Disaster recovery (DR) is an organization’s method of regaining access and functionality to its IT infrastructure after events like a natural disaster, cyber attack, or even business disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Disaster recovery relies upon replicating data and computer processing to another location, not affected by the disaster. Multiple locations could be affected by the same disaster if they are in close physical proximity to each other; a best practice is to place your DR location in a separate geographical region from where your primary business operations reside. When servers go down because of a natural disaster, equipment failure, or cyber-attack, a business needs to recover lost data from a second location where the data is backed up. Ideally, an organization can transfer its computer processing to that remote location as well, in order to continue operations. This procedure is known as performing a DR failover.
On-premises vs. Enterprise Cloud Disaster Recovery
There are multiple ways to implement a disaster recovery plan. However, the method that provides you with the most efficiency, flexibility and recovery speed is Cloud backup and disaster recovery.
Cloud-based storage and recovery solutions enable you to backup and restore your business-critical files in case they are compromised. Thanks to its high flexibility, Cloud technology allows efficient disaster recovery, regardless of the type or intensity of workloads. The data is stored in a secured Cloud environment, architected to provide high availability. The service is available on-demand, enabling organizations of different sizes to tailor DR solutions to their business needs.
Cloud-based disaster recovery is both simpler to implement and easier to manage, when compared to traditional on-premises solutions. Businesses no longer need to waste hours transferring backup data from on-premises servers or tape drives to recover after a disaster. The Cloud automates these processes, ensuring fast and error-free data recovery.
Why Use Enterprise Cloud Disaster Recovery?
A Cloud disaster recovery plan provides several key benefits, as compared to other types of disaster recovery strategies:
- Scalability – It is more scalable since you can quickly increase the amount of resources you back up in the Cloud, by purchasing more Cloud infrastructure capacity.
- Cost-effectiveness – You pay-as-you-go. In other words, you pay for Cloud-based disaster recovery infrastructure as you use it; there is no need to invest upfront in hardware or to pay for more infrastructure than you use at a given time.
- Geo-redundancy – Cloud-based disaster recovery makes it possible to leverage geographic redundancy features. This means that you can spread your backed-up resources across multiple geographic regions to maximize their availability, even if part of the Cloud you use fails.
- Fast recovery from the Cloud – Recovery from the Cloud is typically much faster than on-premises solutions, because of the robust infrastructure and automation capabilities that the Cloud provides.
Scalable, Cost-effective Cloud Disaster Recovery with AllCloud and CloudEndure
AllCloud believes DR in the Cloud is the best option for our customers. And AllCloud has partnered with CloudEndure Disaster Recovery from AWS to provide cutting edge Cloud disaster recovery. CloudEndure is an AWS service that makes it quick and easy to shift your disaster recovery strategy to the AWS Cloud from existing physical or virtual data centers, private clouds, or other public clouds without any downtime or performance impact. You can use CloudEndure Disaster Recovery to protect your most critical databases, including Oracle, MySQL, and SQL Server, as well as enterprise applications such as SAP.
CloudEndure Disaster Recovery minimizes downtime and data loss by providing fast, reliable disaster recovery in AWS. The solution continuously replicates data from physical, virtual, or Cloud-based infrastructure to a low-cost staging area that is automatically provisioned in any target AWS Region of your choice. During failover or testing, an up-to-date copy of applications can be spun up on-demand and be fully functioning in minutes. During normal business operations, you only pay for data storage costs and a minimal staging environment, rather than paying for an entire copy of your infrastructure.
- Reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) – Leveraging AWS for DR allows you to leverage on-demand DR infrastructure rather than paying for dedicated assets in an on-premises environment, replacing capital expenditures (CapEx) with operational expenses (OpEx), and increasing operational efficiency.
- Easy Testability – Quickly spin up machines for your periodic DR drills without disrupting your source environment.
- Accelerated Disaster Recovery – CloudEndure Disaster Recovery uses near real-time data replication, which enables your recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) to be in minutes, rather than in hours or days, which is typical of traditional on-premises solutions.
- Plans that Grow with You – AWS allows you to test your target DR systems in whichever manner that best meets your needs. Updating DR plans, managing the minimal infrastructure needed to keep your failover site prepared, and testing target DR systems are all a button away. Never again worry about procedural binders having to be updated.
- Flexibility Between Infrastructures – Protect physical, virtual, or Cloud-based source machines by replicating them into a DR site in any AWS Region.
Enhance Your Disaster Recovery Strategy with the AllCloud DR Quickstart Program
AllCloud’s 4-week Disaster Recovery Evaluation is a quick-start program teaming up with AWS CloudEndure. During the program, our AWS experts focus on ensuring your organization is getting optimal value from your existing infrastructure and has the building blocks for a successful Cloud-based disaster recovery strategy. Contact our experts today!