Characteristics of No-Limit Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)

 

Disaster Recovery is a set of policies and procedures to enable or continuation of critical applications following man-made or natural catastrophe. Disaster Recovery focuses on the critical applications systems as opposed to business continuity involves keeping all essential aspect of a business functioning despite significant disruptive events. Basically, Disaster Recovery (DR) is a subset of Business Continuity (BC).

Prior selecting a Disaster Recovery Strategy, a disaster recovery metrics should be defined. The key two metrics are Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO). These metrics are originated by the business processes. These business processes are then mapped to  the underlying IT system and Infrastructure that support those processes.

Typically, DRaaS requirements and expectations are documented in a Service Level Agreement (SLA) and third party provides failover to a cloud computing. The Cloud computing could be Private or Public Cloud. DRaaS in the public cloud can be useful for small and medium size business. It means that DRaaS, to these organisation, does not have to invest and maintain their own off-site DR environment. An additional benefit is that DRaaS contract with third part can be flexible as the business’s needs change.

With new technology available today, large enterprise could demand for No-Limit DRaaS. The characteristics of No-limit DRaaS are as follow:

1. Able to replicate the entire enterprise to the cloud without crippling the network bandwidth

2. Provides automated DR testing, orchestrated application-level recovery and certified RTO & RPO

3. Critical data and systems will be instantly recovered in minutes and the organisation will be operational in the Cloud within hours of disaster declaration

4. Able to run a full DR test and validation soon after the initial replication is completed. The aim of this test to proof of readiness to the business to access the application and data from the Cloud provider

5. Comprehensive protection in event of disaster, systems running on physical or virtual are restored instantly as virtual machines in the Cloud

The downside is that the business must trust DRaaS service Provider in the event of a disaster and the Provider meets the define RTO and RPO at all time. One way to mitigate this risk is to set up monitoring tools on the Cloud provider so that the business kept informed for any issue.

If you need further information or initial consultancy, please email mustafa@imexservices.co.uk for details.