Overview:

This article explains how to create a Stage-1 Disaster Recovery (DR) Policy in SWIFT for scenarios where you only want to back up resources from the source side (SWIFT), without provisioning anything on the target side—until needed.


Use Case Scenario:

Let’s assume a scenario where the production environment is running smoothly. You want to back up all critical components on the SWIFT (source) side, but you do not want to provision any resources on the target side, as there's no immediate need for it.

However, in the unfortunate event of an issue or failure on the production side, and you need to quickly recover and bring everything up by creating a new cluster, SWIFT provides this flexibility using the Stage-1 DR Policy.


Key Benefits

  • Backup is maintained at the source side without any active infrastructure on the target.

  • Cost-effective: No compute or storage resources are consumed on the DR side until needed.

  • Fast recovery: You can quickly provision a new cluster using the latest backups from SWIFT.

  • Ideal for passive DR setups or cost-sensitive environments.


When to Use This Approach

  • Production is stable, and you do not need an active DR cluster.

  • You want to reduce costs by avoiding unnecessary provisioning on the target.

  • You require a ready-to-use backup for quick disaster recovery when needed.



Now you just need to follow below steps in SWIFT.


1. Log in to the SWIFT Dashboard.

2. Add your source cluster in SWIFT.  You can refer below article.

https://rackware.freshdesk.com/a/solutions/articles/5000891149?lang=en


3. Then, create a Stage 1 DR Policy. Go to Business Continuity & DR, select DR Policy with Stage 1 sync type, and create it 




4. Then apply the same DR Policy. Please see below snippet.




5.  When you apply the DR policy then you will get prompt that you need to,


   Step-by-Step Instructions:

  1. Provide Source Cluster Details
    On the left side of the DR Policy configuration screen:

    • Enter the Source Cluster Name

    • Specify the Namespace

    • Select the appropriate Image Group

  2. Select DR cluster config
    On the right-hand side:

    • Choose the Cloud Type on which you wish to create the DR cluster.

    • In this example, we have selected IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service (IKS).

    • Also you need to provide the cluster name, namespace and k8s version.





Provide the Traipod option as per your usecase and select the IR.




And then there will be a another option to add the IBM configuration.

1. Provide the region

2. Provide Resource group (here we have given clustername_rg)

3. Provide API key

4. Apply




6. Once the policy is applied, it will move to the 'Active' state and Stage1 sync will begin. Please see the snippet below.


 


7. Now you need to 'Failover' the policy to create a IKS DR cluster.  For that you have to go to the DR Policy and click on 'Failover' as below.




8. Make sure to unselect the 'DR Drill' option, as we are creating a real DR cluster. The 'DR Drill' option is intended for testing purposes only.




9. Upon selecting 'Failover', the system will initiate the creation of the DR cluster. 



10. By navigating to 'All Replications' under the Sync Administration section, you will see that Stage2 has started. This indicates that the DR cluster creation process is in progress. Please refer to the snippet below for your reference.