Backup zone

As explained in Think Like a CTO

A backup zone is a separate computing or deployment environment prepared to take over service operation after failure of the primary environment.

A backup zone is a separate environment prepared to take over when the active zone fails. Disaster recovery may use one or several backup zones; with only one, failover consumes the remaining safety net. section 8.4

Plan a backup zone around the decisions that determine whether failover will be useful:

• Set the organization’s downtime tolerance and decide whether recovery requires full or partial service. section 8.4
• Decide whether the organization will fail forward to a new primary or eventually return to the original environment. section 8.4
• Test what the backup zone knows about completed work, because failover can create duplicates, omissions, or manual database and file-reconciliation tasks. section 8.4.2

Partial service during failover

An online store might let customers view products and add items to a cart while disabling checkout. Less visible functions, such as logging, reporting, and scheduled administration, may also be deferred. A fully serviced takeover is harder: interrupted email batches may need investigation, and duplicate emails may be acceptable. section 8.4.2

Figure 8.2 Foundations of a DR strategy

Use the foundations diagram to compare downtime tolerance, service scope, and failover direction when shaping a disaster-recovery strategy. section 8.4

How Think Like a CTO covers it

How deep it goes

Explains topology and planning questions, then examines partial service, state reconciliation, duplication, and manual recovery work.

Examples

Uses active and backup zones, a shopping cart without checkout, deferred administration, and potentially duplicated email alerts.

What it assumes

Assumes disaster-recovery planning and service-continuity concerns while establishing downtime tolerance, service scope, and failover choices.

What you can do after

Evaluate disaster-recovery designs by defining service scope, failover direction, and the consequences of incomplete state transfer.

How it connects

Connects backup zones to disaster recovery, downtime tolerance, partial service, failover, and data reconciliation.

liveBookmanning.com

Read Think Like a CTO on liveBook Get the book at manning.com

Related concepts

• disaster recoveryused by · Disaster recovery is the planning and execution of processes and capabilities for restoring systems, data, and services after a disruptive event.

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of Think Like a CTO. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.