You are not DR-ready until the following are true.
This is the shortest useful executive checklist for deciding whether a service really has disaster recovery capability.
6
1
Explicit RPO/RTO
Business-defined, not guessed by engineering.
2
Protected data paths
Backups, replication, and restore targets are known.
3
Tested recovery
Real restores and measured failover timings exist.
4
Dependency map
Critical upstream and downstream systems are understood.
5
Independent comms
Status and coordination survive the same outage.
6
Failback + people ready
Multiple operators can execute the full return path safely.
The mature DR mindset is not “we have backups.” It is “we have repeatedly proven that the service can be restored within target.”