The most common situation we find in the field is this: the backup software is installed, everything looks green, but nobody has attempted a restore in years. A backup system tried for the first time during a disaster is not a backup system.

Two numbers to measure

The recovery time objective tells you how quickly the system must be back up. The recovery point objective defines how much data you are prepared to lose. If these two numbers are not written down, the backup architecture is not really defined either.

How to test

A restore test is run on an isolated network without touching production. Does the system boot, is the database consistent, does the application actually work: all three need checking.