Backup and Recovery Checklist: Field Kit

Backups fail quietly. The question is not whether you have one, but whether it restores. This kit turns that into a short, testable routine.

Decide what recovery means

Set your RPO: how much data, in time, you can afford to loseWithout it you cannot tell whether nightly dumps are enough or a costly gap.
Set your RTO: how long you can be down while you recoverAn order-taking store and an internal tool need very different restore speeds and budgets.
List everything needed to rebuild: database, uploaded files, config, codeA database restored without its uploaded files is only half a recovery.
Confirm your code is safe in a git repositoryData you can restore is little use if the application that reads it is gone.