Disaster recovery testing is a critical part of any organization’s business continuity and disaster recovery planning. Proper testing helps ensure that when disaster strikes, critical systems and data can be recovered within the required timeframes to minimize disruption to operations. There are several key parts of effective disaster recovery testing.
Identifying Critical Systems and Data
The first step in disaster recovery testing is identifying the organization’s critical systems and data that must be recovered quickly in the event of a disruption. This involves conducting a business impact analysis to determine the potential effects of uncontrolled, non-specific threats that could severely damage an organization. The analysis evaluates critical business functions, systems, and data to determine recovery time objectives, recovery point objectives, and other metrics that will guide the disaster recovery planning and testing process.
Developing Disaster Recovery Test Plans
Once critical systems and data are identified, detailed test plans can be developed to validate the recoverability of those assets. Test plans should include:
- Scope and objectives of the test
- Roles and responsibilities of participants
- Test scenarios reflecting probable and maximum worst-case disasters
- Detailed procedures to be followed
- Metrics for success to validate recovery within designated objectives
Test plans may cover different types of disaster scenarios such as natural disasters, cyber attacks, data corruption, or other system failures. Multiple test plans may be needed to fully validate the recoverability of all critical assets.
Testing Backup and Recovery Procedures
One major component of disaster recovery testing is validating that backups of critical data can be properly restored when needed. This involves periodically restoring backup copies to ensure their integrity and reliability. Test restores should be done from backups made to disk, tape, remote facilities, or other media to confirm that all backup types and locations meet restore requirements.
Testing Replication and High Availability
Many disaster recovery plans utilize real-time data replication, clustering, or other high availability technologies to provide continuous access to critical systems and data. The disaster recovery testing process must rigorously validate that these technologies perform as expected during simulated outages. This testing confirms that users can transparently failover to replica systems with minimal disruption when the production systems become unavailable.
Testing Disaster Detection and Notification
Detecting and reacting quickly to a disaster situation is crucial for minimizing downtime. Disaster recovery testing should include validating that problems are detected rapidly and alerts are communicated to appropriate personnel through established escalation procedures. Automated notifications, dashboard views, and other tools should be tested to verify that administrators are prompted to take action when failures occur.
Validating System Recovery
The core of disaster recovery testing is performing a complete end-to-end recovery of critical systems to validate they can be restored within recovery time objectives with acceptable data loss. This typically requires restoring systems from backups and reconfiguring networking/infrastructure to gain access back to these restored systems. Different disaster scenarios should be tested to confirm robust recovery capabilities.
Testing External Dependencies
Organizations are often dependent on external vendors or services such as cloud providers, making it essential to test these third-party integrations as part of disaster recovery validation. Testing should confirm that external systems, data transfers, networking, authentication, and other dependencies work as expected during recovery.
Validating Failback Capability
After production systems are restored, failback procedures should be executed to revert replicated and backup systems to their normal state. Testing failback capabilities is important to confirming that all environments are left properly prepared for future recovery scenarios once normal operations resume.
Documenting and Reviewing Test Results
Each disaster recovery test should be documented with details on test objectives, procedures, participants, and outcomes. Metrics validating recovery time, data loss, system availability, and other goals should be reported. Test documentation should be distributed to stakeholders for review to identify gaps and areas for improvement in capabilities.
Updating Disaster Recovery Plans
Based on test lessons learned, disaster recovery plans should be updated to address any deficiencies identified during testing. Plans should be revised to reflect system changes, personnel changes, or new best practices uncovered. Continually maturing plans based on rigorous testing helps refine recovery capabilities.
Planning and Resourcing Future Tests
Ongoing disaster recovery testing is essential to account for continual changes in most environments. Each test should be reviewed to determine timeframes and responsibilities for executing future tests. Testing schedules, scopes, and estimated resources should be planned out to promote alignment across various stakeholders within the organization.
Key Types of Disaster Recovery Tests
There are several specialized types of disaster recovery tests that focus on validating specific capabilities:
Walkthroughs
DR team members step through recovery procedures and required actions without actually recovering systems or data. Useful for training.
Tabletop Exercises
Moderated sessions to discuss disaster scenarios and required responses. Confirms understanding of responsibilities.
Backup Restores
Regular restores from backup media to confirm recoverability of critical data.
High Availability Failover Tests
Shut down production systems and attempt to failover to replica systems to test availability.
Full Interruption/Recovery Tests
End-to-end recovery of major systems to a remote recovery site.
Partial Disruption Tests
Recovery of limited, non-critical subset of systems.
Cyber Attack Simulations
Simulate malware, ransomware, or hacking scenarios to test incident response capabilities.
Key Disaster Recovery Testing Challenges
While essential, comprehensive disaster recovery testing presents some common challenges:
Disruption to Operations
Full tests that impair production systems can impact business operations and revenue-generating activities.
Indirect Effects
Tests may trigger problems in downstream systems that are difficult to anticipate.
Cost
Substantial staff time and hardware/facilities expenses may be required for robust testing.
Difficulty of Realism
All details of a real disaster cannot be accurately simulated in a test setting.
Maintaining Test Environments
The recovery infrastructure for testing purposes must be configured to match the production environment.
Key Metrics for Disaster Recovery Testing
Key metrics should be defined to determine whether disaster recovery tests meet objectives. Typical metrics include:
| Metric | Definition |
|---|---|
| Recovery Time Objective (RTO) | The maximum acceptable time to restore operations after a disaster. |
| Recovery Point Objective (RPO) | The maximum duration of data loss acceptable during recovery. |
| System Availability | The percentage of time that critical systems are accessible and operational. |
| Data Integrity | The accuracy and consistency of data recovered from backup locations. |
These metrics are commonly measured in minutes, hours, or days depending on the recovery objectives set within the organization.
Tools for Disaster Recovery Testing
Specialized tools can assist with executing disaster recovery testing and provide detailed reporting on results:
High Availability/Replication Tools
Solutions for replicating systems, data, and configurations to remote sites where testing can occur without disrupting production.
Backup/Recovery Tools
Backup and restore tools with capabilities to automate test restore processes and validate backup integrity.
Infrastructure Automation Tools
Tools that allow orchestrating and provisioning replica test environments through scripting and configuration management.
Virtualization Platforms
Hypervisors that allow replicating and live migrating virtual machines to enable isolated testing environments.
Chaos Engineering Tools
Used to simulate infrastructure failures or cyber attacks against systems to validate incident response capabilities.
Log Monitoring and Analytics
For gathering detailed metrics on system availability, uptime, and performance during tests.
Key Participants in Disaster Recovery Testing
Disaster recovery testing requires coordination across many different members of an organization. Key participants include:
- Business managers – Provide requirements and targets for recovery.
- IT leadership – Plan budgets and high-level objectives for testing.
- IT operations – Manage infrastructure and systems for testing environments.
- InfoSec/risk management teams – Provide expertise in relevant threats and vulnerabilities.
- Disaster recovery coordinators – Define and oversee execution of testing.
- IT administrators – Perform hand-on recovery procedures during tests.
- Application owners – Represent critical business systems and data being tested.
- End users – Validate usability of recovered systems.
- External vendors – Participate in testing third-party provided systems and services.
Orchestrating testing activities across these various roles and organizations can be challenging. Strong leadership and project management is required for successful tests.
Industry Best Practices for Disaster Recovery Testing
Recommended best practices for developing and executing disaster recovery testing include:
- Design tests to evaluate worst-case scenarios based on risk assessments of probable and maximum credible disasters.
- Define specific, measurable, and realistic test objectives and success criteria.
- Test both small components and end-to-end system recovery processes.
- Use checklists, scorecards, and metrics to evaluate test results against objectives.
- Evaluate integration points with external vendors and providers during testing.
- Automate recovery processes as much as possible to improve test consistency.
- Re-evaluate disaster recovery plans and procedures after each test.
- Validate that systems can scale to handle high volumes simulating crisis workloads.
- Test backup cycles periodically on all critical data to confirm recoverability.
- Require formal approval of test results and corrective actions from management.
Regulatory Requirements for Disaster Recovery Testing
Some industries and geographies impose legal or regulatory requirements around disaster recovery testing due to the potential high costs of disruption. Examples include:
Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)
Requires public companies in the United States to demonstrate financial controls – including IT systems backups.
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)
Sets security standards for credit card transaction systems including yearly DR testing.
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
Requires data protection and DR capabilities for systems handling medical data in the US.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
European Union regulations mandating protection of personal data including backup and recovery.
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)
Regulates disaster recovery planning for financial services firms operating in the US.
Organizations should consult appropriate compliance experts to determine what disaster recovery testing requirements apply to their specific situation.
Conclusion
Regular, comprehensive disaster recovery testing is essential for validating that critical systems and data can be restored quickly should unexpected events cause outages and data loss. Key elements of effective testing include identifying assets to protect, developing detailed test plans, documenting and reviewing results, and continuously improving the overall program. When implemented well, disaster recovery testing provides confidence that IT and business operations will be resilient to major disruptions. Though testing presents challenges, the benefits far outweigh the costs and efforts involved.