Since many organizations are migrating towards Backup as a Service and other hosted services that allow them to focus more on core business activities, Disaster Recovery as a Service is a natural part of this transition. When a natural disaster strikes or power outages occur Disaster Recovery as a Service or DRaaS comes into play.
The Fundamentals of DRaaS
At its core, DRaaS is designed to protect an organization’s data and IT infrastructure in the event of a disaster. With DRaaS, businesses can replicate data and entire servers to a cloud environment managed by a DRaaS provider.
In case of disruptions caused by natural disasters, earthquakes, equipment failures, ransomware, or others, the provider ensures rapid recovery to maintain business continuity. Essentially, it’s akin to having an insurance policy for your data and IT systems.
Below, a cluster is down due to an equipment failure:
Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) vs Backup as a Service (BaaS)
While DRaaS services focus on restoring IT operations after a disaster, Backup as a Service (BaaS) is more about the periodic backup of data. Both are essential for data protection, but DRaaS takes it a step further by ensuring business operations continue even when the primary site is compromised.
The Value Proposition of DRaaS
One might wonder, “Why would organizations choose DRaaS over managing their own Disaster Recovery?” The benefits are as follows:
- Simplicity: The DRaaS model eliminates the need for businesses to manage physical servers or storage resources in a separate Disaster Recovery site. Everything is managed in the cloud
- Cost-Efficiency: Instead of investing in hardware appliances and the infrastructure needed for Disaster Recovery, businesses only pay for the service level agreement they choose with their DRaaS provider. This aligns with the cloud computing service model
- Scalability: As businesses grow DRaaS offerings allow companies to scale their Disaster Recovery plans accordingly, often on demand
- Easier Disaster Recovery planning – Managed Disaster Recovery as a service allows for easier Disaster Recovery planning where backup data is managed and made available as a service, along with the infrastructure needed for business continuity
Choosing the Right DRaaS Provider
Given the vital role of Disaster Recovery in today’s businesses, selecting the right DRaaS provider is crucial. Not all DRaaS providers are created equal. Here’s what to look for:
- Recovery Time and Objectives: A good DRaaS provider should offer clear recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO). This will ensure your business can resume normal operations as quickly as possible after a disruption
- Recovery point objective (RPO): The recovery point objective is an extremely important metric when considering Disaster Recovery as a Service. It defines how much data loss is acceptable to the business
- Data Protection Measures: Ensure the DRaaS provider offers robust data protection, especially if regulatory compliance is a concern for your industry
- Technical Expertise: Lack of in-house experts is a common reason businesses turn to DRaaS. The chosen DRaaS provider should thus have a strong technical team, offering assisted DRaaS or managed DRaaS models based on the client’s needs
- Fully featured data protection solutions: Make sure your DRaaS partner of choice is using modern, fully-featured solutions for data protection and these support the wide range of infrastructure used by your organization
As an example of effective data protection solutions, BDRSuite is a fully-featured data protection and Disaster Recovery software that allows businesses to protect a wide range of infrastructure and data across private, public, hybrid, and SaaS clouds, including physical server and client infrastructure.
The Role of Virtualization in DRaaS
Virtualization plays a pivotal role in DRaaS. Virtual machines (VMs) can be quickly and easily replicated to a DRaaS provider’s cloud, whether private or public. In a disaster, these VMs can be spun up remotely in the service provider’s cloud, ensuring end-user access remains uninterrupted.
After the disaster has been resolved, virtual machines can be replicated back to the original location from the private or public cloud and operations can resume normally in the original data center. This process is known as failover and fallback with virtual servers.
Challenges in Implementing DRaaS
Like any cloud service, DRaaS isn’t without challenges:
- Data Changes and Synchronization: Real-time synchronous replication can be costly. Some businesses might opt for periodic replication, but this could mean recent data changes aren’t immediately backed up
- DNS Managed Concerns: In the recovery process, redirecting users to the DRaaS service can be complex, especially if not pre-planned
- Network configuration: Along the same lines as DNS concerns, networking reconfiguration may be needed to avoid downtime associated with bringing up resources in a separate environment with a different network configuration. DRaaS providers and the data protection solutions they use can automate the reconfiguration of network addressing, etc
BDRSuite is a solution that provides full failover and fallback capabilities, taking care of network complexities with VM replication.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do DRaaS solutions differ from traditional Disaster Recovery plans?
Traditional Disaster Recovery plans often rely on an organization’s own infrastructure, requiring dedicated physical servers, storage resources, and often, a separate data center. This often comes with substantial upfront costs, and scaling becomes a concern as data grows. DRaaS solutions, on the other hand, harness the power of cloud computing and are infinitely scalable.
They allow businesses to replicate data and virtual servers to a DRaaS provider’s cloud environment, enabling fast recoveries without the burden of managing and maintaining additional hardware. This shift to a cloud-based model, whether private or public cloud, offers not only cost efficiency but also greater flexibility.
What are the primary challenges businesses face when transitioning to a self-service DRaaS model?
Self-service DRaaS offers organizations the capability to manage their Disaster Recovery process largely on their own, relying less on the DRaaS vendor.
Ensuring data synchronization, managing DNS redirections during a recovery process, and understanding how to restore data optimally in the remote environment of a public or private cloud fall back to the customer in self-service configuration.
How do advancements in synchronous replication benefit DRaaS?
Synchronous replication ensures that data is mirrored in real-time from the primary site to the DRaaS provider’s cloud. This means that any change made to the original data is instantly mirrored, resulting in a much narrower window for potential data loss. The obvious advantage is that data can be recovered in the event of a disaster until the very last transaction or operation, ensuring minimal data loss.
However, it’s important to note that while synchronous replication offers near-instant data protection, it requires a large amount of bandwidth and low latency to function effectively, making it essential for businesses to work closely with their DRaaS providers to achieve the desired results.
Wrapping up
DRaaS is a natural evolution for organizations pivoting their backup and Disaster Recovery strategies to hosted and managed service providers. It allows businesses to offload the complexities, time, hardware, and other expenses associated with Disaster Recovery to an organization and provides this as a hosted solution.
It allows organizations to ensure they’re protected from both natural and man-made disasters, from earthquakes and power outages to equipment failures, without having the skills in-house. DRaaS providers have staff with the expert skills needed to configure, monitor, and execute DR plans smoothly and efficiently.
Related Posts:
MSP Series: What is Managed Backup and Disaster Recovery: Part 12
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