An enterprise global supply chain platform hosts its primary database on Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL in `us-east4` with a cross-region read replica in `us-central1` to support disaster recovery (DR). The business mandates a recovery point objective (RPO) of under 5 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of under 1 hour. Your team is designing an annual non-disruptive DR validation procedure to verify failover readiness and application functionality in `us-central1`. Which procedure should you incorporate into the validation plan to meet these requirements without risking production data integrity?
- Verify compute and storage resource quotas in `us-central1` ahead of the test, promote a isolated clone of the cross-region replica for validation testing, and test DNS traffic steering to the staging endpoint.Answer
- BInitiate an unannounced live promotion of the primary cross-region database replica to master status in `us-central1` and immediately update production Cloud DNS A records to route active customer traffic.
- CExecute the DR validation script using standard regional default quotas in `us-central1` and promote the standby replica directly during the test window.
- DMigrate the database to a multi-region HA Cloud VPN setup prior to testing to ensure continuous cross-region transactional consistency without needing replica promotion.
Answer
Verify compute and storage resource quotas in the target disaster recovery region prior to testing, create and promote a isolated clone of the read replica to test application functionality, and update DNS pointing to non-production staging endpoints.
Safe DR validation procedures require pre-verifying regional resource quotas to guarantee capacity in the secondary region. Using a database clone of the cross-region read replica for validation allows full write testing and application verification without disrupting live replication or introducing production risk.
Step-by-Step Solution
Key Concept
Disaster Recovery Validation and Failover Testing Procedures