Disaster recovery (DR) refers to the process of preparing for and recovering from events that prevent a workload or system from meeting its business objectives. In the cloud context, it involves strategies to mitigate risks and ensure that workloads can recover effectively from disruptions, such as natural disasters, technical failures, or human errors.

Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the maximum acceptable amount of time that a workload can be down after a disaster, while Recovery Point Objective (RPO) defines the maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time. Both metrics are crucial for planning disaster recovery strategies, as they help organizations determine how quickly they need to restore services and how much data they can afford to lose.

AWS supports disaster recovery through its shared responsibility model, where AWS ensures the resiliency of its infrastructure while customers manage their workload configurations. AWS provides multiple Availability Zones within each Region, allowing customers to deploy workloads across these zones to enhance resilience. Additionally, services like AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery and backup solutions help organizations implement effective DR strategies tailored to their specific needs.