“IT no longer needs a replicated & costly disaster recovery site once leveraging cloud technology to accomplish DR”
Cloud technology continues to infiltrate almost every aspect of computing yet in an optimistic way. More and more IT departments are investing heavily to manage and protect cloud-based services. IT research firms estimated that global spending on public cloud services would exceed $150 billion by end of 2017.
Among these, Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) is most essential as it takes into consideration some of the biggest challenges such as ensuring high-performance levels in mission-critical applications while keeping the cost low, promotes compactness and mobility. The details in the given context highlights the future of DRaaS, that in simpler terms known as managed disaster recovery.
Greater dependability to the traditional DR model
Many IT departments around the world have already deployed disaster recovery strategies via cloud due to ease of management as compared to server and tape-based backups. If for instance, physical data tapes and servers are near to the disaster when it hits, probability of risk is equal or higher as that of the server site. On the contrary, if these physical backups are far off, recovery time issues are likely to be face by enterprises.
Leveraging virtual private infrastructures offer efficient protection of the systems and data across the geographic risk zones; just in case breadth of disaster is wider. Plus, virtual private environments offer higher levels of security as compared to public clouds.
DRaaS – Fewer recovery sources than tape & server-based
Hardware resources and provisioning in a virtualized DRaaS setting are significantly less than physical sites with a duplicated enterprise-based infrastructure. Testing of the entire system in this scenario is quick, easy and streamlined thus ensuring continuity of the business processes.
Cloning DR sites usually require greater number of servers. The process is far more time taking causing IT experts to test only a handful of servers following a disaster event. DRaaSapproach simplifies the process and reduces the cost and risk of failure using advanced virtualized computing, storage and networking resources to facilitate backup-server.
It’s rather an effective and smart approach because corporations can share space capacity with many other enterprises. However, this space capacity tend to fluctuate based on any specific time of the day, year and even per the season.
Higher flexibility
DRaaSoffers flexibility and convenience to choose a customized plan based on different types of disaster recovery for enterprises. These are;
- Server failure
- Major natural calamity
- Loss of power and access to the site
- Security breach, tempering the data
- Disaster due to human biasness
- Data center collapse or destruction
Scope and strategy of the recovery for each is predetermined following a business-impact analysis. Plan should include methodology of the desired recovery, its extent and timeframe; all must be clearly defined with end-to-end service level agreement (SLA).
In a typical case, disaster recovery service is cloning of information and application between two data centers. If primary data center is unavailable due to any reason, backup site occupies the place and activates a fresh copy of the application through frequently replicated details.
All of the services focus on providing business resilience and continuity, allowing applications to work over a backup site and minimize service disruptions to a possible extent.
Leveraging cloud technology for DR means IT no longer requires a completely duplicated DR site that’s far too costly. Flexibility allows convenient and pocket-friendly backup for the workload.
Select the right partner
With security-rich technology, enforceable service levels and the right cloud process, DRaaSpromises implementation of the disaster recovery less expensive, highly secure and more automated than ever before.
Conclusion
Companies, especially those serving the IT sector needs partnering with a reliable DR service provider to quickly backup and restore systems without compromising the critical information and application integrity. It’s important not to trust just any provider and stated SLA. Confirmation of partner’s services as well as security, long-term reliability and quick recovery features is a must.
