Do you have a solid backup process? Many companies haven’t verified that their backup process is complete or tested how they can restore from their backup storage. But even companies that are sure their backups aren’t missing critical files and have validated the steps for restoring data don’t have a complete disaster recovery (DR) solution if all they’re doing is running a nightly backup job.
DR requires more than simply backing up data. It requires the ability to recover applications from all kinds of problems, including the failure of a storage device, the loss of processing capability, or a network outage. It means the ability to get service back now, without losing all the work that happened today, after last night’s backups finished.
Traditionally, providing that kind of DR solution required maintaining a large amount of spare capacity, ideally at a secondary site in another location. That solution requires a large investment of capital and IT support time that many companies have trouble justifying. Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) offers a more effective, faster, and cheaper solution. DRaaS lets companies recover their operations on a cloud-based environment where they pay per use, rather than having the excess capacity at a secondary data center sitting idle most of the time.
Benefits of DRaaS Solutions
The benefits of DRaaS go beyond simply reducing set up and maintenance costs. The process of recovery becomes more reliable, because it’s supported by the cloud provider with orchestration and verification tools. It’s often easier to test DR in a cloud rather than at a secondary site, adding to the reliability. And there’s more flexibility than conventional DR, because resources can be added or dropped on demand.
Designing Your DRaaS Solution
Although DRaaS relies heavily on the cloud provider’s infrastructure and expertise, implementing an effective DRaaS process does require a company to investigate their needs to make sure the process will satisfy recovery objectives. Businesses need to identify the critical processes that need to be recovered and determine the recovery time objectives.
With the objectives identified, solutions can be assessed to choose the best approach to a range of DR issues including:
- multiplatform support for the full range of required data center technology
- file and VM backup technologies
- real-time replication to an active DR site or recovery from asynchronous replication
- DR testing approaches
- security and encryption of data in transmission and in cloud storage
DRaaS from dcVAST
dcVAST offers a full range of services to support your backup and disaster recovery needs, from support for NetBackup appliances and managed backup to a full-fledged disaster recovery as a service offering built on Amazon Web Services enabling both physical and virtual machines to recover in the cloud. Our team will help you evaluate your DR needs to choose the appropriate solution and offer full support for meeting your needs. With managed backups and DRaaS, you receive a reliable and cost-effective disaster recovery solution. Contact dcVAST to learn more about how our services help your business meet your recovery objectives.
