1. A computing system comprising: a source database system comprising N hosts and associated with a first plurality of database services, where N is an integer greater than one, the source database system comprising: a first memory storing first processor-executable program code; and a first processor to execute the first processor-executable program code in order to cause the source database system to: create a backup of the source database system; and a target database system comprising M hosts, where M is an integer less than N, the target database system comprising: a second memory storing second processor-executable program code; and a second processor to execute the second processor-executable program code in order to cause the target database system to: read a topology of the source database system from the backup, the topology assigning the first plurality of database services to the N hosts and the reading of the topology of the source database system from the backup including: starting of a master host of the target database system; initialization of a master name server of the master host; and reading of the topology from the master name server, the topology of the source database being backed up independently of service-specific parts of the backup of the source database system; configure the M hosts of the target database system to include the first plurality of database services; and perform a database recovery of the target database system using the backup of the source database system.