Compelling Attributes of Cloud Based DR Approach

Jul 26,2021 by Manoj Yadav

The viability of an onsite data center playing a significant role in the process of disaster recovery cloud hosting not have been challenged in the past. After all, the stakes are so high that enterprises were prepared to spend a significant portion of their IT budget in safeguarding mission critical applications and sensitive information.

DR- then and now

Cost of gaining capability of disaster recovery was indeed highly prohibitive in the past because it demanded development of an utterly new data center infrastructure. Organizations needed to establish process for smooth transfer of critical data in the event of any disaster. It was indeed a herculean task to gain operational transferability and seamless movement of mission critical data if the primary site of an enterprise is damaged due to an act of God.

This approach would be almost be impossible in today’s context, assuming that cloud computing was not available. This is primarily due to restricted budgets and ever-reducing profit margins that put a significant strain on IT budgets of enterprises. Thanks to the advent of colocation services and increased adoption of cloud solutions, one can design a Disaster Recovery infrastructure without incurring huge expenditure.

Moving to cloud based DR

Moving data from a colocation data center facility to a cloud based infrastructure is not a cake-walk as it demands keen attention to minute details to prevent errors. You need to carefully design strategy to plan and test the entire process of transition for gaining a successful and smooth cloud Disaster Recovery capability.

Analysis of how the enterprise would benefit from gaining cloud DR capability can certainly help in the early stage of the process. One of the most striking benefits is hassle free and speedy operations that are implemented for a Disaster Recovery plan if the systems are down due to an unexpected outage.

Another feature of a cloud oriented Disaster Recovery option facilitates seamless flexibility as compared to onsite IT infrastructure. Unlike the physical servers at primary site, cloud servers are far more flexible because of being virtual instances. Finally, it all boils down to costs and cloud based disaster recovery option scores over on-site facilities by a huge margin.

You can easily adopt a cloud based disaster recovery solution by choosing a right hosting provider that offers Disaster Recovery as a Service or DRaaS. Since there are several options to choose from one should research carefully for selecting a right DRaaS provider.

Assurance of SLA backed support

Licensing and other details including extensive connectivity, data replication, and DR application, must be thoroughly checked while finalization of the service level agreement. Many services mentioned in the agreement may not be essential from your organization’s point of view.

One of the most essential aspects of a Disaster Recovery solution is a guarantee of robust support in terms of skill development of your in-house staff. Your technical personnel must be familiar with all aspects of DR operations including backup as well as recovery.

One more aspect of enterprise-specific DR costs is associated with the unique business model especially is you are looking forward to sign a long term agreement. These costs cannot be classified in the general terms of contract. It is therefore recommended that such costs should be assessed in advance to avoid disputes. You can, for example, get clarity about a future situation that demands transitioning of DR services.

Advantages of a multi-cloud solution

Although, there is a general tendency to address cloud as a singular environment, the current scenario is entirely different. Majority of organizations are acquiring a multi-cloud infrastructure to facilitate different cloud hosting providers depending on the nature of services.

In a multi-cloud setup for disaster recovery, you can significantly reduce scope of a single point of failure. This assures seamless performance of your business critical applications in spite of any event impacting your business continuity. A singe cloud approach may bring your business operations to a standstill especially during prime time.

Such multiple service provider approach must be also extended to telecom providers to sustain traffic. In addition, you can also gain by striking a better deal in a competitive environment, if multiple providers are involved.

Measureable cloud benefits

Unless you have properly defined the advantages of cloud adoption in measureable terms, you will be only groping in the dark. A measure for a successful adoption of cloud computing is therefore essential. You can implement this by defining recovery time objective that explains optimum time to sustain business activities before the actual brunt of the disaster becomes unbearable.

Another measure for defining success of a cloud initiative refers to the amount of data, which can be lost in a particular event. This measure is known as RPO or Recovery Point Objective.

In conclusion

There are several advantages of adopting a cloud based DR resource by abandoning the obsolete and cost intensive on-site backup infrastructure. However, the most notable benefit is its cost efficiency of investing in a cloud based disaster recovery option.

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