Whether it’s due to natural disaster, fire or cyberattack, businesses need to be able to recover from disasters and disruptions. For many organizations, this requires a robust Disaster Recovery (DR) strategy that can be executed quickly and easily with a minimal impact on the business’s productivity.
A key component of any DR strategy is the ability to replicate data offsite in a secure environment where it can be recovered in the event of a disaster. Typically, the data is stored in a cloud-based infrastructure and protected from any physical or virtual disasters that might affect an organization’s primary location. The replication of backups to a secondary site reduces the recovery time for critical applications and helps achieve the desired RTO and RPOs.
Traditional DR solutions often require a significant investment in hardware and software for an organization to build its own DR site, and a lot of time to manage the solution. DRaaS eliminates the need to invest in a second infrastructure and enables businesses to pay for a service on an as-needed basis that’s hosted offsite by a vendor, which makes the solution more affordable for most organizations.
The best DRaaS solutions enable businesses to protect both physical and virtual workloads in a single platform, allowing IT teams to respond on demand to workload protection and recovery needs with a simple, easy-to-manage technology. Carbonite DoubleTake DRaaS, for example, offers push-button failover of VMware and Hyper-V virtual servers to the cloud and ensures business continuity with real-time replication of each server’s data at the byte level.
A fully managed DRaaS solution includes deployment, monitoring and management of the backup and replication process by a provider’s team of experts. This allows organizations to focus on other business priorities and focuses the internal IT team on executing their DR strategy with a high degree of confidence.
Many providers also offer a partially managed DRaaS solution with an open model that includes some upfront setup and ongoing maintenance, but enables IT teams to take on additional responsibilities on an as-needed basis. This type of DRaaS is best for large IT departments with the skills to perform the necessary management, but prefer a more cost-efficient, consumption-based DRaaS solution that shifts costs from an up-front capital expenditure to a monthly operating expense.
It’s important for organizations to carefully evaluate their DRaaS options before choosing one. It’s also a good idea to test and vet the new solution on a regular basis – ideally, not during a disaster scenario. This way, if the organization does experience an outage, it’s clear that the DRaaS solution is working as expected and will help it restore operations quickly. For more information about DRaaS solutions, contact us today. We can answer any questions you may have about the newest DRaaS technologies and help you choose the right solution for your business. We are experts in the field and look forward to assisting you! backup and disaster recovery solutions