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Overview

A protection plan defines which workloads are protected, how they are replicated to the DR site, and in what order they recover during a failover. Creating a well-structured plan is the foundation of an effective DR strategy.
Prerequisites
  • An active Xloud account with project access
  • At least one DR site registered and connected (contact your administrator if no DR site is configured). Your administrator can configure this through XDeploy.
  • Instances and volumes you want to protect must exist in the project
Key Concepts
TermDefinition
RPORecovery Point Objective — maximum acceptable data loss measured in time
RTORecovery Time Objective — maximum acceptable recovery time
Replication ModeAsynchronous (lower overhead) or Synchronous (zero data loss, higher latency)
Consistency GroupResources that must recover together atomically

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Creating a Protection Plan

Navigate to Protection Plans

Log in to the Xloud Dashboard (https://connect.<your-domain>) and navigate to Project → Disaster Recovery → Protection Plans. Click Create Plan.

Define plan settings

FieldDescription
Plan NameDescriptive label (e.g., prod-web-tier-dr)
RPO TargetMaximum data loss tolerance (e.g., 15 minutes)
RTO TargetMaximum acceptable recovery time (e.g., 1 hour)
Replication ModeAsynchronous or Synchronous
DR SiteTarget site where workloads recover
Synchronous replication guarantees zero data loss (RPO = 0) but adds write latency proportional to the round-trip time between sites. Use asynchronous mode for sites separated by more than 10ms RTT.

Add protected resources

Click Add Resource and select the instances, volumes, or application groups to include. For each resource, configure:
  • Recovery Priority — order in which this resource starts during failover
  • Consistency Group — group resources that must recover together atomically
  • Pre/Post Scripts — optional automation hooks for application quiesce and validation

Review and activate

Review the plan summary and click Activate. XDR begins replicating all protected resources to the DR site immediately. Initial sync time depends on data volume.
Plan status shows Active and initial replication sync begins.

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Managing Existing Plans

Navigate to Project → Disaster Recovery → Protection Plans to see all plans with their current status and replication lag.Available actions per plan:
  • Edit — update RPO/RTO targets or add resources
  • Deactivate — pause replication without deleting the plan
  • Delete — permanently remove the plan (stops replication)
  • Failover — initiate failover (see Failover)
  • Test Failover — run a DR test (see DR Testing)

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Replication Health

Monitor replication health to ensure your RPO targets are achievable before an actual disaster event:
MetricHealthyWarningAction
Replication lag< RPO targetApproaching RPO targetInvestigate network bandwidth
Plan statusACTIVEDEGRADEDReview event log for errors
Last recovery point< RPO ago> RPO agoCheck connectivity to DR site
Monitor replication lag for all plans from the Disaster Recovery → Protection Plans list view, which displays current lag alongside each plan.
If replication lag consistently exceeds your RPO target, actual data loss on failover will exceed the configured target. Escalate to your storage administrator immediately.

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Next Steps

Failover

Execute failover when a primary site failure is confirmed

DR Testing

Validate your protection plan without impacting production

XDR Admin — Recovery Plans

Define ordered resource groups and automation hooks (administrator)

Troubleshooting

Diagnose replication lag and plan activation issues