Amazon OpenSearch Service announces managed cross-Region disaster recovery

Amazon OpenSearch Service now provides managed cross-Region disaster recovery, enabling users to replicate domains across AWS Regions without manual setup. This feature automates synchronization between primary and secondary domains, reducing operational overhead while maintaining strict availability standards. Users can initiate replication via a single API call or through the AWS Management Console, streamlining the process for mission-critical workloads. The service eliminates the need for custom replication scripts or third-party tools.

The disaster recovery solution guarantees a recovery point objective (RPO) of under one minute and a recovery time objective (RTO) of under 20 minutes. During planned events like maintenance or Region rotation, a switchover operation exchanges roles between domains with zero data loss. In the event of an unplanned outage, failover promotes the secondary domain, with data loss limited to the replication lag. After failover, users can restore protection by pairing the new primary domain with a secondary domain.

Monitoring replication health and lag is possible through Amazon CloudWatch metrics, providing visibility into the status of cross-Region synchronization. The feature requires OpenSearch version 3.7 or later and supports domains within the same AWS account, including those encrypted with customer-managed AWS KMS keys. However, domains using UltraWarm storage or OpenSearch Optimized instances (OR1 or OR2) are not supported.

Managed disaster recovery incurs no additional charges beyond standard rates for the secondary domain and cross-Region data transfer. Users on earlier versions can upgrade via clone-based methods to test OpenSearch 3.7 before migrating. The feature is available today in all commercial AWS Regions where Amazon OpenSearch Service operates.