Disaster Recovery

Don't wait for a real disaster to find out

Annual fire drills can't keep pace with infrastructure drift. Recovery plans need continuous validation using real chaos experiments, with RTO/RPO measured against actual SLAs. Compliance evidence should generate automatically.

40 minRTO achieved vs. 4-hr SLAAutomated backup restore validation
Zerodata loss in validated regional failoverTransaction-level RPO measurement
100%automated audit trailGenerated after every DR test run
Why Harness

Make disaster recovery testing a continuous engineering practice

Most teams treat disaster recovery (DR) testing as a compliance checkbox. Harness treats it as a continuous engineering practice — automated, evidence-generating, and pipeline-integrated.

Audit-ready evidence

DR test evidence is screenshots, spreadsheets, and tribal knowledge. Auditors — and your board — need documented proof of recovery capability with timestamps and outcomes.

Every Harness DR test generates a full audit trail: RTO/RPO measurements, step-level logs, pass/fail outcomes. Compliance reports are automatic, not assembled by hand.

Runbook rot

Runbooks go untested for months. When an incident hits, commands reference deleted resources, deprecated APIs, and services that no longer exist.

Harness converts manual runbooks into automated probes that validate every step on a schedule. Failures surface weeks before a real disaster forces the discovery.

Continuous vs. annual

Annual fire drills leave 11+ months of infrastructure drift untested. New services, rotated credentials, and config changes silently break recovery procedures.

Harness schedules automated DR tests daily, weekly, or on every deployment. Catch drift before it becomes a production disaster.

How It Works

Probe. Fault. Recover.

Disaster recovery testing is automated end to end.

Define your recovery workflow in Pipeline Studio Configure pre-flight probes, fault injection, and recovery steps in a visual editor alongside your existing pipelines — no separate tooling required.

Inject the fault, watch the failover, measure RTO in real time Harness triggers the fault, promotes the secondary, and records timing from injection through full recovery — comparing against your SLA target automatically.

Validate every runbook step before a real disaster forces it Convert manual recovery procedures into automated probes. Surface outdated commands, missing steps, and infrastructure drift on a schedule, not during an incident.

Gate releases on DR pass/fail results Integrate DR tests directly into your deployment pipeline with automated RTO/RPO thresholds that block unsafe releases before they reach production.

Full platform capabilities

Disaster recovery capabilities

Automate failover testing, validate runbooks, and generate compliance evidence across every layer of your recovery plan.

Multi-region failover

Automate AWS, Azure, and GCP region failover testing. Validate Route53, Traffic Manager, and Cloud Load Balancer configurations under real failure conditions.

RTO/RPO measurement

Track Recovery Time Objective and Recovery Point Objective in real time during every test. Automatically flag when results miss SLA targets.

Runbook automation

Convert manual DR runbooks into automated resilience probes. Catch outdated procedures, missing steps, and infrastructure drift before they matter.

Database recovery validation

Test RDS replica promotion, backup restore procedures, and transaction log replay. Measure actual data loss and recovery time against your RPO.

Scheduled recurring tests

Schedule DR tests daily, weekly, or on every deployment. Maintain continuous compliance readiness without manual coordination.

Use cases

Real-world DR scenarios

How teams use Harness to validate recovery plans, meet compliance mandates, and stop finding the same failures twice.

Multi-region failover validation

Simulate a full regional outage, validate DNS failover, database replica promotion, and application startup in the backup region against your RTO target.

Compliance readiness for regulated industries

Run quarterly DR tests automatically, generate audit trails with RTO/RPO evidence, and provide boards and auditors with documented recovery capability.

Runbook validation before incidents

Convert a 47-page manual runbook into automated probes. Find broken steps, deprecated commands, and missing procedures on a schedule — not during a real disaster.

Database backup and restore testing

Test point-in-time restore, transaction log replay, and data integrity validation monthly. Confirm your RPO is achievable before you need it.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Yes, with proper controls. Harness includes built-in blast radius limits, rollback mechanisms, and emergency stops. Start with non-critical services during off-peak hours. Many organizations run monthly DR tests in production to validate real failover procedures.

RTO (Recovery Time Objective) is how quickly you can restore service after a failure. RPO (Recovery Point Objective) is how much data loss is acceptable. These define your business continuity requirements. Harness measures actual RTO/RPO during tests to verify you meet SLAs.

Leading organizations test monthly or with every major deployment. Annual testing is insufficient — infrastructure changes constantly through deployments, configuration updates, and dependency changes. Automated continuous testing catches drift before it breaks recovery.

Yes. Harness automates AWS, Azure, and GCP multi-region failover testing. Validate Route53 health checks, Traffic Manager policies, database replica promotion, and application startup in backup regions. Measure actual failover time and data replication lag.

This is extremely common and dangerous. Harness converts manual runbooks into automated resilience probes that validate each step. We catch outdated commands, missing procedures for new services, and infrastructure drift before real disasters occur.

Many industries — financial services, healthcare, government — require documented proof of recovery capability. Harness provides automated testing with full audit logs, RTO/RPO measurements, and compliance reports showing test results and recovery validation.

Get started with Harness Disaster Recovery

Validate your recovery plans, prove compliance, and stop finding out your DR procedures are broken during a real disaster.