How do you design backup and disaster recovery for web ops?

Long Answer

Implementing backup, recovery, and disaster recovery (DR) plans for web systems is central to maintaining data integrity and business continuity. As a Web Operations Specialist, you must ensure resilience against failures ranging from hardware crashes to regional outages or ransomware.

1) Backup strategy

• Scope: include databases, app configs, infrastructure code, SSL keys, and media.
  
• Frequency: adopt incremental backups daily, full weekly, and point-in-time database snapshots.
  
• Automation: schedule jobs (cron, cloud-native backup services).
  
• Redundancy: store copies in multiple zones/regions with at least one offline or immutable.
  
• Security: encrypt at rest (KMS) and in transit (TLS); enforce access control and audit.
  
• Retention: align retention with compliance (e.g., 30/90/365 days).
  

2) Recovery planning
Backups are only useful if tested:

• Recovery Point Objective (RPO): define acceptable data loss (e.g., 15 minutes).
  
• Recovery Time Objective (RTO): define max downtime (e.g., 1 hour).
  
• Testing: quarterly restore drills into staging to validate completeness.
  
• Runbooks: document exact recovery steps (DB restore, app redeploy, DNS switch).
  
• Automation: IaC (Terraform/Ansible) accelerates rebuilding infra consistently.
  

3) Disaster recovery tiers

• Cold site: minimal infra; cheapest but slowest recovery.
  
• Warm site: pre-provisioned infra, synced backups; moderate cost/speed.
  
• Hot site: fully replicated, auto-failover; fastest but costliest.
  Choice depends on SLA, budget, and business criticality.
  

4) DR execution workflow

• Detection: monitoring alerts on outage/data loss.
  
• Failover: DNS/global load balancer points traffic to DR site.
  
• Sync: data replicated in near real-time to standby (streaming DB replication, object storage sync).
  
• Validation: integrity checks ensure replicas are not corrupted.
  
• Failback: after primary recovers, reverse sync back.
  

5) Compliance and governance
Industry rules (GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS) dictate backup retention, encryption, and reporting. Regular audits confirm alignment.

6) Business continuity integration
Backup/DR plans must tie into continuity strategy: prioritized apps/services, communication flows, and stakeholder updates. Documented contact lists and escalation ladders are as critical as technical failover.

7) Continuous improvement
Each drill or incident produces lessons. Metrics like Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR), backup success rate, and recovery verification rate drive maturity.

Together, these practices ensure that web systems survive failures while protecting customer trust, regulatory compliance, and operational continuity.

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Table

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Common Mistakes

Frequent errors include treating backups as “set and forget” with no restore testing, leading to corrupted archives. Teams often store backups in the same region as production—losing both in a regional outage. Over-permissive access to backup buckets creates insider risks. Some underestimate RPO/RTO, leaving businesses with unacceptable data loss or downtime. Skipping DR drills means staff freeze during crises. Others forget config and secrets—restoring app code without credentials leaves systems unusable. Finally, no clear communication plan during disasters leads to chaos even when technical recovery succeeds.

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Sample Answers (Junior / Mid / Senior)

Junior:
“I configure automated DB snapshots daily, encrypt backups, and test restores in staging monthly. If a system fails, I redeploy from the last snapshot.”

Mid:
“I implement incremental + PITR backups across regions. I define RPO/RTO with stakeholders, test restores quarterly, and maintain runbooks. For DR, we use a warm standby with DNS failover.”

Senior:
“I design tiered backups with encryption, retention policies, and immutable storage. CI/CD integrates recovery testing. For DR, I select hot/warm sites based on SLA, automate failover with GSLB, and run tabletop/chaos drills. Business continuity is integrated into every plan.”

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Evaluation Criteria

Strong candidates show layered backup strategy (full, incremental, PITR), multi-region redundancy, and encryption. They define RPO/RTO with business input and stress the importance of restore testing. Rollback must be automated via runbooks and IaC. Disaster recovery strategies must be compared (hot, warm, cold) with justification for choice. Governance is key—audits, retention, and compliance alignment. Monitoring and validation (backup success metrics, drill results) distinguish maturity. Weak answers only mention “backups exist” without testing, multi-region, or DR planning.

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Preparation Tips

Build a demo: create a database, back it up daily with point-in-time restores enabled. Store backups in multi-region buckets with encryption. Define RPO (15m) and RTO (1h). Simulate failure: restore to staging, check integrity. Practice DNS failover to a warm standby with traffic shift via Route 53 or Cloudflare. Automate rebuilds with Terraform. Draft a DR runbook: detection, escalation, failover, recovery, communication. Review compliance (GDPR retention rules). Rehearse explaining DR tiers (cold/warm/hot) and trade-offs in 60–90 seconds.

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Real-world Context

A retailer lost data when backups were stored in the same DC as production—both destroyed in fire. They rebuilt with cross-region storage and immutable vaults. A SaaS startup failed an audit because backups contained unencrypted PII; encryption and key rotation fixed compliance. An e-commerce firm reduced downtime from 6h to <1h by shifting from cold to warm DR with DNS failover. A fintech discovered restores were corrupted during a real outage—quarterly restore drills were mandated. These examples show that backup, recovery, and disaster recovery are not theory—they are lifesaving practices for web operations.

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Key Takeaways

• Backups must be automated, encrypted, and multi-region.
  
• Define RPO/RTO with business leaders.
  
• Disaster recovery tiers (hot/warm/cold) balance cost and speed.
  
• Test restores and run DR drills regularly.
  
• Documented runbooks + communication are as critical as tools.
  
  

Practice Exercise

Scenario: You’re tasked with ensuring business continuity for a web platform handling customer PII.

Tasks:

1. Automate daily incremental + weekly full backups with encryption.
   
2. Store in multi-region buckets; enforce RBAC and immutable retention.
   
3. Define RPO (15m) and RTO (1h) with stakeholders.
   
4. Run a simulated outage: restore DB into staging, validate data integrity.
   
5. Implement DNS failover to a warm standby environment.
   
6. Document a DR runbook: escalation, containment, failover, recovery, comms.
   
7. Conduct a tabletop exercise: simulate ransomware attack → verify backup isolation, restore, and notification procedures.
   
   

Deliverable: A demo plan + runbook showing you can protect data integrity and maintain business continuity with backup, recovery, and DR strategies.