DRaas Leads Companies Into The World Of Cloud
DRaaS can help companies in the event of a disaster. Find out how.
In this article Chris Rogers, technology evangelist at Zerto, shares insights on how disaster recovery in cloud computing, how it works, its benefits, how to plan for it, and how to choose between Cloud DR, DRaaS, and traditional.
As more and more large enterprises adopt cloud technologies, there are still many small- and medium-sized companies that have yet to take that leap. There are economic incentives that make the movement to the cloud beneficial, such as trading capex for opex expenses, but these enterprises lack some of the skills and resources to navigate the migration successfully.
Cloud-based services, including disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), can provide companies with a first introduction to the cloud. DRaaS can help companies in the event of a disaster, whether it’s a cyberattack, equipment failure, or natural disaster, by allowing them to back up their data on a secure, managed cloud. With DRaaS, the organization can recover entire sites or applications when needed.
While some companies can build and maintain their own on-premises secondary site for that purpose, the approach is very expensive. Parts of their budgets, which could be going to activities that support the bottom line, will instead be needed to build an entire data center, hire people to maintain it, keep the site cool, etc.
See More: How to Modernize Your Disaster Recovery Plan
Cloud solutions are an alternative that allows companies to eliminate the cost of maintaining their own on-prem site. Using the cloud, they can pay only for necessary storage and computing power by offsetting the financial burden of maintenance to their chosen cloud service provider. A hybrid cloud solution, including both public and private clouds, helps companies save money. However, companies must also come up with a way to protect their data in the cloud.
Implications of the Hybrid Cloud
Taking DR to the cloud is a great start, but few can run full production in the cloud if they’ve never done it before. Furthermore, developing a hybrid cloud to run DR on can be an extra cost.
Even if ignoring the cost, the issue of expertise alone is enough to drive many organizations to adopt DRaaS. Ransomware attacks bring down all types of groups worldwide, and according to IDC, over one-third of organizations have been targeted by a ransomware attack.
Many organizations aren’t comfortable taking on full responsibility for protecting their data. They lack the time, resources, and skills to sufficiently defend themselves against ransomware attacks. A recent IDC study showed that more than 40% of companies surveyed reported they lacked IT knowledge and skills to manage DR.
Thus, the DRaaS market has been growing 40% year after year as more organizations seek the solutions that DRaaS offers, like a reduction of capex costs and protection from ransomware and natural and man-made disruptions and outages.
Enterprise Benefits of DRaaS
DRaaS is a simple solution that takes on an organization’s difficult work and provides the necessary expertise to both run and protect data applications in the cloud. When organizations choose DRaaS instead of developing their own cloud for DR, they don’t have to worry about developing network and firewall infrastructures, buying storage and predicting capacity, providing maintenance and support, or scheduling downtime to conduct tests.
Additionally, offering DR services exclusively over software saves money for physical servers and storage, and offering data centers close to the customer’s operations can also lead to faster performance. Commitment to service level agreements (SLAs) determines recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) standards.
There are two different offerings for most DRaaS: self-service and fully managed. Self-service DRaaS is a prepackaged offer that includes a third-party site for replication and the assumption of full responsibility for the client’s data and application. This offering is well-suited for companies that want to move to a pay-as-you-go model to reduce their data center footprint but also want some level of control.
Companies that lack technical personnel but have high-security requirements would be well suited for a service provider which offers a fully managed DRaaS with a public or private cloud. The provider is the one who takes care of designing the DR cloud, installing it, and maintaining it. Professionals with extensive DR experience manage the strict SLAs which back these services.
See More: What Is Disaster Recovery? Definition, Cloud and On-Premise, Benefits and Best Practices
Choosing the Right DRaaS Partner
There are many DRaaS providers available to companies. When considering which to choose, organizations should look for:
- A solution with very few barriers to migrating workloads, sites, or applications to the cloud
- A solution that provides a better price than on-site private cloud
- A solution that can be used across different types of hardware and software and scale to whatever the client needs
- A solution that is non-disruptive and won’t stop normal operations while it’s being set up or tested
- A solution with extremely fast replication
Both individuals and organizations have been using the cloud for years without really considering it, whether it’s streaming personal content or office applications. It can feel like the technology is just a part of everyday life. But it’s important to comprehensively understand the disaster recovery service you’re using in the cloud to protect your data and applications. Having this understanding and using the cloud for such important purposes can help consumers embrace the cloud as a technology.
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