Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)

Version: 1.0
Last Updated: April 2026
Document Owner: Operations Team
Review Cycle: Quarterly

Executive Summary
Recovery Objectives
Backup Strategy
Recovery Procedures
Disaster Scenarios
Testing & Validation
Communication Plan
Roles & Responsibilities

Executive Summary

This Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) defines procedures to restore ThemisDB operations in the event of a disaster. The plan establishes Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) for different failure scenarios and provides step-by-step recovery procedures.

Critical Success Factors

Automated Backups: Continuous incremental backups with point-in-time recovery
Geographic Redundancy: Multi-region replication for critical data
Regular Testing: Quarterly DR drills to validate recovery procedures
Clear Communication: Defined escalation paths and stakeholder notifications

Recovery Objectives

Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

RTO defines the maximum acceptable time to restore service after a disaster.

Disaster Scenario	Target RTO	Maximum Acceptable RTO
Single Node Failure	5 minutes	15 minutes
Data Center Outage	30 minutes	2 hours
Regional Disaster	2 hours	4 hours
Complete Data Loss	4 hours	8 hours
Ransomware Attack	6 hours	12 hours

Recovery Point Objective (RPO)

RPO defines the maximum acceptable data loss measured in time.

Disaster Scenario	Target RPO	Maximum Acceptable RPO
Single Node Failure	0 seconds (no data loss)	5 seconds
Data Center Outage	5 seconds	30 seconds
Regional Disaster	1 minute	5 minutes
Complete Data Loss	15 minutes	1 hour
Ransomware Attack	1 hour	24 hours

Service Level Targets

Metric	Target	Measurement
Annual Availability	99.95%	~4.4 hours downtime/year
Monthly Availability	99.9%	~43 minutes downtime/month
Mean Time to Detect (MTTD)	< 2 minutes	Monitoring alerts
Mean Time to Recover (MTTR)	< 30 minutes	Incident resolution

Backup Strategy

Backup Types

1. Continuous Replication

Frequency: Real-time
Method: Asynchronous replication to standby nodes
RPO: < 5 seconds
Use Case: High availability, failover

2. Incremental Snapshots

Frequency: Every 15 minutes
Method: RocksDB checkpoint + WAL archival
RPO: 15 minutes
Retention: 24 hours (96 snapshots)

3. Full Backups

Frequency: Daily at 02:00 UTC
Method: Complete database snapshot
RPO: 24 hours
Retention: 30 days

4. Long-term Archives

Frequency: Weekly (Sunday 03:00 UTC)
Method: Compressed full backup
RPO: 7 days
Retention: 1 year (52 backups)

Backup Storage

Primary Backup Location:
  Provider: S3-compatible object storage
  Region: Primary region + 1
  Encryption: AES-256-GCM at rest
  Lifecycle: Automated retention policies

Secondary Backup Location:
  Provider: S3-compatible object storage
  Region: Geographic redundant region
  Encryption: AES-256-GCM at rest
  Lifecycle: Mirrored from primary

Cold Storage Archive:
  Provider: Glacier/Archive storage
  Retention: 7 years
  Compliance: GDPR, SOC 2, HIPAA

Backup Verification

All backups are automatically verified:

# Automated backup verification (runs after each backup)
themisdb-cli backup verify \
  --backup-id <backup-id> \
  --check-integrity \
  --check-consistency \
  --sample-restore

# Expected verification checks:
# ✓ Checksum validation
# ✓ File integrity check
# ✓ Metadata validation
# ✓ Sample data restore test
# ✓ Corruption detection

Recovery Procedures

Procedure 1: Single Node Failure Recovery

Scenario: One database node fails in a multi-node cluster
RTO: 5 minutes | RPO: 0 seconds

Detection

# Monitoring alert triggers
ALERT NodeDown
  IF up{job="themisdb"} == 0
  FOR 1m
  LABELS { severity="critical" }

Recovery Steps

Assess Impact (< 1 minute)

# Check cluster status
themisdb-cli cluster status

# Verify other nodes healthy
themisdb-cli health --all-nodes

Automatic Failover (< 2 minutes)
- Load balancer automatically routes traffic to healthy nodes
- Cluster rebalances shard assignments
- No manual intervention required

Replace Failed Node (< 2 minutes)

# Start replacement node
kubectl scale deployment themisdb --replicas=3

# Node automatically joins cluster
# Data replication begins automatically

Verify Recovery (< 1 minute)

# Confirm cluster health
themisdb-cli cluster status
# Expected: All nodes HEALTHY, all shards balanced

# Run health check
curl http://load-balancer/health
# Expected: HTTP 200 OK

Success Criteria:

All nodes reporting healthy
All shards balanced
No client-visible errors
Replication caught up

Procedure 2: Data Center Outage Recovery

Scenario: Complete data center loss
RTO: 30 minutes | RPO: 5 seconds

Detection

# Multi-node failure in same availability zone
ALERT DataCenterDown
  IF count(up{job="themisdb", az="us-east-1a"} == 0) > 2
  FOR 2m
  LABELS { severity="critical" }

Recovery Steps

Declare Disaster (< 5 minutes)

# Incident commander assesses situation
# Confirm: Multiple nodes down in same DC
# Decision: Activate DR plan

# Notify stakeholders
themisdb-cli incident declare \
  --type datacenter_failure \
  --severity critical \
  --notify all

Activate Secondary Region (< 10 minutes)

# Promote secondary region to primary
themisdb-cli failover promote \
  --region us-west-2 \
  --force \
  --verify-data-consistency

# Update DNS to point to new region
aws route53 change-resource-record-sets \
  --hosted-zone-id Z1234567890ABC \
  --change-batch file://dns-failover.json

# Expected output:
# ✓ Secondary region promoted to primary
# ✓ All shards active
# ✓ DNS updated (TTL: 60s)
# ✓ Traffic routing to new region

Verify Application Connectivity (< 5 minutes)

# Test from multiple locations
for region in us-west eu-west ap-south; do
  curl https://themisdb.$region.example.com/health
done

# Run synthetic transactions
themisdb-cli test synthetic-transactions \
  --workload production \
  --duration 5m

Monitor Recovery (< 10 minutes)

# Watch key metrics
themisdb-cli monitor \
  --metrics qps,latency,errors \
  --duration 10m \
  --alert-on-anomaly

# Expected: Metrics return to normal within 10 minutes

Success Criteria:

Secondary region serving all traffic
< 5 seconds data loss
All clients reconnected
Performance within 10% of baseline

Procedure 3: Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR)

Scenario: Data corruption or logical error detected
RTO: 2 hours | RPO: 15 minutes

Use Cases

Accidental data deletion
Application bug corrupted data
Malicious data modification
Schema migration gone wrong

Recovery Steps

Identify Corruption Window (< 15 minutes)

# Analyze audit logs
themisdb-cli audit query \
  --start "2026-01-24T00:00:00Z" \
  --end "2026-01-24T06:00:00Z" \
  --user admin \
  --action DELETE

# Find last known good state
themisdb-cli backup list \
  --before "2026-01-24T05:00:00Z" \
  --verified-only

Create Current State Snapshot (< 10 minutes)

# Preserve current state for forensics
themisdb-cli backup create \
  --type full \
  --label "before-restore-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)" \
  --priority high

Restore to Point-in-Time (< 60 minutes)

# Perform PITR to last good snapshot
themisdb-cli restore pitr \
  --target "2026-01-24T04:45:00Z" \
  --backup-id backup-20260124-0430 \
  --verify-consistency \
  --dry-run

# Review dry-run results
# If acceptable, execute restore:
themisdb-cli restore pitr \
  --target "2026-01-24T04:45:00Z" \
  --backup-id backup-20260124-0430 \
  --verify-consistency \
  --execute

Verify Data Integrity (< 20 minutes)

# Run data validation
themisdb-cli validate database \
  --check-indexes \
  --check-constraints \
  --check-references

# Compare key metrics
themisdb-cli metrics compare \
  --baseline backup-20260124-0430 \
  --current now \
  --tolerance 1%

Resume Operations (< 15 minutes)

# Bring database back online
themisdb-cli maintenance-mode disable

# Notify stakeholders
themisdb-cli incident update \
  --status resolved \
  --notify all

Success Criteria:

Data restored to target timestamp
All integrity checks pass
No data inconsistencies
Applications functioning normally

Procedure 4: Ransomware Recovery

Scenario: Ransomware attack detected
RTO: 6 hours | RPO: 1 hour

Detection

# Unusual patterns detected
ALERT RansomwareSuspected
  IF (
    rate(themisdb_delete_operations[5m]) > 1000 OR
    rate(themisdb_encryption_failures[5m]) > 10
  )
  FOR 5m
  LABELS { severity="critical" }

Recovery Steps

Immediate Isolation (< 5 minutes)

# Isolate affected systems
themisdb-cli security isolate \
  --node all \
  --block-external \
  --preserve-forensics

# Disable all user access
themisdb-cli security revoke-all-tokens

# Alert security team
themisdb-cli incident declare \
  --type security_breach \
  --severity critical \
  --notify security-team

Assess Damage (< 30 minutes)

# Identify affected data
themisdb-cli security scan \
  --check-integrity \
  --check-encryption \
  --output /security/scan-results.json

# Find last clean backup
themisdb-cli backup find-clean \
  --before-incident \
  --verify-integrity

Rebuild from Clean Backup (< 4 hours)

# Deploy new infrastructure (immutable)
kubectl create namespace themisdb-recovery
helm install themisdb-clean ./helm/themisdb \
  --namespace themisdb-recovery \
  --set security.hardened=true

# Restore from verified clean backup
themisdb-cli restore \
  --backup-id <last-clean-backup> \
  --namespace themisdb-recovery \
  --verify-integrity \
  --scan-malware

Security Hardening (< 1 hour)

# Apply security patches
themisdb-cli security patch-all

# Rotate all credentials
themisdb-cli security rotate-credentials --all

# Enable enhanced monitoring
themisdb-cli security enable-enhanced-monitoring

Gradual Restoration (< 30 minutes)

# Bring services online with restricted access
themisdb-cli service start --restricted-mode

# Whitelist verified clients only
themisdb-cli security allow-client \
  --verified-only \
  --require-mfa

Success Criteria:

Clean database restored
No malware detected
All credentials rotated
Enhanced security active
Forensics preserved

Disaster Scenarios

Scenario Matrix

Scenario	Likelihood	Impact	RTO	RPO	Primary Response
Single node failure	High	Low	5 min	0 sec	Auto-failover
AZ failure	Medium	Medium	30 min	5 sec	Region failover
Region failure	Low	High	2 hr	1 min	DR site activation
Data corruption	Medium	Medium	2 hr	15 min	PITR restore
Ransomware	Low	High	6 hr	1 hr	Isolation + rebuild
Hardware failure	High	Low	15 min	0 sec	Replace + resync
Network partition	Medium	Medium	10 min	5 sec	Route around
DDoS attack	Medium	Low	5 min	0 sec	Rate limiting + CDN

Testing & Validation

DR Testing Schedule

Monthly Tests (30 minutes)

Backup verification
Restore test (non-production)
Failover simulation
Monitoring validation

Quarterly Tests (4 hours)

Full DR drill
Cross-region failover
Complete restore test
Team readiness assessment

Annual Tests (Full Day)

Disaster simulation exercise
Multi-scenario testing
Communication plan validation
Documentation review

Test Procedures

Monthly Backup Test

#!/bin/bash
# Monthly backup verification script

# 1. List recent backups
themisdb-cli backup list --last 30-days

# 2. Select random backup
BACKUP_ID=$(themisdb-cli backup list --last 30-days --format json | jq -r '.[0].id')

# 3. Verify backup
themisdb-cli backup verify --backup-id $BACKUP_ID

# 4. Test restore to staging
themisdb-cli restore \
  --backup-id $BACKUP_ID \
  --target staging \
  --verify

# 5. Run validation queries
themisdb-cli test queries \
  --environment staging \
  --suite smoke-tests

# 6. Generate report
themisdb-cli test report \
  --output /reports/dr-test-$(date +%Y%m%d).html

Quarterly DR Drill

#!/bin/bash
# Quarterly full DR drill

echo "=== DR DRILL: $(date) ==="

# 1. Simulate disaster
echo "Step 1: Simulating data center failure..."
themisdb-cli test simulate-disaster \
  --type datacenter-failure \
  --region us-east-1

# 2. Activate DR procedures
echo "Step 2: Activating DR procedures..."
themisdb-cli failover promote \
  --region us-west-2 \
  --test-mode

# 3. Validate recovery
echo "Step 3: Validating recovery..."
themisdb-cli test synthetic-transactions \
  --duration 15m \
  --target dr-region

# 4. Measure metrics
echo "Step 4: Measuring RTO/RPO..."
themisdb-cli test measure-recovery \
  --output /reports/dr-drill-metrics.json

# 5. Restore to normal
echo "Step 5: Restoring to normal operations..."
themisdb-cli failover restore \
  --region us-east-1

# 6. Generate report
echo "Step 6: Generating report..."
themisdb-cli test report \
  --type dr-drill \
  --output /reports/dr-drill-$(date +%Y%m%d).pdf

Communication Plan

Escalation Matrix

Severity	Initial Response	Escalation (15 min)	Escalation (30 min)
P0 - Critical	On-call engineer	Engineering manager	CTO + CEO
P1 - High	On-call engineer	Engineering manager	VP Engineering
P2 - Medium	On-call engineer	Team lead	Engineering manager
P3 - Low	On-call engineer	-	-

Notification Templates

P0 - Critical Disaster

Subject: [P0 CRITICAL] ThemisDB Disaster - [SCENARIO]

Status: DISASTER IN PROGRESS
Severity: P0 - Critical
RTO: [X hours]
RPO: [Y minutes]

IMPACT:
- [Description of impact]
- [Affected services]
- [Estimated user impact]

CURRENT STATUS:
- Detection time: [HH:MM UTC]
- DR procedures activated: [HH:MM UTC]
- Expected recovery: [HH:MM UTC]

ACTIONS TAKEN:
- [Action 1]
- [Action 2]

NEXT STEPS:
- [Next step 1]
- [Next step 2]

Incident Commander: [Name]
War Room: [URL/Bridge number]

Updates will be provided every 15 minutes.

Stakeholder Communication

Stakeholder	Timing	Method	Content
Internal team	Immediate	Slack + Email	Technical details
Management	< 15 min	Email + Call	Business impact
Customers	< 30 min	Status page	Service status
Partners	< 1 hour	Email	Impact assessment

Roles & Responsibilities

Disaster Recovery Team

Incident Commander

Declares disaster
Coordinates recovery effort
Makes key decisions
Communicates with stakeholders

Technical Lead

Executes recovery procedures
Validates technical steps
Monitors system health
Reports to Incident Commander

Database Administrator

Manages backup/restore
Verifies data integrity
Optimizes recovery process
Documents technical details

Communications Lead

Drafts status updates
Notifies stakeholders
Manages status page
Coordinates with PR/Legal

Security Lead (if applicable)

Assesses security impact
Conducts forensics
Implements hardening
Coordinates with security team

Appendices

Appendix A: Emergency Contacts

Incident Commander: [Name] - [Phone] - [Email]
Technical Lead: [Name] - [Phone] - [Email]
DBA On-Call: [Phone] - [PagerDuty]
Security Team: [Email] - [Phone]
Management: [Email] - [Phone]
Cloud Provider Support: [Phone] - [Ticket Portal]

Appendix B: Critical System Information

Production Environment:
- Cluster ID: prod-cluster-001
- Primary Region: us-east-1
- DR Region: us-west-2
- Backup Location: s3://themisdb-backups
- Monitoring: https://grafana.example.com

Access Credentials:
- Vault Path: /secret/themisdb/dr
- Break-glass Account: dr-admin@example.com
- Emergency Access: [Documentation link]

Appendix C: Checklist for Annual DR Plan Review

RTO/RPO targets still appropriate
Backup retention periods sufficient
Contact information up to date
Recovery procedures tested
Infrastructure changes documented
Compliance requirements met
Team training completed
DR budget allocated

Document History

Version	Date	Author	Changes
1.0	2026-01-24	Operations Team	Initial version

Approval

Role	Name	Signature	Date
CTO
VP Engineering
Security Officer
Compliance Officer

Next Review Date: 2026-04-24
Document Classification: Internal - Confidential
Retention Period: 7 years

FilesExpand file tree

DISASTER_RECOVERY_PLAN.md

Latest commit

History

DISASTER_RECOVERY_PLAN.md

File metadata and controls

Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

Critical Success Factors

Recovery Objectives

Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

Recovery Point Objective (RPO)

Service Level Targets

Backup Strategy

Backup Types

1. Continuous Replication

2. Incremental Snapshots

3. Full Backups

4. Long-term Archives

Backup Storage

Backup Verification

Recovery Procedures

Procedure 1: Single Node Failure Recovery

Detection

Recovery Steps

Procedure 2: Data Center Outage Recovery

Detection

Recovery Steps

Procedure 3: Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR)

Use Cases

Recovery Steps

Procedure 4: Ransomware Recovery

Detection

Recovery Steps

Disaster Scenarios

Scenario Matrix

Testing & Validation

DR Testing Schedule

Monthly Tests (30 minutes)

Quarterly Tests (4 hours)

Annual Tests (Full Day)

Test Procedures

Monthly Backup Test

Quarterly DR Drill

Communication Plan

Escalation Matrix

Notification Templates

P0 - Critical Disaster

Stakeholder Communication

Roles & Responsibilities

Disaster Recovery Team

Incident Commander

Technical Lead

Database Administrator

Communications Lead

Security Lead (if applicable)

Appendices

Appendix A: Emergency Contacts

Appendix B: Critical System Information

Appendix C: Checklist for Annual DR Plan Review

Document History

Approval