Disaster recovery in practice: How Claranet overcame a complete AWS outage in four days

The initial situation: Complete failure without a disaster recovery concept

In spring 2026, geopolitical tensions in the Middle East led to an unexpected and immediate IT crisis at one of our customers: Parts of the regional AWS data centres were severely damaged by drones. The result was a complete failure of the entire company IT. There was no disaster recovery concept in place.

This immediately caused three problems. Firstly, the repair work at AWS progressed slowly due to the persistently difficult security situation. Secondly, the obvious solution, a quick migration to another AWS region, failed due to disrupted AWS services. Thirdly, without prepared failover structures, there was a daily threat of increasing business outages.

The Claranet solution: rebuild in under 96 hours

The customer decided to rebuild the IT environment at short notice together with Claranet as its cloud partner. The collaboration took place in close, continuous coordination. The schedule:

• Thursday evening: GO for the implementation
• Late Friday evening: handover of the new environment
• Monday: joint commissioning and functional tests
• Tuesday morning: first part of the environment in productive use

Parallel to the recommissioning, the Claranet team worked with the customer on the further development of a complete DR environment. Particularly noteworthy: the migration took place without any client-side configuration changes. This point was explicitly emphasised in the customer feedback, as was the fast and smooth recovery.

Success factors for rapid recovery

Four key lessons learnt can be derived from the project that apply to every disaster recovery scenario:

1. Flexibility and proactive action are crucial in crisis situations.
2. Open communication and close collaboration with experienced partners are key factors.
3. Fast, reliable implementation strengthens trust in the collaboration.
4. The importance of DR concepts is confirmed time and again in reality.

The successful handling of this critical situation shows that teamwork, flexibility and commitment lead to rapid migration and restoration of services, even under time pressure. The value of partnership-based cooperation and proactive problem solving was particularly evident in this case.

Risks without disaster recovery mechanisms

What could have happened if the customer had acted without an experienced partner? These five risks typically occur when companies face an emergency without a prepared disaster recovery concept:

• Long recovery times: Without a prepared DR environment, the infrastructure and configuration must first be rebuilt, which costs valuable time.
• Lack of automation: Manual processes increase the susceptibility to errors and further delay recovery.
• Data loss: Without regular backups and replication, there is a risk that current data will be irretrievably lost.
• Customer dissatisfaction and loss of image: Prolonged outages impair customer satisfaction and can cause lasting damage to trust in the company.
• High operational effort: Emergency migration ties up resources and often requires several teams to work together under high time pressure.

Advantages of a DR concept implemented in advance

Those who plan disaster recovery with foresight benefit from measurable advantages. This is precisely where Claranet's Managed Services come in:

• Minimised downtimes (RTO/RPO): Automated failover mechanisms and regular data replication allow the recovery time objective (RTO) and the maximum tolerable data loss (recovery point objective, RPO) to be reduced to a minimum.
• Automated recovery: With infrastructure as code and standardised templates, the entire IT landscape can be quickly and consistently redeployed in an alternative region.
• Cost efficiency: Modern cloud DR solutions make it possible to keep resources available for emergencies at low cost and only activate them in an emergency ("pilot light" or "warm standby" approach).
• Regular testing and compliance: DR mechanisms can be tested regularly to fulfil security and compliance requirements in the event of an emergency.
• Reduced operational stress: A predefined DR plan provides clarity about processes and roles in the event of a crisis and takes the pressure off teams.
• Rapid scalability: In an emergency, the infrastructure can be flexibly and quickly ramped up in another region to continue business operations.

Best practices for an effective disaster recovery strategy

Four basic principles have emerged from numerous cloud projects that Claranet recommends to its customers:

• DR as an integral part of the cloud architecture: disaster recovery should already be considered and planned for when designing the IT landscape.
• Regular backups and replication: Data should be backed up continuously and replicated to a geographically separate region.
• Documented and tested emergency plans: Clear, documented processes and regular DR tests ensure that every action is taken in the event of an emergency.
• Automation and standardisation: The use of infrastructure as code and automation tools ensures consistent and rapid deployment.

Conclusion: Disaster recovery is a competitive advantage, not insurance

This use case shows how critical pre-considered and implemented disaster recovery mechanisms are for the resilience of modern IT environments. They make it possible to react quickly and in a structured manner to unexpected disruptions, minimise downtimes and maintain business operations: a decisive competitive advantage in an increasingly uncertain world.

Companies that establish disaster recovery as an integral part of their IT strategy not only protect themselves against economic damage. They also secure the trust of their customers and partners. With an experienced cloud partner like Claranet, the emergency plan becomes a resilient safety net that proves its worth in an emergency.

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Frequently asked questions about disaster recovery (FAQ)

What is a disaster recovery concept? A disaster recovery concept is a pre-defined strategy for restoring the IT infrastructure after a failure. It specifies which systems must be available again in what order and with what resources and in what time.

How quickly can an IT environment be restored after a cloud outage? With a prepared DR concept and automated failover mechanisms, recovery times of just a few minutes are possible. Without preparation, a rebuild takes days to weeks. In this Claranet case, a complete environment was productively rebuilt in four days.

What do RTO and RPO mean? RTO (Recovery Time Objective) is the maximum tolerable downtime, RPO (Recovery Point Objective) is the maximum acceptable data loss. Both values are the basis of every DR strategy.

What is the difference between pilot light and warm standby? With the pilot light approach, only minimal core components run in a second region. With Warm Standby, a reduced but functional copy of the productive environment is already active. Warm standby costs more, but is faster in an emergency.

What does Managed Disaster Recovery from Claranet do? Claranet plans, implements and operates the DR concept as a managed service. This includes architecture consulting, automation with infrastructure as code, regular tests and operation of the failover environment.