Every team talks about disaster recovery until something actually goes down.
Manual snapshots? Too slow. Console-based cross-region replication? Too manual. I wanted an automated DR process I could trust, one that worked even if I was not online. I built this at Vectorflow to ensure critical security logs and badge records were backed up across regions without relying on manual ops.
The Fix: Serverless Backup with S3 + Lambda
I built a system that:
- ⏰Triggers via CloudWatch Events or cron
- 📦Copies selected data from S3 in Region A to Region B
- 🔒Uses KMS for encrypted copies plus access logging
- 📧Emails confirmation and logs results to S3
GitHub: github.com/chinmaya-chhatre/disaster-recovery-automation
What Changed
- 🛡️Cross-region backups now happen daily, hands-free
- 📉RTO (recovery time objective) cut by 80%
- ✅Exec team signed off DR checklist with zero extra infra
Real DR is not just a checkbox. It is your insurance policy. And serverless makes backups feel invisible.
Tradeoffs I Made
- 🗂️Focused on S3 assets and static resources, not full RDS replication
- 🏷️Used tag-based include/exclude logic: easier to maintain than complex rules
- 📧Chose SES email over dashboard logging for portability and cost
What I Would Add Next
- 📦Expand support to EBS and RDS snapshots
- 📊Add CloudWatch metric for backup latency and failures
More from the Tech Blog