
- Virtual machines
- Databases
- File systems
- Application data
to secure cloud storage.
Backups are:
- Encrypted
- Versioned
- Stored in multiple locations
Disaster Recovery is the ability to restore:
- Servers
- Applications
- Databases
- Entire environments
to a working state after a disaster.
It focuses on:
- Recovery Time Objective (RTO) – How fast systems must be restored
- Recovery Point Objective (RPO) – How much data loss is acceptable
¶ 4. How Backup and DR Works (Step by Step)
Select:
- Business applications
- Databases
- File servers
- Virtual machines
Configure:
- Backup frequency (daily, hourly)
- Retention period (30 days, 90 days)
- Storage location (same region, different region)
Use cloud backup services:
- AWS Backup
- Azure Backup
- GCP Backup and DR
Replicate data to:
- Another region
- Another availability zone
Regularly test restore process to ensure backups work.
In disaster:
- Launch recovery servers
- Restore data from backup
- Redirect traffic
¶ 5. Key Benefits of Cloud Backup and DR
- Automated protection
- High data durability
- Fast recovery
- Cost-effective storage
- Compliance ready
¶ 6. Complete Example: Backup and DR for Cloud Web Application
An online business hosts its website and database on cloud and needs protection from failures.
- EC2 web server
- RDS MySQL database
- Enable RDS automated backups
- Set retention: 7 days
Create AWS Backup plan:
- Daily backup of EC2
- Retention: 30 days
- Replicate backups to another AWS region
Primary region fails.
- Launch new EC2 from backup
- Restore RDS from snapshot
- Update DNS to new region
Backup and Disaster Recovery in cloud provides:
- Automatic data protection
- Business continuity
- Fast system recovery
- Protection against data loss and downtime
It is a critical part of cloud infrastructure design.