Businesses are moving to the cloud in increasing numbers to improve computing agility and efficiency. But while cloud computing provides a cost-effective and flexible way to manage digital assets, data is not immune from natural or artificial disasters. Without robust backups and failover processes in place, companies risk losing crucial data. This is why it’s important to include disaster recovery (DR) in your cloud strategy.
In this article, we’ll take a look at how to protect your data in the cloud with disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS). DRaaS is a fully managed disaster recovery solution that allows organizations to replicate their IT infrastructure to the cloud and automatically initiates a failover process in the event of a failure or disaster. For organizations with lean IT teams, a DRaaS solution can be far more affordable than maintaining second infrastructure in a remote location with a staff standing by to respond in case of a disaster.
There are many different ways to perform disaster recovery in the cloud. The first step is conducting a detailed analysis of your IT infrastructure and workloads to identify what components are critical to the business. This should be followed by defining business continuity and disaster recovery protocols, including RTO and RPO, to ensure that you can recover from any data loss or service interruption.
Once you have a clear picture of your IT environment and workloads, you can start assessing your current disaster recovery plan and make any necessary changes. If you don’t have a DR plan in place, it is essential to develop one as soon as possible. It is also essential to test and validate your disaster recovery plans on a regular basis, in order to ensure that they are working as expected. Neglecting to do so can result in lost data and prolonged downtime in the event of a disaster.
The most basic way to implement a disaster recovery plan is by using a backup solution that copies your IT infrastructure to a secure cloud environment. This can be accomplished with a range of software vendors, some of which are specialized in providing disaster recovery as a service. Another option is to use a multi-site DR configuration, which involves running a scaled down version of your full IT environment in a separate geographical location from the primary server. For the most severe RTO and RPO requirements, you can also opt for a full replica of your IT infrastructure in multiple cloud availability zones at all times. This is the most expensive option, but it can provide the most comprehensive and fastest DR solution. This approach is typically used to mitigate regional disasters.