A robust disaster recovery strategy protects applications from downtime due to any IT-related events, such as natural disasters, breaches, and more. The optimal strategy for your business should balance three key factors: cost, complexity, and speed.
The cloud DR options available today are faster, cheaper, and more flexible than ever before. Here are some of the options to consider.
DRaaS
DRaaS leverages cloud-based infrastructure to provide a secondary IT infrastructure. It replicates data and applications in real time, shifting access to them to a remote disaster recovery site when they fail. Unlike backup and storage services that support many customers on shared infrastructure, DRaaS solutions often have dedicated infrastructure and network bandwidth, reducing CapEx and speeding up recovery times.
The DRaaS process typically starts with IT administrators using a provider-supplied management interface to select virtual machines and physical servers in their IT infrastructure that they want to back up. DRaaS then takes snapshots of these selected servers at multiple locations in the background, ready to be restored during a disaster event. The organization pays for storing these snapshots and applications, along with any usage fees for data synchronization between the primary and the DRaaS sites.
When a disaster event occurs, IT admins can use the management interface to initiate a failover to the DRaaS solution. It can be as simple as clicking a button to move applications over, or it may require some more complicated setup, such as configuring firewall rules and setting up VPN connections. The best DRaaS providers offer automation of this process, making it easier for IT teams to follow if they are under stress during a headline-grabbing disaster.
When the disaster has passed, IT administrators can trigger a failback process that moves applications back from the DRaaS provider to their primary location. This can be as quick as an hour, ensuring that the business can continue to operate even while the physical servers at their primary location recover or are replaced.
BaaS
Creating regular backups helps businesses protect against data loss. The process is often time-consuming and requires a great deal of attention, but it’s critical to protecting against the risk of data loss from natural disasters, theft, hardware corruption, or human error. With backup as a service (BaaS), business owners can offload data backup to the cloud.
Then, when a backup fails, the information can be restored from a copy of the original data. BaaS providers usually charge a monthly fee, which can save organizations the expense of purchasing and maintaining backup hardware.
When selecting a BaaS provider, look for a solution that offers robust authentication and a clear set of policies about how backups are used. Authentication is essential to ensure that only authorized users can access your data, and the policies should help you pass compliance audits.
Also, consider a BaaS that provides flexibility as your business needs change. For example, some companies may need to backup data more frequently or extend the retention period of certain types of data. A good choice is a service that lets you adjust these settings easily and at a reasonable cost. Another feature to consider is compression, which reduces the amount of disk space that backed-up data takes up on a server. This can also lower the risk of data loss if a data center fails.
Managed
Traditional disaster recovery, which relies on physical backups and external hardware that is stored onsite, can be expensive. It also takes time and resources to maintain.
A managed disaster recovery in the cloud solution eliminates these issues by allowing organizations to outsource their entire DR infrastructure and orchestration. These providers provide the hardware, storage, software and DR expertise needed to keep your business online during a crisis.
Cloud disaster recovery uses the distributed nature of cloud environments to replicate data in multiple geographical locations. This provides protection against local natural disasters and cyber threats. In addition, it reduces downtime and costs by letting you recover to an operationally ready state without having to restore the entire infrastructure from a backup.
Disaster recovery is a critical capability for businesses of all sizes, and it’s essential that you have a tested plan in place to mitigate the risks associated with downtime. Your DR plan needs to be flexible enough to accommodate changes in your company’s processes and technology. It should be updated frequently to ensure that it meets your RTO and RPO objectives.
Having an effective disaster recovery in the cloud strategy is vital to protecting your business against downtime and loss of productivity. The experts at Sungard AS can help you put together a comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) plan. Contact us today to get started.