High availability and disaster recovery strategies for cloud-based SAP systems

High availability and disaster recovery strategies form the backbone of resilient cloud-based SAP systems. This article explores how these complementary approaches address different levels of system resilience - with high availability focusing on component-level failures within a region through redundancy and automated failover, while disaster recovery handles catastrophic events affecting entire regions. The exploration covers infrastructure redundancy, database high availability, application-level redundancy, and automated failover mechanisms as key elements of comprehensive availability architectures. For disaster recovery, backup and recovery approaches, cross-region replication, recovery orchestration, and regular testing are essential components. The article also evaluates cloud provider-specific features from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, highlighting their unique capabilities for SAP workloads. Implementation best practices emphasize business-driven requirements, layered defense strategies, automation, regular testing, thorough documentation, proactive monitoring, and continuous review processes to optimize resilience for these business-critical systems.