Maintaining a resilient cloud infrastructure is essential for companies of all sizes. Intentional or accidental threats to the environment can cause severe disruptions to your business. Extended outages can result in lost customers and long-term harm to an organization.
Effectively safeguarding a cloud infrastructure requires navigating several challenges. We will present some key steps that organizations should adopt to ensure the safety of their computing environment and maintain business continuity.
Utilizing cloud disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) services can offer enhanced resilience and streamline the recovery process. The cloud provides recovery options not available with traditional, on-premises IT environments. VAST IT services offers organizations reliable DR and BC services to mitigate risks to your cloud infrastructure and business.
Why You Need a Resilient Cloud Infrastructure
Your cloud infrastructure needs to be protected from multiple threats that can cause severe business disruptions.
- External threat actors – Threat actors launch sophisticated phishing campaigns to exploit security vulnerabilities and compromise systems. Ransomware and other types of malware introduced into the environment can cripple critical systems and damage your business.
- Insider risks – Deliberate or unintentional actions by insiders can lead to unexpected outages or data corruption. Quickly recovering from these incidents is essential for your company’s health.
- Data loss or corruption – Mistakenly deleting or corrupting a critical file can bring an IT environment to a halt. Companies can use the relevant portions of a DR plan to recover quickly and mitigate any negative effects.
- Faulty software – A faulty software update can result in sudden outages that can be difficult to address effectively. The Crowdstrike update that crashed computers around the world is a recent example of this phenomenon. The ability to quickly restore systems after this type of unexpected event is crucial for business continuity.
Key Steps to Cloud Disaster Recovery
Effective cloud disaster recovery begins with a DR plan that should include the following steps.
Identify critical applications and data
The first step in building a resilient cloud infrastructure is to identify all of the business-critical applications and data resources necessary to recover the environment. This can be challenging in a complex cloud infrastructure that may include elements from multiple cloud service providers (CSPs). Resources can be spread among different platforms and be difficult to successfully inventory.
Implementing a tool like VAST View provides you with the information you need to make informed decisions when developing your DR plan. The lightweight and agentless platform analyzes and inventories your data, applications, and network dependencies for a complete view of your cloud resources.
Set RTOs and RPOs
Define the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for all systems that will be recovered. The RTO establishes how quickly you need to restore a given system to maintain business operations after a disruption. The RPO defines the maximum tolerable data loss and informs how frequently backups should be taken.
Dependencies need to be considered when setting RTOs and RPOs as some foundational systems may need to be recovered early in the process to support business-critical applications. The DR strategy an organization chooses to implement should be based on the defined RTOs and RPOs.
Select a cloud DR strategy
The cloud DR strategy a company selects needs to reflect its RTOs and RPOs. Different approaches offer varying recovery times that must be aligned with an organization’s recovery objectives. Following are some of the recovery strategies a company can adopt.
- Backup and restore in which backup copies are stored in the cloud and restored when required. This is a cost-effective strategy but may not be fast enough for some organizations.
- Warm standby has critical systems running in the cloud at a limited capacity which can be ramped up quickly after a disaster.
- Hot failover recovery keeps complete environments running in the cloud that can be immediately brought online to restore functionality with limited downtime.
Implement backup and replication procedures
Backups and data replication procedures need to align with an organization’s RTOs, RPOs, and DR strategy. Leveraging the cloud’s capacity to store backups and recover to a different geographic region provides enhanced resilience. Backup and restore procedures should be thoroughly tested to ensure they perform as expected.
Automate and orchestrate recovery procedures
Cloud DR solutions such as AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery automate the recovery process to minimize human error and reduce downtime. The recovery sequence should be orchestrated and coordinated to ensure a smooth and efficient recovery.
Testing and plan maintenance
Various portions of the DR plan should be tested via planned and announced tests. Reviewing testing outcomes enables a company to modify the plan to address identified issues. The plan should be updated regularly to reflect changes in the environment of business objectives.
Key Steps to Cloud Business Continuity
Ensuring business continuity in a cloud environment requires developing a reliable BC plan. One of the keys is to design and maintain an effective DR plan as outlined above. Following are some keys to successful business continuity.
- Classify and prioritize business functions based on their critical nature to the organizations. Recovering these functions must be a priority and should be reflected in the DR plan.
- Take advantage of cloud-based BC solutions such as using cloud services for communication and to support a remote work environment. These tools should be available during a disaster so vital personnel can communicate and maintain business operations.
- Implement redundant systems when necessary to mitigate downtime for time-sensitive and business functions.
- The BC plan should be tested using simulations and live tests to evaluate its effectiveness. The plan should be updated to address issues and improve BC capabilities.
VAST’s Solutions for a Resilient Cloud Infrastructure
VAST has multiple solutions to help your company develop a resilient cloud infrastructure. In addition to VAST View, we offer a disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) solution leveraging the power of AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery. We also provide assistance in developing a business continuity strategy that addresses your unique requirements and objectives.
Talk to our cloud experts today and start protecting your business with a resilient cloud infrastructure.
