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ChallengesreDestructive

Backup & Disaster Recovery Drill — Challenge

Lose the database on purpose, restore it, and write down the RTO and RPO you actually achieved.

Time
27 min
Level
Advanced
Objectives
4 objectives
Cost
Free

Before you start

You will need

  • Docker
  • Docker Compose
  • psql

You will be able to

  • Verify a backup by restoring it, not by checking it exists
  • Measure RTO and RPO rather than asserting them
  • Write a runbook someone else can follow

CostFree

— runs locally with Docker Compose and PostgreSQL.

How to clean up

You are done when

0 of 4

The goal#

Achieve the same outcome as Backup & Disaster Recovery Drill, from an empty starting point, without the steps.

The backup job has reported success every night for eight months. Nobody has restored one.

Today you find out whether it works — on a database you can afford to lose.

What must be true when you are done#

  • A backup is taken, verified, and restored into a clean database.
  • You can state the RTO you measured and the RPO your schedule implies.
  • The restore is driven by a written runbook, not by memory.
  • A deliberately corrupted backup is detected before it is trusted.

Rules#

  • Do not open the guided lab until you are finished, or until the same problem has held you up for 20 minutes.
  • Documentation is allowed and encouraged.
  • Verify every criterion with a command whose output you can read.

If you get stuck#

  1. What did you expect, exactly?
  2. What happened instead — the error text, not a paraphrase?
  3. Which layer is that error from?
  4. What is the smallest command that proves the layer below is fine?

The concept behind it

Stuck?Open the guided lab

Next up

Lab 54 of 58 on the project path

Chaos: Failure Injection & RecoveryKill things deliberately, measure how long recovery takes, and find the assumption that was wrong.50 minAdvanced