A Quick Guide to Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS)

Data backup and disaster recovery (DR) are two very important and functionally different processes of any multi-layered IT security strategy. Data backup is a process of storing a copy of files or data to a separate storage location with a purpose of restoring it after an uneventful occurrence. Whereas, the process of restoring the lost or damaged data to get back to the normal functioning of the business operations is considered as Disaster recovery.

Data safety is the most common concern and critical requirement of the businesses these days, regardless of their sizes, attracts the implementation of backup and disaster recovery solutions. Let us understand what exactly a Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) is and how it works.

What is Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS)?

DRaaS is another pay-per-use managed service offering from cloud computing which uses replication to duplicate the production environment data of an enterprise and sends it to the cloud. The replication technologies used in DRaaS can be hypervisor-based, host-based, application-based, or even storage-based to employ cloud backup and server backup solutions. Later, it uses cloud-based resources to build a complete recovery infrastructure of an organization.

In case of disaster, the operations and end-user access of the enterprise are failed-over into this environment till the time the primary IT infrastructure is available again. Most organizations, at first, do not require DRaaS, but in order to carry out continuous replication thy must consider some of the pricing components that include:

• Replicated data storage costs
• Software licensing costs
• Computing infrastructure costs
• Bandwidth costs

Some of the DRaaS providers might only charge for the storage and software licensing when the services are inactive and add the infrastructure and bandwidth costs once the service is activated. While others charge for all the components as a service availability fee, regardless of the usage of the actual services.

Benefits of DRaaS:

Let us discuss some of the benefits of opting DRaaS for our business modules:

• Cost-Efficient:The cost of the DRaaS services depends on the number of virtual servers the user runs in the cloud, and the volume of the storage resources the overall enterprise data will consume. This, when compared to the cost of building and maintaining a physical duplicate of the existing IT environment, is very less for any disaster recovery purposes. Hence, it becomes quite an attractive offering for small scaled businesses at moderate pricing.
• No DR Maintenance Overheads:All the responsibilities of cost and environmental recovery is taken care by the DRaaS provider. The user is only responsible to ensure to pass on the updated information about their IT infrastructure and the replicated data that needs to be protected to its service provider.  The DRaaS provider is accountable for all the physical DR infrastructure including server and storage to orchestrate the recovery.
• Increasing DR Capacity: For enterprises that already have backup and disaster recovery solutions for their business-critical data, it is recommended to seek DRaaS to ensure even the less important or newer applications can also have disaster recovery coverage.
• Zero Downtime: In most of the cases the existing cloud & server backup and disaster recovery solutions come with an option of recovery time objective (RTO) usually measured in hours. However, opting DRaaS ensures a viable way to not let your customers and partners experience any interruption when disaster strikes and can run applications with zero downtime.
• Offers a test environment: The DRaaS environment is used to process security or other tests that could be disruptive without interrupting the functionalities of primary infrastructures or operations.

The in-depth offerings of DRaaS: The objective of any disaster recovery solution is to make the enterprise up and live again with minimum interruption as soon as possible. There exist some of the key differentiators that a DRaaS provider can offer to an organization. Let us understand some.

Key differentiators of DRaaS:

• Security Level of Infrastructure: As soon as the operations of an enterprise is switched to a DRaaS provider, the level of infrastructure security increases. Although cloud providers offer excellent physical security around their facilities, the same may not be the case when it comes to serving data security and the availability of specific security functions such as firewalls.
• Application Orchestration: Any backup and disaster recovery solution can ensure the safe data recovery and making the enterprise up and live again in a shorter time span. But very few, unlike DRaaS, can ensure running the functionalities with the same level of interdependencies, database consistency, and updated DNS records. An orchestration layer offered by DRaaS can manage these tasks automatically to ensure the recovered IT infrastructure runs correctly.
• Vulnerability Scanning: Additional features such as vulnerability scanning can be offered by some cloud service providers that scans for every little detail of security aspects without impacting the production environment.
• OS Support: DRaaS providers offer support for multiple operating systems and databases. So, you must choose the provider wisely after checking your legacy application requirements.

Final Words:

Opting DRaaS for your organization can help you synchronize your applications and get them in place quickly after the disaster strikes. Since the applications these days are vast and are very critical for the smooth functionalities of an organization, they need to be secured at any cost.

If you are looking forward to having one such backup and disaster recovery solution for your organizations, i2k2 Networks is all ears! With a 20-year proven record in offering robust and reliable cloud backup solutions and server backup solutions, i2k2 Networks is already leading the Backup and disaster recovery industry. The solutions are simply- flexible, reliable, and scalable with a strong technical team to assist the customers round the clock.

Call us at +91-120-466-3031 | +91-971-177-4040 to know more or you can even drop a mail at sales@i2k2.com.