Writing a disaster recovery plan people can actually follow

Many disaster recovery plans fail not because the backups are missing, but because the plan is a long policy document nobody can use at 3 a.m. A good plan is written for the moment it is needed.

What the plan must contain

1. Scope: which systems it covers, in priority order, with their recovery time and recovery point targets.
2. Roles: who declares a disaster, who leads, who communicates, and their deputies.
3. Contacts: phone numbers and alternative channels for the team, providers, key customers and authorities. Keep a copy that does not depend on the systems that may be down.
4. Triggers: what situations activate the plan, so nobody wastes an hour debating.
5. Step-by-step runbooks for each critical system: where the backup or standby is, how to restore or fail over, how to verify it works, how to redirect users.
6. Dependencies: DNS, certificates, identity, licences, third-party APIs. Systems rarely recover in isolation.
7. Communication templates for staff, customers and partners.
8. Failback: how to return to normal operation once the primary site is healthy.

Keep it usable

• Write runbooks as numbered steps with exact commands, names and locations.
• Store the plan where it can be reached during an outage, including offline.
• Keep credentials needed for recovery in a secure vault that does not depend on your main systems.
• Review the plan whenever systems change, and at least once a year.

Test it

• Tabletop exercises: walk through a scenario around a table, step by step.
• Partial tests: restore one system or fail over one service.
• Full tests: run the business from the recovery site for a defined period.

Record how long each step took and what went wrong, then fix the plan.

How IDX helps

IDX Disaster Recovery maintains replicated standby infrastructure with tested failover, and our team works with you to write and rehearse the runbooks for the systems we protect. Our migration and managed services teams can also help map the dependencies a plan needs to cover.