Migration to cloud-based disaster recovery may hold you back – but there are solutions available to simplify the process giving you full control and better experiences. As an IT leader, you are responsible for delivering IT operational continuity — one main area often overlooked are data backups and corresponding disaster recovery/business continuity planning (DR/BCP).
Cloud Disaster Recovery
Cloud disaster recovery is a service that provides the opportunity to recover your data from applications, servers and or network devices from a cloud service – in minutes, not days. As you consider migration to from premise based back up to infrastructure-as-a-service & DR-as-a-Service, you’ll want to look for the following features as a minimum:
- Secure and compliant data center with verifiable certifications such as SOC 1/ISAE 3402, SOC2, SOC3, ISO 9001, FIPS 140-2, PCI DSS Level 1, HIPAA, FedRam, DoD CSM (Levels 1-2, 3-5, DIACAP/FISMA, ITAR
- Instantaneous on-line access to data – replicated on disks, not tape
- Data RTO (recovery time objectives) that are configurable to provide intact and recoverable data sets for disaster recovery protection
- Daily email confirming that your data has been successfully backed up
- Where applicable fully mirrored replication of your data across multiple environments.
- Ability to support a wide variety of OS’s such as Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Unix
- RAID, SAN and JBOD Storage
- Encryption such as 256-bit AES encryption for data at rest (in storage) for sensitive data required to be backed up as well as SSL encryption for data in transit
- Variable initial seed loading options for data ingest to initiate service
Benefits of Cloud Disaster Recovery
- Can offer disaster recovery protection of data, applications and operating systems in continuous real-time replication service
- Can supports multiple IT environments – physical and virtual servers – thus enabling further flexibility and scale for delivering IT operational continuity
- Reduces CAPEX velocity by reducing expense for replication server environment by moving to a variable cost model
- Enables re-configuration of dedicated failover environments to only paying for resources when needed
- In some cases enhances DR/BCP by enabling geographic diversity in the event of a widespread disaster
- Recovery from any outage though a single console when using providers such as AWS
- In the majority of case can eliminate the capital expense of purchasing new storage units by shifting these costs to service provider
- Can reduce data center costs, no IT staff support requirements – note this doesn’t eliminate costs altogether as there will be a shift of OPEX to the provider but can certainly be decreased to permit focus on what’s important vs. what’s is not part of your expertise
- Pay for only what you need, multiple standard options from GB to TB to beyond
- Implement best practices for data retention and backup to satisfy compliance requirements
- In some instances greatly improving security and compliance of not only the data center but also the staff supporting the service
Conclusion
An affordable cloud based service that replicates your primary server environment is the most important thing you can do to make sure your business is back up and running if a disaster occurs. Disaster recovery of your data, applications and operating systems should have the highest priority in your company when implementing your operational plans.
With our partners, we offer dedicated private network pathways, via Layer 2, into the cloud, riding on your existing carrier. With a layer 2 network design, all your data rides on one dedicated private global network no matter its origination point – from data center to cloud; from on-premise to cloud; or even from one cloud to another cloud
Layer 2 switching, versus Layer 3, Direct Connect results in huge time savings for speedy, simple interconnection of your public, private and on premise resources. Our customers bring their network ‘as-is’ without time consuming re-designs (i.e., vLANS, subnets, router, firewall and VPN topologies).
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