The part people practise least and need most.
BEFORE RESTORING
Understand what will be lost. Restoring returns everything to the backup point; data written since is gone.
Export or note anything recent you need to reconcile afterwards.
RESTORING FILES
Extract the archive to the correct location, with correct ownership and permissions. Wrong ownership after a restore is a common cause of an application failing afterwards.
RESTORING A DATABASE
Create the database if needed, then import the dump. For a full restore, drop existing tables first so leftover data does not conflict.
Confirm the application configuration still holds the correct credentials.
RESTORING CONFIGURATION
Compare rather than overwriting blindly. Configuration may have changed for good reasons since the backup.
AFTERWARDS
Restart services Test the application thoroughly Check cron jobs Check certificates Check mail
PRACTISING
Restore to a test server occasionally. The first time you restore should not be during an emergency.
