backup-verification-test

name	backup-verification-test
enabled	true
description	Use when performing backup verification test — template for systematically verifying backup integrity and recoverability. Covers backup inventory, restore testing in isolated environments, data integrity validation, RTO/RPO measurement, and gap analysis to ensure backups are actually recoverable when needed.
required_connections	[{"prefix":"aws","label":"AWS (or cloud provider)"}]
config_fields	[{"key":"system_name","label":"System Name","required":true,"placeholder":"e.g., production-database"},{"key":"backup_type","label":"Backup Type","required":true,"placeholder":"e.g., full snapshot, incremental, WAL archive"},{"key":"target_rpo","label":"Target RPO","required":true,"placeholder":"e.g., 1 hour"},{"key":"target_rto","label":"Target RTO","required":true,"placeholder":"e.g., 4 hours"}]
features	["DEVOPS","DISASTER_RECOVERY"]

Backup Verification Test Skill

Verify backup recoverability for {{ system_name }} ({{ backup_type }}). Target RPO: {{ target_rpo }}, Target RTO: {{ target_rto }}.

Workflow

Phase 1 — Backup Inventory

BACKUP CATALOG
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] System: {{ system_name }}
[ ] Backup type: {{ backup_type }}
[ ] Backup schedule: ___
[ ] Last successful backup: ___
[ ] Backup location(s):
    - Primary: ___
    - Secondary (cross-region): ___
[ ] Backup size: ___ GB
[ ] Encryption: [ ] At rest  [ ] In transit
[ ] Backup retention: ___ days
[ ] Oldest available backup: ___

Phase 2 — Restore Environment Setup

ISOLATED RESTORE ENVIRONMENT
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] Isolated restore environment provisioned
[ ] Network isolation confirmed (no production access)
[ ] Sufficient compute and storage allocated
[ ] Restore credentials and access configured
[ ] Restore start timestamp: ___

Phase 3 — Restore Execution

RESTORE TEST
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] Backup retrieved from storage
[ ] Backup integrity check passed (checksum/signature)
[ ] Restore initiated — timestamp: ___
[ ] Restore progress:
    - Data restored: ___ / ___ GB
    - Estimated completion: ___
[ ] Restore completed — timestamp: ___
[ ] Actual restore time: ___ (target RTO: {{ target_rto }})

RTO ASSESSMENT
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Restore duration:     ___
Target RTO:           {{ target_rto }}
RTO met:              [ ] YES  [ ] NO

Phase 4 — Data Integrity Validation

INTEGRITY CHECKS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] Database/system starts successfully from backup
[ ] Row count comparison:
    - Source: ___
    - Restored: ___
    - Delta: ___
[ ] Sample data verification (10 random records): [ ] PASS  [ ] FAIL
[ ] Application can connect and query restored data
[ ] Referential integrity intact
[ ] No corruption errors in system logs
[ ] Point-in-time accuracy:
    - Backup point-in-time: ___
    - Expected RPO: {{ target_rpo }}
    - Actual data age: ___
    - RPO met: [ ] YES  [ ] NO

Phase 5 — Cleanup and Reporting

CLEANUP
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] Restore environment torn down
[ ] Sensitive data securely deleted
[ ] Test results documented
[ ] Next verification test scheduled: ___

GAP ANALYSIS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] RTO gap: ___ (actual vs target)
[ ] RPO gap: ___ (actual vs target)
[ ] Identified risks:
    - ___
    - ___
[ ] Remediation actions:
    - ___
    - ___

Counter-Rationalizations

Shortcut	Counter	Why
"We can skip some steps for this case"	Adapt the workflow steps, don't skip them	Skipped steps are where incidents and oversights originate
"The user seems to already know what to do"	Complete all workflow phases with the user	The workflow catches blind spots that experience alone misses
"This is a minor case, full process is overkill"	Scale the process down, don't turn it off	Minor cases become major when unstructured; the process scales, not disappears
"I'll fill in the details later"	Complete each section before moving on	Deferred details are forgotten; real-time capture is more accurate
"The template output isn't necessary"	Always produce the structured output format	Structured output enables comparison, audit trails, and handoff to other teams

Output Format

Produce a backup verification report with:

1. Test summary (system, backup type, test date)
2. RTO results (actual restore time vs target)
3. RPO results (data freshness vs target)
4. Data integrity (validation checks and results)
5. Gap analysis (identified risks and remediation plan)