Replication is not backup. Terraform is not recovery.
The data plane needs its own deliberate strategy: backups, snapshots, WAL/PITR, versioning, and immutability.
PITR
Replication
Fresh standby
Great for infra failure. Bad against logical corruption that replicates instantly.
Backups
Recoverable history
Independent copies protect against deletion and ransomware.
Snapshots
Fast rollback point
Useful for volume restoration, but consistency quality matters.
PITR
Restore to just before damage
Base backup plus WAL/archive logs shrink real data loss.
A mature answer protects customer data, uploaded objects, secrets, and state stores separately — not only the cluster definition.