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How to Build a Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery Strategy

By April 19, 2021No Comments7 min read
Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery Strategy

Technology is driving all modern businesses. Cloud technology is helping businesses in saving a lot of money. You can use the cloud for doing complex operational workloads. It can also help you in executing disaster recovery plans. The cloud can help you in simplifying your day-to-day operations. A cloud disaster recovery strategy can help you in saving money and time. It will provide more data backup location options to your business. Cloud will provide both scalability and reliability to your business. In this article, we are going to share some steps that you can follow for building your cloud-based DR strategy.

  1. Understand your IT infrastructure

You should consider your IT infrastructure before creating your cloud-based DR strategy. Make sure that you are checking your assets and equipment. Also, you should check the data that you have stored on your servers.

You should evaluate the risks that can affect your IT infrastructure. Risks will include power outages, data theft, and natural disasters.

  1. Conduct an impact analysis

You should assess the impact of the disaster on your business. This will depend on mainly the Recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO).

RTO is mainly defined as the maximum time that your systems and application can stay down. After the RTO period, the disaster will start affecting your operations. If you are in the healthcare sector, then you can’t tolerate a huge RTO. However, a medium-paced business can look for other ways to carry out its business operations. Thus, they can set their RTO to one week.

RPO or Recovery Point Objective is the maximum amount of time for which you can tolerate data loss. You need access to your data after this timeframe for resuming your operations. Sometimes RPO can be as little as 5 minutes. If your business is dealing with critical data, then you need to recover it quickly. However, if your business data is not time-sensitive, then you don’t need to worry about RPO much.

  1. Create a DR plan based on your RTO and RPO

You can focus on creating your DR plan after determining your RTO and RPO. There are multiple DR approaches that you can use. Full replication in the cloud technology can also help you in protecting your business from disaster. You can combine different disaster recovery strategies for creating your DR plan. This plan should be based on your RTO and RPO. If you can’t tolerate downtime, then you should aggressively invest in disaster recovery. However, if you can tolerate downtime, then you don’t need to invest aggressively invest in DR.

  1. Find the right cloud partner

You should look for a good cloud service provider. Your cloud provider will help you in deploying your disaster recovery strategy. If you are going to use only the cloud for implementing your strategy, then you should find a good cloud provider. Make sure that your cloud provider is reliable. Your cloud provider should be scalable and reliable. It should provide security compliance to your business. This will help you in protecting your business data from attackers.

Almost every cloud service provider like IBM, Google Cloud, Azure, and AWS is providing DR options. These are perfect for small and medium-sized businesses.

  1. Create your Cloud DR infrastructure

You should start setting up your DR infrastructure. Make sure that you are working with your cloud DR partner during this process. You should create a plan before creating your cloud DR infrastructure. Make sure that you know about the compliance and security that you need to set up. You should ensure that your DR strategy is aligning with the RPO and RTO specifications. This will ensure that your business will function smoothly.

  1. Create your DR plan

You should have a standard guideline for your DR. Make sure that all the instructions are mentioned in your DR plan. This plan should be given to everyone who is involved in DR. Your employees should take responsibility in case of a disaster. They should know about their roles and responsibilities. You should ensure that every instruction is stated on paper. All the details should be mentioned on paper. This document should be shared with your employees.

  1. Testing

You should regularly test your DR plan. This will ensure that your DR plan is actually working properly. It will help you in finding loopholes in your plan. Thus, you can fix all the loopholes that are present in your plan. Your plan might look like the best plan on the paper. However, you will know about its credibility only after testing it properly.

Most probably your first test will not go smoothly. However, you should learn from your experiences. It will help you in upgrading your DR plan. Thus, you can prepare your infrastructure for potential disasters.

If you have a big DR plan, then you should definitely test it. It is recommended to run these tests every quarter. This will help you in finding loopholes in your plan. It will ensure that all the components of your plan are working properly. If some part of your plan is not working properly, then you should focus on fixing that part. This will help you in fixing your entire DR plan.

You should also analyze and monitor your infrastructure performance. Make sure that your backup infrastructure is working properly. This should be done on a weekly basis. If you are dealing with sensitive data, then this should be done on a daily basis.

Your organization will always change with time. You will hire new employees in your organization. The technologies and processes are going to change with time. Thus, you should test your DR plan regularly. This will ensure that your business is ready for an emergency.

Conclusion

This guide will help you in creating a cloud-based DR plan. A DR strategy can help you in protecting your business during a disaster. Thus, you should focus on creating a good DR plan for your business. If you don’t have access to a good IT team, then you should consider working with a good MSP. Experienced MSPs like Bleuwire can help you in creating a good DR plan for your business. They will help you in moving your data and applications to the cloud. This will ensure that you can enjoy the benefits of the cloud. If you need more information regarding DR strategy, then you can contact Bleuwire.

Contact us today to learn about Bleuwire™  services and solutions in how we can help your business.