Written steps anyone can follow
A recovery plan for every system, tested once and printed.
- Term
- 3 to 4 weeks, one-off
- Price, indicative
- From $1,500 one-off
Recovery often lives in one person’s head, and that person may be on a plane the day it matters. A runbook puts every step on paper, in order, with an owner beside each one.
Four weeks to a tested plan
- Week 1
Interview the people
We talk with the owner, the office manager and whoever runs IT, for about 1 hour each.
- Week 2
Map and set targets
Each system gets a recovery point and a recovery time, agreed with you in writing.
- Week 3
Write the steps
Restore order, step-by-step instructions, where each login is kept, and a contact tree.
- Week 4
Run a tabletop
We walk your team through one realistic outage on paper, for about 2 hours, and fix the gaps.
- Handover
PDF and binder
You get a PDF and a printed binder, plus a list of changes that should trigger an update.
What you receive
- Who it is for
- Offices where one person knows how to recover
- Format
- Remote interviews, PDF and printed binder
- A system map of every server, app and data store you depend on
- A recovery point and recovery time for each system, agreed in writing
- A restore order, written for someone who has never done it before
- A contact tree for staff, vendors, your insurer and us
- One tabletop exercise, with each gap it found and how it was fixed
- The runbook as a PDF and a printed binder
Is this the right plan?
Right for you if
- One person knows how everything is set up, and nobody else does
- Your insurer or board has asked for a written recovery plan
- You have backups but no agreed order for bringing systems back
- You are adding Standby Recovery and want the failover written down
Look elsewhere if
- You have no backups yet; start with a backup plan, then write the runbook
- You need a plan certified to a named standard; we do not certify
Example: a burst pipe in August
A 38-person law firm runs document management and billing on two servers in a basement closet. The runbook restores documents first and billing second, with a recovery time of 1 business day each. The tabletop finds that nobody knows where the domain login is kept, so the binder now says. In August a pipe bursts above the closet. Step 1 in the binder: email support@ezbre.com.
Recovery Runbook questions, answered
What is a disaster recovery runbook?
It is a written, step-by-step plan for bringing each system back after an outage, in the order the business needs them. It says who does what, where each login is kept, how much data each system can lose and how long it can be down, and who to contact first.
How long does a recovery runbook take?
A typical runbook takes 3 to 4 weeks from the first interview to the printed binder. Most of that time is spent fitting around your calendar, not writing. We need about 5 hours of your team’s time in total, including the interviews and the 2-hour tabletop exercise in the final week.
What happens in the tabletop exercise?
Your team walks through one realistic outage on a video call, such as a failed server on a Monday morning, with the draft runbook open. Each person reads their steps aloud. Wherever someone gets stuck or a detail is missing, we note the gap, fix the runbook and reissue it before handover.
Do we need to be an Ezbre backup client?
No. The runbook covers whatever backups you run today, ours or another provider’s. If it finds a system with no backup, or one that has never been restored, it says so plainly, and you decide what to do about it. The fixed fee is quoted in writing before work starts.
How do we keep the runbook up to date?
Each runbook ends with a one-page list of changes that should trigger an update, such as a new server, a new app or a new office manager. We can revise it for a fixed fee quoted in writing, and a quarterly Restore Drill is a good moment to check it against a real restore.
Plan this with an engineer
A free 45-minute backup check to see whether Recovery Runbook fits your systems, your recovery targets and your budget.