What Disaster Recovery Planning Is
Disaster recovery planning (DR planning) is the structured work of defining how you will restore critical systems after a major disruption — and proving that the plan works through testing. In EV charging, DR planning covers the full stack: CPMS, charger connectivity, authentication, payments, roaming, monitoring, firmware/configuration services, databases, and support operations.
Why DR Planning Matters for EV Charging Networks
Charging networks behave like utility infrastructure: downtime quickly impacts revenue, SLAs, and customer trust. DR planning helps you:
– Recover service within defined limits (RTO)
– Limit data loss (RPO) for transactions and billing
– Reduce blast radius from mis-deployments or cyber incidents
– Keep fleets operational (especially depots with departure deadlines)
– Meet enterprise procurement and cybersecurity requirements
Define the Targets First
A solid DR plan starts by setting measurable objectives per service:
– RTO (Recovery Time Objective): maximum acceptable downtime
– RPO (Recovery Point Objective): maximum acceptable data loss window
– Service tiers: what must be restored first vs later
Example tiering for charging:
– Tier 0: core authorization + charging start/stop
– Tier 1: monitoring, alarms, support tooling
– Tier 2: billing, invoicing, reporting, analytics
Scope: What Must Be Recoverable
DR planning is not only “the cloud CPMS.” A complete scope typically includes:
– Device connectivity (OCPP endpoints, TLS cert validation, DNS)
– Identity & access (RFID/app tokens, whitelists, user accounts)
– Payments (tariffs, payment provider integration, settlement)
– Roaming (OCPI or roaming hub links, session exchange)
– Databases (sessions, meter values, customer data, audit logs)
– Configuration & device twins (desired state, site policies, load caps)
– OTA firmware pipeline (update hosting, signing keys, rollback)
– Logging and observability (metrics, traces, SIEM feeds)
– Support operations (ticketing, call center scripts, incident comms)
Core DR Design Decisions
DR planning must choose how failover and recovery will work:
– Active-passive: standby environment is ready, activated during disaster
– Active-active: multiple regions run simultaneously, fastest failover
– Cold/warm/hot standby: trade-off between cost and recovery speed
– Data replication: synchronous vs asynchronous (affects achievable RPO)
– Key management: how secrets, certificates, and signing keys are protected and restored
– Network dependencies: DNS, APN/SIM providers, firewalls, VPNs
Charger Behavior During Backend Outage
For EV charging, DR planning must define “what chargers do when the brain is down”:
– Offline start rules: local whitelist, cached tokens, or restricted mode
– Session continuity: buffering meter values and events until reconnect
– Safe fallback: “deny by default” vs “free vend” policies per site type
– Reconciliation rules after recovery (avoid double billing, ensure auditability)
– Depot-specific policies: prioritise keeping charging possible for critical departures
DR Playbooks You Should Have
Practical DR planning produces step-by-step playbooks, not slides:
– Regional cloud outage failover (switch endpoints, update DNS, validate mTLS)
– Database restore (point-in-time recovery, integrity checks, reindex)
– Credential compromise (rotate secrets, revoke certificates, block devices)
– Bad configuration rollout (rollback desired state, freeze changes)
– Bad firmware rollout (halt campaign, rollback channel, isolate affected models)
– Payment provider outage (fallback tariffs, offline receipts, queue transactions)
– Roaming outage (local auth options, user messaging, settlement queue)
Each playbook should specify:
– Trigger criteria (what counts as disaster)
– Roles and approvals (who can declare and execute)
– Exact steps, commands, and validation checks
– Communication templates (status page, customers, partners)
– Post-incident actions (root cause, improvements)
Backups and Recovery Readiness
Your DR plan should explicitly document:
– Backup frequency and retention per dataset
– Where backups are stored (separate account/tenant, immutable storage)
– Encryption and access controls (who can restore)
– Restore testing schedule and success criteria
– Dependencies: schemas, migrations, feature flags
Testing and DR Drills
A DR plan is only real if tested. Common drill types:
– Tabletop exercises (walk through scenarios and decision paths)
– Game days (controlled outages and failovers in production-like staging)
– Live failover tests (planned regional switch)
– Restore tests (prove RPO and data integrity using real backups)
Key measures to record:
– Actual recovery time vs RTO
– Data loss vs RPO
– Operational friction points (missing access, unclear ownership, broken docs)
Common Pitfalls
– Backups exist but restores aren’t tested
– DR covers CPMS but ignores payments, roaming, identity, or firmware signing keys
– Single points of failure: one DNS provider, one region, one database cluster
– No “kill switch” for mass configuration or firmware errors
– Chargers have no defined offline policy → unpredictable behavior and customer confusion
Related Terms for Internal Linking
– Disaster recovery
– Business continuity
– High availability (HA)
– Failover
– Backup and restore
– Incident response
– Secure update pipeline
– Device authentication