Which DR strategy fits us: backup, pilot light, warm standby or hot standby?
For SMBs with an RTO of a few hours, pilot light is usually enough. Hot standby quickly doubles infra cost for a scenario you may never face.
Try this first
- 1Backup & restore (RTO hours to days): cheapest. Cross-region snapshots, IaC for rebuild. Fits internal tools and secondary apps.
- 2Pilot light (RTO 30-60 min): core components run minimally in second region, app tier scales up on failover. Fits SMB production.
- 3Warm standby (RTO 5-15 min): smaller production replica runs full-time, scales to full capacity on failover. Fits e-commerce.
- 4Hot standby / multi-site (RTO < 1 min): two full production environments active. Fits payments and trading, rarely SMB.
- 5Test your chosen tier every quarter. Pilot light that only exists on paper isn't DR.
When to bring us in
If a customer or regulator contractually requires a specific RTO, document the design and have it reviewed before you sell it.
See also
- Everyone logs in with the AWS root accountRoot is for emergencies and billing. Day-to-day work belongs in IAM users or SSO.
- Every developer has AdministratorAccessAdministratorAccess everywhere is convenient now, painful later. Start with role-based policies.
- Everyone has individual IAM users with their own passwordIdentity Center (formerly AWS SSO) links to your IdP and issues temporary credentials per session.
None of the above fits?
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