Houston faces hurricanes, flooding, and grid stress in addition to everyday hardware failure. Disaster recovery defines how fast systems return (RTO) and how much data you can lose (RPO). Plans on paper fail when nobody tests restores or failover twice a year.
Define RTO and RPO With Leadership
Email might need four-hour RTO while ERP might tolerate twenty-four hours if documented. Match backup frequency and replication to those targets instead of guessing.
Legal, finance, and operations should agree on priorities before an incident.
Replication and Runbooks
Offsite replication to Azure, a secondary Houston site, or another colo gives options when the primary site is unavailable. Runbooks list DNS changes, VPN updates, and who declares disaster.
Tabletop exercises walk teams through decisions without touching production.
Test Restores Every Quarter
Hawkeye Core schedules restore tests and documents results for insurance, auditors, and internal peace of mind.