According to the International Data Corporation’s Storage and Data Management Services Programme Director, Paul Hughes, cloud based disaster recovery is top of mind for virtually every IT department, regardless of the size of the business. The shift towards the deployment of cloud-based disaster recovery solutions, however, is not without its challenges.
The pivot away from traditional, on-site disaster recovery solutions is a result of the emergence of cloud computing which has brought with it attractive new opportunities and capabilities for organisations that need a complete disaster recovery solution or are looking for ways to reduce costs without sacrificing service.
While many organisations are cognizant of the cost of downtime, IDC research indicates the average cost is about $100,000 per hour, a significant number of organisations remain inadequately prepared. Once again, IDC estimates 50% of organisations have insufficient disaster recovery plans and would struggle to survive after a significant disaster because of inability to recover IT systems.
Fear mongering aside, if you want to setup or update your current disaster recovery plan by making use of a cloud-based solution, what should you look for to ensure your solution is efficient, cost-effective, and robust? Of primary importance is finding a solution that provides orchestration, data movement, and management capability that facilitates data protection, deduplication, multiple uses for backup images.
The critical downfall of many disaster recovery plans is the lack of attention to the process of orchestrating the recovery of a production workload, simply matching component for component between different locations is not enough. The process element of the recovery must be viewed holistically, the orchestration engine should be vendor neutral and allow administrators to have a complete view. This allows entire application environments to be recovered in the cloud, and frees IT teams from having to worry about maintaining device-level compatibility.
Along with comprehensive orchestration, another important factor to consider when selecting a disaster recovery solution is the ease by which data can be moved between on-premises and cloud repositories. The ability to move data, establish multiple disaster recovery sites, and change providers as needed gives organisations the options to optimise recovery, convenience, and cost.
Key takeaways
- Ability to move data, establish multiple disaster recovery sites, change providers as needed, gives organisations options
- Critical downfall of disaster recovery plans is lack of attention to process of orchestrating recovery of production workload
- Orchestration engine should be vendor neutral and allow administrators to have complete view
- Multiuse backup images are icing on the cake of any data management solution
- Process element of recovery must be viewed holistically, orchestration engine should be vendor neutral, allowing administrators to have complete view
- Allows application environments to be recovered in cloud, frees IT teams from having to worry about maintaining device-level compatibility
Finally, all respectable disaster recovery plans will include the use of a data management solution that facilitates data protection, deduplication, and multiple uses for backup images. A solution that employs embedded encryption capabilities that can be applied comprehensively or selectively by policy will ensure that your information remains secure regardless of its location.
While cloud storage can be a very low cost data repository at rest, some providers charge significant fees for moving data in and out of storage. These charges, however, can be minimised through the use of deduplication technology which will also help reduce the amount of data that must be stored.
So now your recovery data is securely and cost-effectively stored, satisfying all of your organisation’s disaster recovery requirements, what more could you ask for?
Multiuse backup images are the icing on the cake of any data management solution. Just because your business demands that you backup your data does not mean that the backup needs to sit idly by waiting for something to go wrong.
Innovative disaster recovery plans will make sure of a data management solution that allows backup images to be used in multiple ways, such as for user inquiries, eDiscovery, legal holds, and big data analytics. This multiuse of the data is a way for IT to deliver more value to business units without increasing costs.
Merely moving to a cloud hosted disaster recovery solution may not be enough to get your business rolling after a shutdown, explains Allen Mitchell at Commvault.
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