Databases have snapshots. Storage has redundancy. Backups run nightly.
But here’s the question that keeps infrastructure leaders up at night: Can they rebuild the infrastructure itself?
Not the data. The infrastructure that runs the data.
Most teams discover the answer during the actual disaster.
The Truth About Modern DR
Here’s what nobody wants to admit: Most disaster recovery plans probably cover 40% of what they actually need to recover.
Data backups? Handled.
But the networks, IAM policies, load balancers, security groups, service meshes, and routing rules that make everything work? That’s often tribal knowledge, scattered Terraform files, and a prayer.
The same Infrastructure as Code that was supposed to enable automatic recovery has become a single point of failure. Because Terraform state (the memory of what’s actually deployed) is often:
- Fragmented across teams and projects
- Poorly versioned or not backed up
- Never tested for recovery
- Maybe even stored in one engineer’s S3 bucket
The assumption is “if it’s in Git, we’re fine.” But Git has your code. It doesn’t have your state. And without a state, you’re not rebuilding – you’re guessing under pressure.
What Happens During Recovery
A suspicious alert. Systems go down. The incident response kicks in.
Engineers verify backups exist. Databases can be restored. Relief sets in.
Then someone asks: “How do we bring the infrastructure back up?”
That’s when the scrambling starts:
- What dependencies exist between these resources?
- Did anyone document the load balancer rules?
- Where’s the current state file?
What should take minutes stretches into days. Manual recreation introduces new errors. Configuration drift creates cascading failures. And the longer it takes, the greater the business impact.
The teams that recover quickly aren’t inherently smarter. They’re just prepared differently.
Three Unglamorous Steps That Work
You don’t need to rebuild everything. You need to make the infrastructure rebuildable.
1. Treat Terraform state like production data
Not “like important files.” Like actual production data. Centralized, versioned, backed up, and tested for recovery. If you lost your state files tomorrow, how long would it take to restore the infrastructure?
2. Maintain infrastructure change history
When recovery fails, it’s usually because nobody knows what changed recently or why. Version your infrastructure changes the same way you version application code. Make the history visible.
3. Test actual rebuilds – not theoretical ones
Spin up a throwaway environment. Try to rebuild it from your Terraform state. Time it. Document what breaks.
Most teams skip this step because it feels like busywork. Until the incident happens.
The Real Risk
Cloud environments are growing more complex. More services, more regions, more dependencies. Meanwhile, attacks are faster and recovery expectations are tighter.
The gap between “we have a DR plan” and “we can actually execute recovery” is widening.
If you’ve never tried to rebuild your infrastructure from scratch, you don’t actually know if you can.
Discovering that gap during a real incident is the worst possible moment.
Reality Check Offer
If you’re unsure whether your infrastructure is truly rebuildable, we offer a free disaster recovery assessment.
- How recoverable is your current Terraform setup
- Where the hidden risks exist
- What rebuilding would look like during a real incident