Security, reliability, and disaster recovery are the top three challenges companies are faced with when utilizing cloud storage. Today, data recovery is at the forefront of many of our minds. Disasters happen, whether they are natural, man-made, or accidental, and they have become more common in this age of cyberwarfare. Disaster recovery budgets remain the same for many companies, but yet, end users cannot afford downtime. Optimize your DR plan and slash your budget with a cloud based DRaaS solution.

The three basic components of a great DR plan include:

Backup – the copying of your data so that a version is available in case of a disaster.
Archive - the long-term retention of two copies of data in two separate locations, preferably in two formats.
Recovery – A recent copy of data to default to if a disaster were to occur.

Here are the steps to optimize your Cloud DR plan:

1. Migrate Your Data to the Cloud

Find a provider that will host the latest copy of your data. There are plenty of cloud data protection options available with three basic options: backup, replication, full cloud hosting.

Many cloud backup services offer the backup format. In case of a disaster your data is extracted and moved into a format easily accessed by a virtual machine. The replication option simply duplicates your data to the cloud, where it is stored in a native file-system format that is immediately accessible in case the primary site goes down. Both replication and backup require an initial data seeding which can take weeks.

The third option is to move your applications to the cloud entirely. This could involve using an on-premises cache so your local applications don’t suffer latency delays or placing the entire workload to the cloud. Placing primary and secondary storage on the cloud eliminates the need of ongoing transfer of data to the cloud. It is important that your cloud vendor provides acceptable resiliency for your stored data.

2. Plan for the Worst

In the case of a disaster where your datacenter becomes unavailable, true failover to the cloud is required. The first step after a disaster is to start all the services that are now in the cloud that your high-priority applications need to run such as DNS and directory services. Once that is running you will start the servers that make up that application. Finally, make sure the networking configurations are correct which provides your end users seamless access.

This process is easier for business’ that put all their data in the cloud but compute on premises. The network would be the same, but the data is already in the cloud, and for recovery they start the applications alongside of the data.

3. Create a Seamless Return

After a disaster, you will want to go back to your original operations as soon as possible. Exiting the cloud is the most difficult aspect if you use a backup or replication service. It can take weeks to restore the data from the cloud. Your DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service) provider should offer the ability to ship the data directly to avoid the weeks that it can take to transfer all the data back to the original operation site.

This is not an issue if your data is already in the cloud using a replication service.

Faster recovery, financial savings, scalability, and security are just some of the many benefits of a cloud based DRaaS solution. Looking for a DRaaS cloud based solution? Contact us to get all of your DR questions answered.