---
title: What is disaster recovery (DR)?
url: https://www.vmware.com/topics/disaster-recovery
description: Learn about disaster recovery and how organizations can protect IT systems and data from unpredictable events.
---

# What is disaster recovery (DR)?

Disaster recovery (DR) is an organization’s method of regaining access and functionality to its IT infrastructure after events such as natural disasters, cyberattacks, or business disruptions.

## Why disaster recovery

Backup solutions restore workloads with point-in-time options, but are slow and unsuitable for disaster recovery. Traditional backups stored within the data center or cloud are unreliable during a data center failure due to the lack of a dedicated recovery software-defined data center (SDDC).

An effective disaster recovery solution reduces time and complexity with the use of automation, which is critical in cases of a rolling disaster such as a ransomware attack. A disaster recovery solution can also help businesses meet other objectives, such as:

- Managing infrastructure, especially with inventory and mapping processes,
- Protecting workloads,
- Boot up order, including failover and failback procedures,
- Testing and maintaining infrastructure aid in risk and impact analysis, and
- Meeting the Service-level Agreement (SLA).

## How disaster recovery works

Disaster recovery relies upon the replication of data and computer processing in an off-premises location not affected by the disaster. When servers go down because of a natural disaster, equipment failure, or cyber attack, a business needs to recover lost data from a second location where the data is backed up. Ideally, an organization can transfer its computer processing to that remote location as well in order to continue operations.

## Types of disaster recovery

Businesses can choose from a variety of disaster recovery methods, or combine several:

- **Back-up:** This is the simplest type of disaster recovery and entails storing data off-site or on a removable drive. However, just backing up data provides only minimal business continuity help, as the IT infrastructure itself is not backed up.
  
- **Cold Site:** In this type of disaster recovery, an organization sets up a basic infrastructure in a second, rarely used facility that provides a place for employees to work after a natural disaster or fire. It can help with business continuity because business operations can continue, but it does not provide a way to protect or recover important data, so a cold site must be combined with other methods of disaster recovery.

- **Hot Site:** A hot site maintains up-to-date copies of data at all times. Hot sites are time-consuming to set up and more expensive than cold sites, but they dramatically reduce downtime.

- [**Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS):**](https://www.broadcom.com/topics/ransomware) In the event of a disaster or ransomware attack, a DRaaS provider moves an organization’s computer processing to its own cloud infrastructure, allowing a business to continue operations seamlessly from the vendor’s location, even if an organization’s servers are down. DRaaS plans are available through either subscription or pay-per-use models. There are pros and cons to choosing a local DRaaS provider: latency will be lower after transferring to DRaaS servers that are closer to an organization’s location, but in the event of a widespread natural disaster, a DRaaS that is nearby may be affected by the same disaster.

- **Back Up as a Service (BaaS):** Similar to backing up data at a remote location, with Back Up as a Service, a third-party provider backs up an organization’s data, but not its IT infrastructure.

- **Datacenter disaster recovery:** The physical elements of a data center can protect data and contribute to faster disaster recovery in certain types of disasters. For instance, fire suppression tools will help data and computer equipment survive a fire. A backup power source will help businesses sail through power outages without grinding operations to a halt. Of course, none of these physical disaster recovery tools will help in the event of a cyber attack.

- **Virtualization:** Organizations can back up certain operations and data or even a working replica of an organization’s entire computing environment on off-site virtual machines that are unaffected by physical disasters. Using virtualization as part of a disaster recovery plan also allows businesses to automate some disaster recovery processes, bringing everything back online faster. For virtualization to be an effective disaster recovery tool, frequent transfer of data and workloads is essential, as is good communication within the IT team about how many virtual machines are operating within an organization.

- **Point-in-time copies:** Point-in-time copies, also known as point-in-time snapshots, make a copy of the entire database at a given time. Data can be restored from this backup, but only if the copy is stored off-site or on a virtual machine that is unaffected by the disaster.

- **Instant recovery:** Instant recovery is similar to point-in-time copies, except that instead of copying a database, instant recovery takes a snapshot of an entire [virtual machine](https://www.vmware.com/topics/virtual-machine).

## Disaster recovery planning

A disaster recovery plan outlines a strategy for restoring IT systems after an unexpected outage. This essential component of business continuity aims to ensure efficient recovery, minimize disruption costs, protect brand reputation, and rapidly return to normal operations. Plans address various disruptions like equipment failures, cyberattacks, and power outages. Due to the complexity and unpredictability of disasters, proactive planning is crucial for quick and efficient system restoration, reducing financial harm, and helping staff return to their duties swiftly.

Disaster recovery involves intricate, synchronized operations. Since the timing and nature of a disaster cannot be foreseen, prior planning is crucial for the swift restoration of systems. A robust disaster recovery plan mitigates financial damage, avoids business interruptions, and enables staff to resume their regular duties promptly.

## Steps of a disaster recovery plan

Developing a robust disaster recovery (DR) plan is crucial for business continuity. While it's impossible to predict every potential disruption, these steps will help minimize harm when disasters strike.

1. **Designate a Recovery Team:** Assemble a diverse DR team (IT, PR, etc.). Clearly define roles, and appoint a DR leader for oversight and decisions.
2. **Evaluate and Prioritize Risks:** Identify critical systems, prioritize them (e.g., customer-facing over development), and reflect this in recovery plans.
3. **Develop Recovery Plans and Procedures:** Develop detailed technical recovery plans. Implement mitigation strategies (e.g., disabling services for limited functionality) to minimize outage impact during full recovery efforts. Establish alternative communication methods for use when normal systems are down.
4. **Design and Implement Backups:** To achieve recovery goals, determine necessary backups and their frequency, considering Recovery Time Objective (RTO) for maximum tolerable downtime and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for maximum tolerable data loss. Stricter RTO and RPO require more frequent backups.
5. **Test and Optimize Recovery Plans:** Regularly test DR plans to ensure effective execution and to identify and address shortcomings before a real disaster.

## How to build a disaster recovery team

Whether creating a disaster recovery strategy from scratch or improving an existing plan, assembling the right collaborative team of experts is a critical first step. It starts with tapping IT specialists and other key individuals to provide leadership over the following key areas in the event of a disaster:

- **Crisis management:** This leadership role commences recovery plans, coordinates efforts throughout the recovery process, and resolves problems or delays that emerge.
  
- **Business continuity:** The expert overseeing this ensures that the recovery plan aligns with the company’s business needs, based on the business impact analysis.

- **Impact assessment and recovery:** The team responsible for this area of recovery has technical expertise in IT infrastructure including servers, storage, databases and networks.

- **IT applications:** This role monitors which application activities should be implemented based on a restorative plan. Tasks include application integrations, application settings and configuration, and data consistency.

While not necessarily part of the IT department, the following roles should also be assigned to any disaster recovery plan:

- **Executive management:** The executive team will need to approve the strategy, policies and budget related to the disaster recovery plan, plus provide input if obstacles arise.

- **Critical business units:** A representative from each business unit will ideally provide feedback on disaster recovery planning so that their specific concerns are addressed.

## Recommended for You

## How VMware can help

With [VMware Advanced Cyber Compliance](https://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-infrastructure/advanced-services/advanced-cyber-compliance), your organization can quickly recover from modern cyberattacks and other disasters. This VMware Cloud Foundation Advanced Service offers ransomware and site recovery at scale, with a simplified and unified management experience across on-premises and public clouds.

## Recommended for You

- [Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)](https://www.vmware.com/topics/disaster-recovery-service-draas)

## Related Products and Solutions

- [VMware Live Recovery](https://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-infrastructure/advanced-services/live-recovery)
- [VMware Cloud Foundation](https://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-infrastructure/vmware-cloud-foundation)
- [Why Private Cloud](https://www.vmware.com/solutions/cloud-infrastructure/why-private-cloud)

## Also of Interest

- [What is Platform Engineering?](https://www.vmware.com/topics/platform-engineering)
- [What is Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)?](https://www.vmware.com/topics/disaster-recovery-service-draas)
- [Accelerate Recovery from Disasters](https://www.vmware.com/solutions/security/accelerate-recovery-from-disasters)