Media Company Disaster Recovery
Published · Updated
- 4-Hour
- RTO Achieved (from 24+ hours)
- 1 Hour
- RPO for All Data
- 50TB
- Assets Protected Multi-Region
- 100%
- Compliance Requirements Met
TL;DRA media company held 50TB of irreplaceable video in one data center with an untested, paper-only DR plan. We built multi-region AWS disaster recovery with cross-region replication and automated failover, cutting RTO from 24+ hours to 4 hours at a 1-hour RPO.
Key takeaways
- Problem: 50TB of irreplaceable media in a single data center, no offsite backup, untested paper DR, 24+ hour RTO for a 24/7 platform.
- Built multi-region architecture (us-east-1 primary, us-west-2 DR) using S3 Cross-Region Replication with Glacier archival.
- Automated failover via Route 53 health checks, DNS failover, and RDS cross-region read replicas with automated promotion.
- Used CloudFormation for full environment recreation and ran quarterly DR drills to keep the plan tested.
- Result: RTO cut from 24+ hours to 4 hours, 1-hour RPO across all data, 50TB protected, 100% compliance met.
About the Client
A media company with 50TB of irreplaceable video assets and no disaster recovery plan.
The Challenge
50TB of irreplaceable media assets stored in single data center with no offsite backup
Previous disaster recovery plan existed only on paper with no actual testing or validation
RTO of 24+ hours unacceptable for 24/7 streaming platform with global audience
No automated failover meant manual intervention required during any outage scenario
Compliance requirements mandated geographic redundancy for content licensing agreements
The Solution
Multi-region disaster recovery with intelligent storage tiering for cost efficiency.
S3 Cross-Region Replication | S3 Glacier | Route 53 | AWS Backup | CloudFormation | DR Drills
Technical Implementation
Designed multi-region architecture with primary in us-east-1 and DR site in us-west-2
Implemented S3 Cross-Region Replication for media assets with S3 Glacier for archival content
Configured Route 53 health checks with automatic DNS failover to DR region
Set up RDS cross-region read replicas with automated promotion scripts for database failover
Created Infrastructure as Code (CloudFormation) for consistent environment recreation
Implemented quarterly DR drills with documented runbooks and post-drill improvements
Results & Business Impact
- 4-Hour
- RTO Achieved (from 24+ hours)
- 1 Hour
- RPO for All Data
- 50TB
- Assets Protected Multi-Region
- 100%
- Compliance Requirements Met
Technology Stack
- AWS S3
- Glacier
- Route 53
- AWS Backup
- CloudFormation
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