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disaster recovery 7 min read

How to Build a Disaster Recovery Plan That Actually Works

Solanasis Team |
Server room with organized cabling and green indicator lights

The Plan That Nobody Tests

Here’s the thing that makes most teams uncomfortable: if your primary systems went down right now (email, file storage, CRM, accounting) how long would it take to get back to normal?

If the answer is “I’m not sure,” you’re in good company. Most growing organizations have some form of backup running somewhere. But having backups and having a disaster recovery plan are two very different things.

A backup is a copy of your data. A disaster recovery plan is the documented, tested process for getting your business operational again when something goes wrong (and “something” can mean anything from a ransomware attack to an employee accidentally deleting a shared drive). The first is necessary; the second is what actually saves you.

Why Most DR Plans Fail

The failure modes are predictable:

1. The plan exists on paper but has never been tested

This is the most common scenario. Someone wrote a DR plan for a compliance requirement or board presentation, and it’s been sitting in a shared drive ever since.

Nobody knows if the backup restoration process actually works. Nobody has verified recovery times.

The plan references systems and contacts that may no longer exist. Which is why a DR plan that hasn’t been tested isn’t really a plan at all; it’s false comfort.

2. Backups run, but nobody monitors them

Automated backups give a false sense of security. They might be failing silently, backing up the wrong data, or retaining an insufficient history. We’ve seen organizations discover their “daily backups” stopped working three months ago, and nobody noticed until they needed them.

That’s the quiet failure of automation without monitoring: everything looks fine until the moment it matters.

3. The plan doesn’t account for dependencies

Your CRM doesn’t exist in isolation. It connects to your email platform, your billing system, your marketing automation. A DR plan that only covers individual systems without mapping dependencies will leave you scrambling to reconnect everything after a recovery.

4. Recovery time expectations are unrealistic

Leadership assumes everything can be back online in an hour. The actual recovery process (locating backups, provisioning infrastructure, restoring data, verifying integrity, reconnecting integrations) might take days. That gap between expectation and reality is where the real damage happens.

Building a DR Plan That Holds Up

Here’s the framework we use with clients. It’s not glamorous, but it works.

Step 1: Map Your Critical Systems

List every system your organization depends on to operate. For each one, document:

  • What it does. The business function it supports
  • Who owns it. The person responsible for that system
  • Where the data lives. Cloud provider, on-premise server, SaaS platform
  • What depends on it. Upstream and downstream connections
  • RTO (Recovery Time Objective). How long can you be without it before it materially impacts operations?
  • RPO (Recovery Point Objective). How much data loss is acceptable? An hour? A day? None?

RTO and RPO sound technical, but they’re really business decisions. Your finance team might tolerate being without the accounting system for a day, but losing even an hour of transaction data could be a serious problem.

Step 2: Verify Your Backups Actually Work

This is the step most organizations skip, and it’s the most important one.

For each critical system:

  • Confirm backups are running. Check the backup logs, not just the dashboard
  • Verify backup scope. Are you backing up everything you need, including configurations and not just data?
  • Test a restore. Actually restore from backup to a test environment. Time it. Document what worked and what didn’t.
  • Check retention. How far back can you go? Is that sufficient for your RPO?

If you do nothing else from this article, do this: pick your most critical system and run a real restore test this week. You’ll learn more in that one exercise than in months of planning.

Step 3: Document the Recovery Procedure

For each critical system, write a step-by-step recovery runbook. It should be detailed enough that someone who didn’t set up the system could follow it. Include:

  • Where to find the backup (exact URLs, account names, storage locations)
  • How to initiate a restore (click-by-click instructions)
  • How to verify the restore completed successfully
  • How to reconnect dependent systems
  • Who to notify at each stage

Store the runbook somewhere accessible even if your primary systems are down. A printed copy in a secure location isn’t paranoia; it’s practical.

Step 4: Define Communication and Escalation

When something goes wrong, people need to know:

  • Who makes the call to activate the DR plan
  • Who gets notified and through what channels (if email is down, how do you reach people?)
  • What to tell stakeholders. Clients, board members, vendors
  • When to escalate. At what point do you bring in external help?

Step 5: Test, Review, Repeat

A DR plan is not a document you write once. Schedule:

  • Quarterly: Review the plan for accuracy (have systems changed? contacts?)
  • Bi-annually: Run a tabletop exercise (walk through a scenario verbally with your team)
  • Annually: Run a real restore test on at least your most critical system

What a Real Test Looks Like

When we run a Compliance Readiness Assessment, disaster recovery verification is built into the engagement. Not as a checkbox, but as a real restore test.

We don’t ask “do you have backups?” and move on. We restore from backup, time the process, document what breaks, and hand you a runbook you can actually use.

Most assessments give you a report. We give you proof that your recovery works, or clear documentation of exactly where it doesn’t.

Key Takeaways

  • Having backups is not the same as having a disaster recovery plan
  • The most common failure: the plan has never been tested against a real restore
  • Map your critical systems, define RTO/RPO, and document step-by-step recovery procedures
  • Test a real restore this week; you’ll learn more than months of planning on paper
  • Review and update the plan quarterly; run a live test at least annually

Want to find out if your backups actually work? Our Compliance Readiness Assessment includes a real restore test, not just a checklist. Get in touch and we’ll tell you where you stand.

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