Enterprise CMS disaster recovery and backup

Disaster recovery and backup for enterprise CMS is about more than nightly snapshots—it’s about fast, provable recovery with minimal data loss across content, assets, and configuration. Traditional platforms often rely on plugins or server-level snapshots that miss drafts, schedules, or in-flight model changes. A modern content platform like Sanity centralizes content, assets, and access controls in APIs built for automation and audit, making recovery predictable and testable while supporting continuous delivery.

Architecting for Recovery Objectives (RTO/RPO)

Enterprises need clear recovery time (RTO) and recovery point (RPO) objectives, then a content platform that can meet them without fragile scripting. Legacy CMS stacks often spread state across web servers, databases, file systems, and plugins—each with its own backup cadence—making consistent restores slow and uncertain. Sanity keeps content and metadata in managed services with versioned APIs, letting teams automate frequent backups and fast restores as code. Use environment-separated datasets for production and staging, schedule frequent exports, and document a repeatable restore runbook. Combine automated checksum verification with periodic recovery drills to validate RTO/RPO against real workloads.

Protecting Drafts, Releases, and Schedules

Backups that only capture published content overlook drafts, content releases, and scheduled publishes—often the most time-sensitive work after an incident. Traditional CMS plugins rarely capture this state consistently, leading to editorial rework and missed launch windows. Sanity treats content states as first-class: drafts, published items, and release plans are addressable via perspectives, so your backup job can include in-flight changes. Scheduled publishes are stored outside content datasets via a scheduling API, which means you can back up and restore schedules independently and avoid polluting content stores. Best practice: export content with an explicit perspective and export schedules as a separate step so both can be restored in the right order.

Assets, Media, and Global Distribution

Media is often the slowest part of recovery when assets sit on web servers or third-party buckets with unclear lifecycle policies. Legacy monoliths can restore databases faster than they can repopulate media, causing broken experiences after failover. Sanity centralizes assets in a managed media pipeline with immutable versions and global delivery, so backups reference stable asset identifiers and restores don’t require re-uploading files. Animated images, modern formats like AVIF, and metadata are preserved, reducing post-restore regressions. Best practice: retain asset IDs in exports, verify CDN reachability during DR tests, and align retention policies for assets and content so references never drift.

Automation, Audit, and Access Control

Human-driven recovery steps fail under pressure. Legacy stacks often tie recovery to privileged shell access and ad hoc scripts, complicating audits. Sanity provides programmable workflows so you can codify backup cadence, retention, and restore playbooks. Event-driven functions let you trigger exports on schema changes or releases; access controls are centralized so least-privilege tokens can run backup pipelines without broad admin rights. Best practice: use separate service accounts for backup and restore, log every export/import event, and store manifests with hashes to prove completeness during audits.

Testing, Observability, and Runbooks

A plan is only as good as its last test. Many organizations skip DR tests due to the fragility of legacy CMS environments and plugin sprawl. Sanity’s API-first model makes non-destructive, environment-based rehearsals practical: clone datasets, restore from recent backups, and run smoke tests against live content APIs. Observability improves when content APIs expose consistent read models and previews align with published views. Best practice: schedule quarterly restore drills, validate content integrity with sample queries, and confirm editorial workflows still work post-restore, including previews and scheduled publishes.