Disaster recovery has gone from being a manual manual in a drawer to becoming an operational service that is tested, audited, and paid for by usage. Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) allows for replication of critical loads in near real-time, setting verifiable recovery objectives (RTO/RPO), and executing failover without disrupting production. Four sectors — finance, energy, healthcare, and SaaS — show why it has shifted from an option to a continuity requirement.
This report reviews regulatory requirements, real-world cases, and industry best practices, ending with a technical proposal from Stackscale (Aire Group) to deploy DRaaS with guarantees in Spain and Europe.
Finance: certifiable continuity and audits requiring a clock and compass
Financial entities operate core banking, instant payments, ATMs, and digital channels with availability goals that leave no room for ambiguity. Frameworks like EBA Guidelines on ICT and Security Risk Management, Basel III, or ECB guidelines require demonstrable recovery ability with verifiable RTO and RPO.
What does an “audit-ready” DRaaS require in banking:
- Synchronous replication in low latency for payments and clearance; asynchronous for back-office with greater tolerance for data loss.
- Periodic failover tests (at least quarterly) with automatic reports and traceability of who, when, and how.
- Segmentation by criticality: minutes for payments, longer windows for internal systems.
- Cyberattack scenarios with isolated environments (air-gapped or logically segmented) that maintain essential services during incident containment.
Lesson learned | TARGET2 (ECB, 2020). The nearly ten-hour outage of the interbank platform exposed that having a contingency plan doesn’t equate to being able to execute it on time. Automation of failover, orchestration, and crisis communication are as crucial as replication.
Energy: resilience in ICS/SCADA and networks that can’t stop
Electrical and gas operators work with industrial systems (ICS/SCADA, DCS) where every second counts. Downtime impacts supply, grid stability, and physical security, under frameworks such as ISO 22301 or European critical infrastructure directives.
What DRaaS offers in energy:
- Scheduled recovery tests without disrupting operations, validated against physical and logical incidents.
- Real-time replication of SCADA/DCS and failover to an alternate site if the main center fails.
- Continuity in distributed environments with remote stations and sensitive links: compression and deduplication prevent line saturation.
- Telemetry and auditability to demonstrate compliance and detect bottlenecks before incidents occur.
Systemic risk | Power outage in the Iberian Peninsula (2025). A large-scale power outage paralyzing transportation, telecommunications, and emergency services with cascading effects. The failover capability in real-time — along with available alternate sites — defines the boundary between managed incident and national crisis.
Healthcare & pharmaceuticals: availability with enhanced privacy, no excuses
Hospitals, laboratories, and pharmaceutical companies safeguard health data and intellectual property. Here, systems must not only be always available but also protect data and trace access and restores.
What healthcare DRaaS must guarantee:
- Differentiated RTO/RPO: emergencies and HIS within minutes; research repositories with a focus on integrity.
- Continuous replication of clinical databases and immediate failover in case of failure or ransomware attack.
- Test reports and comprehensive audits for GDPR/HIPAA: evidence that recovery is possible, how long it takes, and to what extent (RPO).
- Hybrid integration: legacy applications with cloud platforms without breaking custody chains.
Real case | Dedalus (France, 2022). A data breach affecting hundreds of thousands of patients led to a €1.5 million fine and a review of controls, replication, and traceability. Availability without security is insufficient.
SaaS and digital platforms: SLAs earned through recovery
SaaS providers combine microservices, CI/CD, and multicloud. Their SLAs depend on their ability to recover quickly after a code failure, external dependency, or platform outage.
What DRaaS resolves in SaaS:
- RTO/RPO policies by microservice (e.g., authentication and payments) with more aggressive objectives.
- Integrated recovery tests within the CI/CD pipeline without delaying deployments.
- Protection scaling in parallel with user growth.
- Ransomware scenarios with isolated failover to halt spread in multi-tenant environments.
Critical dependencies | CrowdStrike (July 2024). A faulty update rendered millions of Windows devices inoperative and affected SaaS chains. The incident underscored that rollback plans, backup environments, and regular recovery testing are not “nice-to-have” but core SLA components.
When “the cloud” is just one data center: South Korea’s case
The fire at NIRS headquarters (Daejeon, South Korea) destroyed government systems and a storage called “G-Drive” without operational copies. Result: hundreds of thousands of civil servants’ files lost and critical services interrupted. The lesson is straightforward: without geographic replication and restore testing, the cloud is not truly cloud, it’s a data center with marketing.
How to implement guaranteed DRaaS: Stackscale’s approach
Beyond the catalog, a robust DRaaS lives in design, testing, and metrics. From Stackscale’s perspective, the pillars are:
- Active-active architecture for critical loads
- Synchronous storage between two independent data centers with RTO = 0 and RPO = 0 for designated volumes.
- Transparent failover at the block level and service orchestration for dependent services (DB, queues, identity).
- Third location for immutable copies
- Immutable backup (WORM) in another data center with 3-2-1 policies and retention mandated by regulation.
- Recovery in isolated environment for forensics and cleaning before re-entering production.
- Platform compatibility
- Common hypervisors and stacks (KVM/Proxmox, VMware), containers/K8s), and hybrid cloud when appropriate.
- Replication at VM, volume, or application level (journaling, log shipping, CDC).
- Testing and evidence
- Drills at least quarterly with KPI (failover time, consistency, errors) and signed evidence for audit.
- Versioned runbooks: recovery steps, dependencies, business validations.
- Governance and security
- Network and account segmentation, mandatory MFA, just-in-time access, and unchangeable logs.
- Monitoring of latency and replication bandwidth, with alerts for RPO drift.
Metrics that matter (and should be contractually agreed upon):
- Target RTO per service (in minutes).
- Target RPO per data class (in seconds/minutes/hours).
- Success rate of recovery tests and average failover time.
- Frequency of drills and scope (partial vs. full).
- SOV (Separation of Duties) and traceability in emergency access.
Sector deployment quick guide
- Finance: prioritize synchronous for payments; asynchronous for risk/credit; auditable quarterly drills.
- Energy: alternate site with redundant links; non-stop testing; optimized replication for remote links.
- Healthcare/pharma: immutability + traceability; minutes RTO in HIS/emergencies; custody chain in restorations.
- SaaS: micro-RTO per service; rollback integrated into CI/CD; isolation for ransomware response.
Cost of not practicing
The cited incidents — TARGET2, blackouts, massive leaks, or update failures — confirm that operational risk is not hypothetical. DRaaS is the nexus of architecture, procedures, and evidence. The time to align RTO/RPO with reality, test recovery, and measure results is before the next incident.
FAQ
What distinguishes DRaaS from traditional backup for business continuity?
Backup protects data; DRaaS protects services. It includes continuous replication, application orchestration, failover to an alternate site, and periodic testing with evidence of RTO/RPO. It allows ongoing operation during incident remediation.
How do you choose between synchronous and asynchronous replication in DRaaS?
Synchronous offers RPO = 0 but demands very low latencies and dedicated links; ideal for payments or transactions. Asynchronous tolerates latency and distance, with RPO in seconds/minutes, fitting for back-office, analytics, or less sensitive loads.
How often should a DRaaS plan be tested?
At least quarterly, with drills simulating realistic failures (like data center outages, data corruption, cyberattacks). Each test must measure RTO/RPO, collect evidence, and update runbooks. In regulated sectors, these reports are part of compliance.
What architecture does Stackscale recommend for critical loads?
For highly transactional data, active-active storage with synchronous replication between two data centers (RTO = 0 / RPO = 0) and immutable copies in a third location. It is complemented with service orchestration and regular signed tests for auditing.