Onboarding a DR customer in 5 days: the operational plan

TL;DR

Onboarding a new DR customer in 5 working days: discovery (day 1), deploy (days 2-3), runbook + drill (days 4-5). Below 5 days you skip checks, above 3 weeks a decision-maker is missing.

The day-by-day plan

Day 1 — Discovery

• VM, storage, application inventory;
• lightweight BIA (3-5 critical processes, target RTO/RPO);
• dependency map;
• credential collection in dedicated vault;
• plan approval from the customer.

Output: 2 documents (inventory + BIA).

Day 2 — Infrastructure deploy

• Connector plugged into LAN;
• L2 tunnel activation;
• first multi-tenant console connection;
• backup policy creation;
• credentials and roles setup.

Output: operational platform.

Day 3 — First full backup

• full backup of all critical workloads;
• integrity verification (DeepVerify);
• replication monitoring;
• first drill rotation on a non-critical VM.

Output: data protected.

Day 4 — Custom runbook

• runbook drafting (3-5 pages);
• restart order with dependencies;
• internal communications procedures;
• runbook approval from customer.

Output: signed runbook.

Day 5 — First partial drill

• failover of a single critical VM to DR;
• real RTO timing;
• drill report with corrective actions;
• handover to customer NOC.

Output: drill report + service in operation.

Three things that derail the plan

• missing customer credentials for systems;
• decision-makers not responding in 24 hours;
• architecture more complex than expected discovered after discovery.

For the first two, schedule the meeting with all decision-makers on day 1 morning. For the third, accept 2-3 days of slippage rather than cutting drills.

What NOT to do

• skip BIA because "the customer is in a hurry";
• deliver generic runbooks;
• close without a partial drill executed.

FAQ

Are 5 days feasible even for complex customers?

For customers with 5-30 VMs and 2-4 critical processes, yes. Above 50 VMs extend to 8-10 days.

How much to bill onboarding?

€800-1,500 one-off for the standard plan. For complex customers, €3-5k.

For consistent pricing, BCDR pricing. For SLAs to sign, DR SLA.