Disaster recovery in the cloud has moved from novelty to norm, yet the term still means different things to different teams. In 2026, a clear primer helps IT leaders separate genuine cloud DR from cloud storage wearing a recovery label.
A Working Definition
Disaster recovery in the cloud means replicating your systems and data to a cloud environment and being able to stand them back up there when your primary environment fails. It restores operations, not just files, which distinguishes it from simple cloud backup.
The Core Components
Cloud DR combines replication that keeps recovery points current, orchestration that boots systems in order, and testing that proves the plan works. Remove any one and you have a partial capability that may disappoint at the worst moment.
Why Teams Adopt It
The appeal of disaster recovery in the cloud is resilience without a standby site. Recovery capacity exists on demand, so organizations gain enterprise-grade continuity without the fixed cost of a second data center sitting idle.
Where It Fits
Cloud DR suits ransomware recovery, site-outage protection, and modernization of aging DR hardware. It is not a universal replacement for every recovery tool, but for whole-system recovery without a second site, it is often the most practical option.
Getting Started
Begin by defining recovery objectives per workload, then match a cloud DR approach to them. Starting from objectives rather than technology keeps the resulting plan aligned with what the business actually needs to recover.
