Hackers are always trying to steal business data. Thus, companies are trying to protect their sensitive data. Natural disasters, hackers, and sometimes even your workers can delete your entire data. You might lose all your critical files due to some accident. Most companies can’t accept these risks. Thus, cloud disaster recovery has become very important with time. In this article, we are going to talk about the importance of cloud DR solutions.
Definition of Cloud Disaster Recovery:
Cloud-based recovery and storage servers will help you in backing up your important business files. Thus, you can restore these files in case of a data breach.
Cloud technology is flexible by nature. Thus, you can create a more efficient disaster recovery plan. Your data will be stored in a high availability infrastructure. Also, you can get these services on-demand. You can use it for creating DR solutions according to your business needs.
The cloud-based DR solutions are different from traditional solutions. You can easily manage these solutions. Enterprises don’t need to waste their time transferring data from their servers to the recovery site. The cloud will help them in automating this entire process. This will help you in ensuring fast data recovery.
Importance of Data Security in Cloud:
Companies are adding new software applications and hardware to their servers. This is increasing the security risks of these servers. Disasters are becoming more unpredictable with time. It can completely destroy your business operations. The costs associated with data loss are very high. Thus, it is better to work on creating a better data recovery and a backup plan.
Your business can lose more than $100k for every hour of downtime. Thus, downtime can potentially lead to a huge monetary loss. Also, your workers will waste a lot of their time in recovering the data. These figures are a nightmare for every business. Thus, the value of the DR plan is increasing with time. You can avoid these costs by investing money into creating a DR plan.
Cloud recovery can help you in dealing with ransomware, cyber-attacks, and other disasters. These threats can completely destroy your files. If you can recover these files quickly, then it will reduce the costs of downtime.
Most enterprises already know about the effects of having a good DR plan. However, they are still not implementing a good DR strategy. We are going to talk about the benefits of having a Cloud-based DR solution.
Advantages of having a cloud-based DR strategy:
The best thing about cloud-based DR options is that they are more cost-effective. If you are using a traditional backup strategy, then you need to set up servers at a different location. Most companies can’t afford this. However, the cloud will help you with outsourcing this. You can easily increase your software and hardware resources. Also, you will only pay for the resources that you are using.
Most companies only think about the actual price of the DR solution. However, you should consider the costs of not having a DR solution. If you have a small enterprise, then you can find a small plan for your business. You don’t need to worry about any maintenance costs. Also, you don’t need to hire any additional IT teams. Your cloud provider will help you in handling all these activities.
Cloud-based DR solutions are also more reliable. Your cloud provider will already have data banks. These data banks will provide redundancy to your server. This will ensure that your data is always available. You can easily restore your backups by using these DR solutions.
The failover and workload migration will take very little time in cloud-based solutions. If you are using traditional solutions, then this time frame will be very big. This will depend on the amount of data that you want to back up. If you have a lot of data, then you can migrate data in separate phases.
Failover capability of cloud
Cloud is the best option if you want to ensure business continuity. If there is a data outage, then workload will automatically shift to other locations. It will automatically restart from those locations. This process is also simply known as failover. A failover should automatically start if some system is not working. If someone has already fixed the issue, then the workloads will start working on the main server. There are various DR tools that can help you in this process. These tools are mostly provided by the data center and IaaS providers.
You can automate the whole failover process in the cloud. However, it is important to properly test this process. You can run tests on your network locations. This will ensure that your DR solution is working properly.
You can upload your data, applications, and VM images in the data set of your solution. This process will take a lot of time. Thus, you should create a strategy before executing this step.
DRaaS or Disaster Recovery as a service
Most cloud providers are offering DRaaS to their users. You can use this protecting your organization from data loss. However, you should explain your business needs to your provider. This will help them in creating a perfect strategy for your business.
You can identify the data that you want to backup. It is also important to determine the efforts that you need to put in for backing up your data. You should clarify all these business requirements. After that, you can find the best DRaaS provider.
How cloud-based DR is evolving with time:
System failures are increasing with time. Thus, more companies are looking for cloud-based DR solutions. Cloud-based providers are providing better services to their users.
Customers are becoming more aware of time. Thus, they are learning about the importance of cloud-based DR solutions. According to many studies, a power outage is the most common cause of downtime. Thus, it doesn’t matter if you have thousands of tapes in your server. If there is a power outage, then you can’t use these backup tapes. Cloud-based DRaaS will ensure that your data is always available. The Cloud services will distribute your data to different locations.
Cloud SLAs:
Cloud SLAs will ensure that your providers are responsible for the management of your services. Also, they will help you in maintaining your data. They will also pay you a penalty if they can’t provide the promised services.
SLA agreement will ensure that your provider will pay you in case of a service outage. They will also pay you if they can’t recover your data. You can use these credits for paying the monthly bills of these services. These credits will help you in recovering your entire monetary loss. However, it is still better than nothing.
An SLA will include important things like uptime percentage and recovery point. For example, some companies are offering an SLA of 99.99%. Thus, you will only face 4 minutes of downtime every year. These SLAs are mostly defined in terms of RPOs and RTOs. You should know about these factors.
The RTO is simply the period for which your applications can stay down. RPO is the period that your data can be down for. These are the most important criteria for every company. Thus, you can use these terms for finding a perfect solution.
Define your business requirements:
The most important of your DR plan is the network capacity and bandwidth your data needs. It is important to find the best DR solution for your company. You need to consider if the bandwidth capacity can handle your user’s request.
RPOs and RTOs will play a very big role in defining your business requirements. These factors should be included in your business impact analysis.
The points were data will be recovered are known as recovery points. You also need to consider the frequency of backup. For example, if you have important files then its recovery points should be of a few minutes. However, less important data can have recovery points of over a few hours.
If you have a smaller RTO and RPO, then the cost of DRaaS will be more. You should also have a schedule for backups. It is important to create two different schedules.
Create a custom DR strategy:
There is no perfect DR solution. You should learn about the best practices. Also, you should find important workloads. Thus, it will help you in avoiding data loss.
You can use the principle of triage for creating a perfect plan. First, you should identify your services, data, and applications. Also, you should properly sort them according to their priority. You should determine the amount of downtime that your business can handle. This will help you in developing objectives for your business.
It is important to identify all the essential resources. Also, you should determine the amount of downtime that you can handle. This will serve as the foundation of your DR strategy.
You need to add all your critical data and applications to this plan. It is important to minimize these costs for ensuring a fast recovery. Your business should remove all the irrelevant data and applications. You need to prioritize all your applications. It is important to define both RPOs and RTOs. The best method to achieve this is by using a separate method for each service and application.
If you are using a hybrid cloud, then you need to separate methods for both cloud environments. You will have different application clusters in both the cloud environments. Thus, they will different RTOs.
You need to use these points for creating a perfect DR plan. It is important to regularly test this plan. Most companies already have a backup plan. But, they never test these plans. Thus, it is important to regularly test both external and internal procedures.
You should test your systems every year. It is important to define your complete process. If you are using a multi-cloud strategy, then you need to regularly perform these tests. Also, if you are regularly adding new systems, then you need to regularly update your DR plan.
Data centers are offering various options to businesses. You can use these options for protecting your data. The most popular component of DRaaS is managed applications. In this, both the backup and primary data will be stored in your cloud. It will be managed by your cloud provider. This will help your company in enjoying the benefits of cloud-based solutions.
A recovery solution will provide you with all the hardware and software you need. You can store your applications and data on your on-premise server. However, your data will be backed up in the cloud infrastructure. You can restore it in case of any failure. However, this process might be very slow.
Many application vendors are also offering backup services. You should check with your vendor if they are offering backup services. This will ensure that the implementation process is easy. You can also backup and restore your data in the cloud infrastructure.
Conclusion
You need to find a perfect recovery solution. It is important to check all the available options. You need to find a provider that is perfect for your business. Business leaders should discuss options with different service providers. Many cloud vendors are offering different packages. These packages will have a different number of users, frequency of backup and backup strategy.
You should first assess the needs of your business. This is the best method to find a DR provider for your business. It is important to discuss the solution with your stakeholders. They should help you in discovering the critical applications and data. This is very important for ensuring business continuity.
You should create a backup schedule. After that, you need to consider the budget of your cloud-based DR solution. This will help you in creating a perfect DR plan for your business. If you need more information regarding Disaster Recovery, then you can contact Bleuwire.
Contact us today to learn about Bleuwire™ services and solutions in how we can help your business.
