The complex nature of the modern business landscape has introduced many changes in the way companies implement and maintain an IT environment. The advantages of these new solutions are essential to the long-term viability and operation of businesses of all sizes. Organizations that choose to ignore the evolution of computing infrastructures risk putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage over their more enlightened rivals.
The Rise of Multi-Cloud Environments
Traditionally, a business maintained an on-premises IT infrastructure to maintain its internal operations and interact with customers. Supporting this computing environment requires onsite expertise and a substantial capital investment. It can be difficult to keep up with technological advancements in an on-premises environment due to costs and a lack of skilled employees.
Cloud computing offers companies an alternative to an on-premises environment. Organizations obtain computing resources from cloud service providers (CSPs) and access them remotely over the Internet. When first introduced, the majority of organizations making use of cloud computing worked primarily with a single CSP. This strategy can be limiting and result in missed opportunities by not incorporating the solutions available from multiple cloud vendors.
As the cloud computing market matured and companies became more comfortable using off-premises systems, many began using multiple CSPs to address specific business objectives.
While multi-cloud environments may better address business requirements, this strategy can pose potential complications. It can be challenging to manage, backup, and recover mission-critical systems resident in multiple clouds. One of the most complex aspects of maintaining a multi-cloud environment is protecting it with a viable disaster recovery solution.
The Importance of Disaster Recovery
Developing a robust and reliable disaster recovery plan is essential for all companies. Disaster recovery is necessary to guard against accidental or intentional data loss and to protect valuable data resources from the dangers of sophisticated threat actors. Without a tested disaster recovery plan, organizations face the danger of losing access to the systems and data they need to run their businesses.
On-premises and single-cloud environments present a fairly straightforward disaster recovery path. Systems are typically replicated in an alternative recovery site which can be at a recovery center or another cloud environment. In many cases, a single recovery solution is employed to recover all systems.
Disaster recovery is substantially complicated when a company employs a multi-cloud strategy. Multiple recovery solutions may need to be used simultaneously to recover all of an organization’s business-critical systems. Performing this type of recovery requires an adequate number of skilled technical resources and needs to be highly coordinated. If recovery teams encounter issues with a subset of the recovery, it can impact the entire process.
The benefits of multi-cloud environments are too great to ignore. Companies that wish to take advantage of the multi-cloud paradigm have to find a way to reliably protect their investment with a reliable disaster recovery solution that can handle their complex infrastructures.
What is AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery?
Amazon Web Services Elastic Disaster Recovery (AWS DRS) offers customers a comprehensive disaster recovery solution suitable for recovering on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. AWS DRS provides organizations with a fast, cost-effective, and reliable disaster recovery solution for their on-premises and cloud applications. Disaster recovery procedures can be tested to ensure they perform as expected before they are needed to address an emergency.
How AWS DRS Works
AWS DRS leverages the flexibility of a company’s AWS account to provide a versatile disaster recovery solution for virtually any Windows-based or Linux application. AWS DRS employs multiple steps to protect an application or system.
- Setup – This step involves installing a lightweight executable agent on a customer’s selected source servers and initiating secure data replication from them. Data is replicated to a staging area in a chosen AWS Region to minimize compute resources and control storage costs.
- Testing – Customers can perform non-disruptive tests to verify the implementation.
- Maintenance operations – Replication monitoring allows customers to ensure their valuable data is being protected.
- Failover for disaster recovery – Recovery instances can be launched on AWS in minutes using the current server state or previous points in time. Applications can remain running on AWS or data can be replicated back to the primary site when all issues are addressed.
Customers can perform different kinds of recovery scenarios with AWS DRS.
- On-premises recovery to an AWS Region protects organizations against data center hardware or software failures.
- Cloud to AWS infrastructure improves resiliency and regulatory compliance. Cloud-based applications are automatically converted to run natively on AWS resources.
- Recover an AWS Region to a different AWS Region for increased resiliency and availability.
Benefits of AWS DRS
Companies stand to enjoy several benefits by adopting AWS DRS as their recovery solution.
- Traditional disaster recovery solutions relied on maintaining an alternate recovery site, often at substantial costs to an organization. AWS DRS eliminates this requirement with companies only paying for the site when it is used for a recovery.
- AWS DRS provides fast recovery to an application’s most current state or a previous point in time to protect against all types of disasters from accidental data loss to ransomware attacks.
- A unified process allows users to test and perform application recovery without specialized skills. Organizations can assure themselves that their preparations are sufficient to recover critical applications and keep the business running.
- AWS DRS can recover diverse environments such as one built on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.
Engaging VAST and AWS DRS to Protect Multi-Cloud Environments
VAST specializes in helping companies implement IT solutions that help grow and protect their businesses. Their strategic partnership with AWS provides them with the knowledge and experience necessary to help your business implement AWS DRS to protect your multi-cloud environment.
VAST has your back and will work with you to implement a reliable disaster recovery plan built around AWS DRS. Our experts can take on the most complex multi-cloud environment and develop a robust disaster recovery solution using AWS resources.
Get in touch with us today and start giving your business and its multi-cloud environment the protection it needs. You need your recovery procedures in place before a disaster strikes.
