Introduction

Quant trading infrastructure failures (data center outages, network failures, software bugs) can cause millions in losses. Comprehensive disaster-recovery (DR) planning—backup systems, failover procedures, recovery time objectives—minimizes downtime and data loss, protecting against catastrophic failures.

DR Architecture

Primary data center (New York) runs trading systems. Secondary data center (Chicago, 500 miles away) maintains synchronized replicas of databases, model servers. On primary failure, automated failover switches traffic to secondary within seconds. Data replicated continuously (zero RPO: recovery point objective). RTO (recovery time objective): < 1 minute.

Implementation

Use database replication (master-slave, multi-master). Geographically distributed caches. DNS failover (automatic rerouting on failure). Automated health checks trigger failover. Regular failover drills (quarterly testing) ensure procedures work. Document runbooks for manual recovery if automated failover fails.

Conclusion

Comprehensive disaster-recovery planning protects trading operations against catastrophic infrastructure failures.