Multi-Region Active-Passive DR Stack

Documented Disaster Recovery You Can Actually Test

Most teams know they should have a DR plan. Few have one that's actually codified and tested. This CloudFormation stack deploys your infrastructure to a second region and wires Route53 health checks so failover is automatic — with documented RTO and RPO for every component.

Architecture

• Primary region stack with full application infrastructure
• DR region stack with matching configuration (scaled down for cost until failover)
• Route53 health check with automated DNS failover
• S3 Cross-Region Replication for static assets
• RDS automated backups with cross-region copy policy
• Parameter Store values replicated to DR region

RTO / RPO Targets (Documented Per Component)

• DNS failover: ~60s RTO
• Application tier: ~5 min RTO (ECS service warm-up)
• Database: 15–30 min RPO (cross-region backup restore)

Included Files

• primary-region.yaml — primary CloudFormation stack
• dr-region.yaml — DR region stack
• route53-failover.yaml — health check and DNS failover
• scripts/test-failover.sh — simulate and validate failover
• README.md — RTO/RPO table, runbook, recovery procedures