Multi-Region Backup & Restore Strategy for Linchpin Analytics
1. Project Overview
- AWS Customer Name: Linchpin Analytics
- AWS Partner Name: Techpartner
- Industry: Education Technology (EdTech)
- Workload: School Analytics & Reporting Platform
- DR Strategy: Backup & Restore
- Production Footprint: 7 AWS Regions
- Backup Frequency: Daily Server & Database Backups
- Validated Region: Canada Central (ca-central-1)
- DR Region: US East (N. Virginia) (us-east-1)
- Target RTO: 4 Hours
- Target RPO: 24 Hours
2. Customer Challenge
Linchpin Analytics provides analytics and reporting services to schools and educational institutions worldwide. The platform enables educators and administrators to access student performance insights, operational reporting, and data-driven decision-making tools.
Due to its global customer base, the platform is deployed across seven AWS regions, with each production region protected by a designated Disaster Recovery (DR) region. The environment consists of Python Django applications running on Amazon EC2 and Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL databases.
To ensure business continuity and protect customer data, Linchpin required a standardized disaster recovery framework that could be applied consistently across all regions while maintaining operational efficiency and cost optimization.
Key Requirements
- Protect application and database workloads across multiple AWS regions.
- Maintain recoverable backups of servers and databases.
- Validate disaster recovery readiness through regular DR drills.
- Ensure recovery procedures are documented, repeatable, and auditable.
- Meet business recovery objectives of 4-hour RTO and 24-hour RPO.
3. Partner Solution
Techpartner implemented a Backup & Restore disaster recovery strategy for Linchpin’s global AWS footprint.
Solution Components
The solution includes:
- Daily EC2 server backups using AWS Backup.
- Daily Aurora PostgreSQL backups and retention policies.
- Cross-region backup storage for recovery purposes.
- Terraform-based infrastructure recovery procedures.
- Standardized DR runbooks for all production regions.
- Periodic DR drills to validate recovery objectives.
Each production region is paired with a dedicated DR region, ensuring recovery capability in the event of a regional outage.
4. DR Validation Exercise – Canada Region
As part of Linchpin’s resilience program, a customer-requested Disaster Recovery Drill was conducted for the Canada deployment.
Scope
- Production Region: Canada Central (ca-central-1)
- Recovery Region: US East (N. Virginia) (us-east-1)
Recovery Activities
- Infrastructure provisioning in the DR region.
- Restoration of Aurora PostgreSQL database from backup.
- Recovery of EC2-based Django application servers.
- Application validation and user acceptance testing.
- Data integrity verification.
Results
| Metric | Target | Achieved |
|---|---|---|
| RTO | 4 Hours | Achieved |
| RPO | 24 Hours | Achieved |
| Application Recovery | Successful | Successful |
| Database Recovery | Successful | Successful |
| Data Validation | Successful | Successful |
The exercise demonstrated that Linchpin’s backup and recovery procedures can successfully restore critical educational analytics services within the defined recovery objectives.
5. Business Outcome
- Standardized disaster recovery framework across 7 AWS regions.
- Verified recovery capability through live DR testing.
- Improved operational readiness and compliance posture.
- Protection of educational analytics data and reporting services.
- Cost-effective resilience model without maintaining active standby environments.
6. Conclusion
Through AWS Backup, Amazon EC2, Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, Terraform, and documented operational procedures, Techpartner helped Linchpin establish a scalable and repeatable disaster recovery capability across its global AWS footprint.
The successful Canada DR drill validated the organization’s ability to recover critical educational analytics services within the agreed RTO and RPO objectives while maintaining a cost-optimized resilience strategy.
