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DR and its cost Implications

1. SOC 2’s Requirement

  • SOC 2 doesn’t dictate how your DR architecture should be built — it evaluates whether your systems and processes meet your stated commitments in the Availability and Processing Integrity criteria.
  • If you commit in your policy that “we can recover from a database outage within 4 hours,” you need a tested plan that shows you can do that.
  • Daily backups + tested restore process can meet SOC 2 if your stated RTO/RPO align with that capability.

2. Where Cross-Region Replication Comes In

  • If your customers expect high availability (HA) even in a full AWS region outage, SOC 2 will expect your architecture to reflect that.
  • Cross-region replication + automated failover is a design choice based on your customer SLAs, not a hard SOC 2 mandate.
  • Without it, you can still pass SOC 2 — as long as:
    • You’ve documented the limitation.
    • Your contracts/SLA don’t promise more than you can deliver.
    • You have backup & restore tested regularly.

3. Cost Implication Reality

  • Single RDS + daily snapshot: Low cost, meets SOC 2 if your RTO/RPO are in line.
  • Multi-AZ failover in same region: +~50–70% cost, improves uptime for single-AZ failures.
  • Cross-region replication: +100–200% cost (another full DB + inter-region traffic), for rare but large outages.
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