# Timed database restore drills into an isolated target prove RTO and RPO

After you leave a Lovable or Bolt sandbox and own the backend, a backup file sitting in object storage is not a recovery plan. Recovery is a **timed restore drill**: restore into an isolated target, prove the app boots and critical reads succeed, then record measured RTO and RPO. Until that drill passes, the backup is fiction — a checkbox, not evidence.

This post is not “turn on daily backups” advice. It is the ops practice you owe once `$DATABASE_URL` points at infrastructure you control. Pair it with [structured production logs](/blog/production-structured-logging-for-agents) so restore failures are triageable, and with [audit trail events](/blog/audit-trail-events-saas-ops) so who ran the drill is attributable.

---

*This is an excerpt. Read the full post at [otf-kit.dev/blog/db-backup-restore-drill-production](https://otf-kit.dev/blog/db-backup-restore-drill-production) — full-stack kits your AI coding agent can actually ship to production. [Browse the kits →](https://otf-kit.dev)*