Backup restoration drills
Let the next operator run the restore drill
Recovery knowledge should survive a team change. Use a fresh operator to test the runbook, access and decision points before an incident demands them.
In this article
Provide the recovery starting point
Give the receiving team the scenario, recovery objective, backup location and maintained procedure. Include how to obtain the required authority without sharing personal credentials.
Identify the service owner who can decide which data state is acceptable. An infrastructure operator may restore a point successfully without being able to judge whether it contains the right business history.
Keep the runbook available through a path that remains usable under the stated failure.
Observe without filling every gap verbally
Ask the operator to select the intended recovery point, create the isolated destination and start the compatible application. Record where they need undocumented information.
Do not treat those questions as operator failure. They reveal dependencies the previous team carried in memory.
Update the maintained procedure with the missing decision or access route, then verify that the receiving team can follow it independently.
Hand over evidence and limitations
Record the completed business checks, phase timings and actual recovered data boundary. Include what the drill did not cover, such as a regional outage or a particular external integration.
List unresolved issues with owners and next actions. A missing attachment or manual key workaround should remain visible until the recovery path is corrected.
Explain the difference between restoring data and reconciling work that occurred after the selected point. The latter may need application and business involvement.
Assign the next exercise
Name the owner, expected cadence and changes that should trigger another drill. Schema changes, identity changes and new storage dependencies can alter recovery even when backup jobs remain green.
Include cleanup verification and retention of the evidence. The receiving team should know what can be removed and what remains necessary for future comparison.
The handover is complete when another operator can recover the service through the documented path and explain its limits. A successful demonstration by the original author alone does not establish that capability.
Primary sources
AWS Backup: restore testingReferences checked 11 September 2026.