IT Disaster Recovery Plan Generator
Build production-ready disaster recovery plans that actually get followed when things break.
What This Does
Generates a complete DR plan covering infrastructure, data, applications, and communications. Output includes RTO/RPO targets, failover procedures, testing schedules, and cost modeling.
When to Use
- Building DR documentation for compliance (SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA)
- After an outage exposed gaps in your recovery process
- Onboarding a new infrastructure team
- Annual DR plan review and update
How to Use
Tell the agent what you need. Be specific about your stack and requirements.
Quick Start
Generate a disaster recovery plan for our SaaS platform. Stack: AWS (us-east-1 primary, eu-west-1 secondary), PostgreSQL RDS, Redis, S3. RTO target: 4 hours. RPO target: 1 hour. Team size: 8 engineers.
Inputs to Provide
- Infrastructure: Cloud provider, regions, key services
- Data stores: Databases, object storage, message queues
- RTO target: Maximum acceptable downtime
- RPO target: Maximum acceptable data loss
- Team size: Who's available during an incident
- Compliance: Which frameworks apply (SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS)
- Budget tier: Startup ($5K-$15K/yr) | Growth ($15K-$50K/yr) | Enterprise ($50K+/yr)
Output Structure
1. Risk Assessment Matrix
| Threat | Likelihood (1-5) | Impact (1-5) | Risk Score | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Region outage | 2 | 5 | 10 | Multi-region active-active |
| Database corruption | 3 | 5 | 15 | Point-in-time recovery + cross-region replicas |
| Ransomware | 3 | 5 | 15 | Immutable backups + air-gapped copies |
| DNS failure | 2 | 4 | 8 | Multiple DNS providers |
| Key person unavailable | 4 | 3 | 12 | Runbook documentation + cross-training |
2. Recovery Tier Classification
Tier 1 — Critical (RTO < 1hr)
- Authentication service
- Payment processing
- Core API
Tier 2 — Important (RTO < 4hr)
- Admin dashboard
- Reporting
- Email delivery
Tier 3 — Standard (RTO < 24hr)
- Analytics
- Internal tools
- Dev/staging environments
3. Failover Procedures
For each Tier 1 service, generate step-by-step runbooks:
- Pre-failover health checks
- DNS/load balancer switchover steps
- Data consistency verification
- Post-failover smoke tests
- Rollback procedure if failover fails
4. Backup Strategy
| Data Store | Backup Frequency | Retention | Location | Recovery Test Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary DB | Continuous (WAL) | 30 days | Cross-region | Monthly |
| Object Storage | Cross-region replication | Indefinite | Secondary region | Quarterly |
| Config/Secrets | On change | 90 days | Encrypted S3 + local | Monthly |
5. Communication Plan
- Internal escalation: PagerDuty/Opsgenie chain with backup contacts
- Status page: Auto-update triggers at incident declaration
- Customer notification: Templates for P1-P4 severity levels
- Executive briefing: 15-min cadence during P1, hourly during P2
6. Testing Schedule
| Test Type | Frequency | Scope | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tabletop exercise | Quarterly | Full team walkthrough | 2 hours |
| Component failover | Monthly | Individual service | 1 hour |
| Full DR simulation | Annually | Complete failover | 4-8 hours |
| Backup restore | Monthly | Random data store | 1 hour |
7. Cost Model
Break down DR spending by category:
- Infrastructure (standby capacity, cross-region replication)
- Tooling (monitoring, alerting, backup software)
- Testing (engineer hours, cloud costs during drills)
- Training (onboarding, annual refreshers)
Benchmark: DR typically costs 15-25% of primary infrastructure spend. Companies without DR plans face average downtime costs of $5,600/minute.
Compliance Mapping
Map each DR control to framework requirements:
- SOC 2 CC7.4/CC7.5: Incident response and recovery
- ISO 27001 A.17: Information security continuity
- HIPAA §164.308(a)(7): Contingency plan
- PCI DSS 12.10: Incident response plan
Rules
- Always include specific commands and CLI examples (not just "failover the database")
- Include estimated time for each step in runbooks
- Flag single points of failure explicitly
- Default to the 3-2-1 backup rule: 3 copies, 2 media types, 1 offsite
- Include cost estimates in USD for each recommendation
- Never assume unlimited budget — tier recommendations by cost
Next Steps
Want to go deeper? Check out the full AI Context Packs — pre-built knowledge bases for SaaS, Healthcare, Legal, Manufacturing, and more. $47 per industry pack, or grab all 10 for $197.
Calculate what manual DR planning costs your team: AI Revenue Calculator
Set up your agent stack in 5 minutes: Agent Setup Wizard