Disaster Recovery Test Plan Template Doc

Disaster Recovery (DR) Test Plan Template

Template Registry Engineering Standards

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1. Document Control Block

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2. Executive Summary & Purpose

This document provides the standardized framework for executing Disaster Recovery (DR) validation exercises. The purpose is to verify the integrity, recoverability, and RTO/RPO compliance of critical systems within the Template Registry ecosystem. This test is intended to expose latent failure points in infrastructure, data synchronization, and failover automation.

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3. Scope & Prerequisites

Scope: Covers production-critical microservices, associated databases, and identity management subsystems. Prerequisites:

• Access: Verified administrative access to primary and DR environments.
• Communication: Dedicated "War Room" (Slack/Teams channel) and conference bridge.
• Tools: Terraform (IaC), Ansible (Config Mgmt), PagerDuty (On-call), Datadog (Monitoring).
• Environment: Clean room validation environment or isolated DR segment.

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4. Roles & Responsibilities (RACI)

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5. Step-by-Step Procedure

Phase I: Pre-Flight Verification

• Validate current backups against the metadata audit log.
• Confirm snapshot consistency for target databases (RDS/Postgres).
• Ensure all key personnel are logged into the emergency communications bridge.

Phase II: Execution (The Failover)

• Initiate documented failover script/automation sequence.
• Redirect traffic to the secondary region/provider.
• Verify health checks of critical services in the new environment.
• Execute smoke tests for primary user workflows.

Phase III: Post-Test Analysis & Reversion

• Document deviations between expected RTO/RPO and actuals.
• Revert systems to primary production configuration.
• Sync delta changes occurred during the test window.
• Archive logs and telemetry data to the permanent DR log repository.

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6. Quality Assurance & Pro-Tips

• Thresholds: Any RTO exceeding 120 minutes or data loss (RPO) > 0 requires an immediate Incident Review.
• Pro-Tip (The "Dry Run"): Always run the DR test on a non-production clone before touching the production failover triggers.
• Common Pitfall: Failing to rotate credentials within the DR environment during the switch. Ensure Secrets Manager sync is verified between regions.
• Verification: Utilize synthetic transactions to confirm the application isn't just "up," but "functional" (e.g., can the app actually write to the DB?).

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7. Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Should we conduct this test during peak traffic hours? A: Negative. Always schedule DR exercises during documented low-traffic windows or "Maintenance Windows" to mitigate business impact in the event of an unforeseen recovery failure.

Q: What if the automated failover hangs? A: Immediate transition to the "Manual Override SOP" (TR-SOP-DR-MANUAL). Do not attempt to debug the automation; perform a manual recovery to maintain the RTO window.

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Authorized by: Julian Vance, Chief Architect