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In the traditional computing setups organizations need to deal with management of data backups, media management, remote placement of data backups for disaster recovery requirements and so on. The entire process was lengthy, cumbersome and at times when backups were actually required they did not work. With cloud computing era, the vows of physical backup media management are long gone and it is replaced with cloud-based disaster recovery techniques. Data is kept in virtual storage designed with improved accessibility, redundancy and resiliency.
In today’s topic we will learn about Cloud Disaster Recovery, how cloud disaster recovery works, its key benefits and use cases.
Cloud Disaster Recovery
Cloud disaster recovery provides provision for data backups, applications, and other resources in cloud-based storage (either a public cloud or a dedicated service provider) with a combination of services and strategies. In the event of disaster, services, applications and data can resume at an alternate cloud provider site or post recovery to the primary data center. The cloud DR is similar to its traditional disaster recovery counterpart as the aim of both is to protect organization resources and ensure continuity of business operations via a reliable backup and recovery mechanism.
Traditional DR’s were limited to local DR and secondary site options. But data storage in a local data center may not be a good idea in the event of an ‘act of god’ such as flood, earthquakes, Tornados, fire etc. An alternate recovery site in a different region could cost significant business costs.
Having a cloud-based DR, public cloud providers offer dedicated facilities to clients with a plethora of backup and DR services to choose from. Organizations can access data and resources using highly scalable, agile, self -driven DR services off-site without investing much in hardware, DR tools etc.
Cloud DR is perceived as a failover technique. Cloud DR transfers workload to cloud based virtual machines when outage occurs. Hence cloud DR enables virtual failover technique to resume business operations.
How Cloud Disaster Recovery Works
Cloud disaster recovery works on a differential approach from a classic DR setup. Instead of stacking up data centers, cloud disaster recovery captures the whole server (snapshot), including operating system, application, fixes, information into a separate virtual environment and package. The virtual server is replicated or supported to an off-site server farm or rolled to a remote location server in a few minutes. The virtual server is not hardware dependent and the entire setup can be made operational quickly.
Advantages
- Reduction in capex on hardware, DR tools and other equipment to setup DR site
- Ease of scalability and flexibility and can address different business needs
- Accessibility of data from anywhere
- Quick and automated backups and protection of data in cloud storage
- Cloud vendors offer SLA based disaster recovery services so IT team is free from maintenance tasks
- DR provides offer compliance to regulatory frameworks such as HIPAA, SOC 2 etc.
- Pay as you go. No need to pay when not using it
- Cloud vendors release updates and ensure full support for improved service quality
Challenges
- Inevitable subscription costs
- Data replication across regions globally
- Some providers charge for egress traffic when files are transferred outside their data centers
- Your data is with 3rd party and you have to trust them for its security
- Internet connectivity is essential to run it