Trust Centre › 5. Disaster recovery
Disaster recovery
In short
Disaster recovery means getting DIANO and your records back after something big goes wrong. We only give figures we have tested. Tested so far: DIANO can bring back your records as they were at the last nightly copy. So at most about one day of work could be lost.
If one data centre fails
- Google keeps the database in more than one data centre inside the Johannesburg region, so one data centre failing does not stop DIANO.
How much work could be lost
- Tested so far: DIANO can bring back your records as they were at the last nightly copy. So at most about one day of work could be lost.
- Since 18 October 2026, DIANO can also take the database back to how it was at any minute in the last 7 days. This is called point-in-time recovery.
- A restore from point-in-time recovery or from the scheduled backups has not been tested yet.
How long it takes
- That test restore of 478 records took under 3 minutes. A larger database takes longer.
If the whole South African region fails
- If Google's South African region fails, the written plan is to rebuild the database in another region from the copy in Belgium, then point DIANO at it.
- One more copy of the nightly backup is kept in Google's europe-west1 region in Belgium, in case the whole South African region fails.
Roadmap: planned, not true yet
- Planned — target October 2026: Restores from point-in-time recovery and from the scheduled backups are tested, and the results are published here.
- Planned — target January 2027: The region-failure plan is tested by rebuilding a copy of the test system from the Belgium copy.
- Planned — target December 2026: Our lawyer advises on SARS's rule about where tax records must be kept. Then the backup copy in Belgium is either locked, so nobody can delete it early, or moved.
Targets can move. When an item is done, it moves up into the page with its proof. The whole roadmap.
For your IT team / auditor
Each statement on this page, how it was checked and when. Every check was read-only. The full evidence (commands and their output) is available to auditors on request.
| Statement | How it was checked | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| Tested so far: DIANO can bring back your records as they were at the last nightly copy. So at most about one day of work could be lost. | rs-drill (export restore tested 10 Oct 2026); Google Cloud scheduled jobs (read-only check, 2026-10-20) (export daily). | 2026-10-19 |
| Google keeps the database in more than one data centre inside the Johannesburg region, so one data centre failing does not stop DIANO. | Google Cloud database settings (read-only check, 2026-10-20) (africa-south1 is a regional location); Google regions page: zones africa-south1-a, -b, -c (published sources (see Sources)); Firestore regional locations replicate across zones in the region. | 2026-10-19 |
| Since 18 October 2026, DIANO can also take the database back to how it was at any minute in the last 7 days. This is called point-in-time recovery. | Google Cloud database settings (read-only check, 2026-10-20) (POINT_IN_TIME_RECOVERY_ENABLED, versionRetentionPeriod 604800s, earliestVersionTime 2026-10-18T14:19:00Z). | 2026-10-19 |
| A restore from point-in-time recovery or from the scheduled backups has not been tested yet. | DIANO's backup and recovery plan (Layer 6 restore drill: "to do"); both were switched on 18 Oct 2026. | 2026-10-19 |
| That test restore of 478 records took under 3 minutes. A larger database takes longer. | DIANO's release record of 2026-10-12 (B5 07:02–07:05 UTC: export finished 07:03:03, import and comparison done by 07:05). | 2026-10-19 |
| If Google's South African region fails, the written plan is to rebuild the database in another region from the copy in Belgium, then point DIANO at it. | DIANO's written region-failure plan (this build). | 2026-10-19 |
| One more copy of the nightly backup is kept in Google's europe-west1 region in Belgium, in case the whole South African region fails. | Google Cloud scheduled jobs (read-only check, 2026-10-20) (transfer job dia-firestore-export-dr: firestore-exports → dr-europe-west1, daily); Google Cloud storage settings (read-only check, 2026-10-20) (dr-europe-west1: EUROPE-WEST1). europe-west1 = St. Ghislain, Belgium (Google regions page). | 2026-10-19 |