I'm sure you've moved on by now, but for the benefit of other people let me say: It's not as scary as you think. The important thing is to have filled out as much exploration as you can and have finished all the star chart nodes prior to performing DVP.
[spoilers]
The worst thing you can do is start getting into a purely defensive mindset once you hit DVP. The corruption countdown is going to look really intimidating, and you're probably going to lose a couple sectors initially, but nothing the corruption does is irreversible. Just keep your head down and keep working on optimum light/minute while you keep exploring to unlock all the constellations and get Quintessence production up and running (the three new constellations are pretty close to where you unlock DVP. There is a map in an earlier comment if you want more help).
Then you need to re-tool your production to make lots of Pristine Light and you will see you can easily stabilize sectors far faster than the corruption spreads to them. Once you have everything stabilized and have knocked down any corruption blooms from lost sectors then the mechanic becomes a non-issue and you just keep scaling your production.