Cloud Solutions

DRaaS - different than DR or backup?

By / March 1, 2019

The shocking reality of downtime.

More than 40 percent of companies that suffer a major business disruption are unable to recover from the long-term impact, and go out of business within two years.

How is DRaaS different than DR or backup, and why would I use it?

The DRaaS protection process, is similar to the cloud backup process. Data, which could be individual files or entire server images, is backed up over the internet and stored in an off-site data center.

The main difference, lies in the ability to failover live servers to an alternative cloud environment. This gives a business the capacity to run live production servers in a virtual environment, with very little configuration, compared to bringing up a new server from backup images.

Traditional backup by itself is slow.

Traditional backup is slow to recover. The average time to be back in business from backup is 48 hours. The average time to get back to business as usual with DRaaS, is just 4 hours.

Traditional backup is often cumbersome. In addition to recovering the proper data, there may still be hardware to change out, configurations to set up, and systems to bring online.

Ideally, backup can still be part of the overall recovery plan, but premise-based backup, works best as a long term data storage solution, providing multiple historic recovery points.

Traditional disaster recovery will cost as much or more than a DRaaS solution.

Manual disaster recovery can still require a lot of hands on configuration, and is often more expensive than an equivalent or better DRaaS solution.

In situations where hardware backups are needed, this additional set of physical hardware is not only often a capital expense, but also a depreciating piece of equipment you may never actually use.

DRaaS changes the revenue model from CAPEX to OPEX, and prevents you from owning outdated hardware and software, not to mention faster reconfiguration times.

Are there disadvantages to DRaaS?

The advantages to DRaaS are many, and the disadvantages few, but the whole picture is important.

• DRaaS may require a skilled administrator to switch the live production environment, although some DRaaS services may include this in the subscription. Simple backup/restore can often be performed by anyone with basic recovery knowledge.
• If the customer needs are very simple, and time isn't a factor, a simple backup/restore can be less expensive than a DRaaS solution.
• DRaaS utilizes Internet bandwidth, as opposed to say, a tape or local drive backup.

If speed to recovery is a factor, and the DRaaS solution affordable, there are very few disadvantages or limitations to DRaaS.

To DRaaS or not to DRaaS?

In business where you’d hate to lose data, but the data isn’t critical (like development systems), backup may be sufficient. Also, if your RTO (Recovery Time Objective), is flexible (greater than 24 hours), a simple cloud backup solution may be adequate.

If your RTO is tight, (less than 24 hours), DRaaS is always the best option. Blended solutions (DRaaS and backup), are best for the ultimate in redundancy, and future restoration of archival data.

Contact AppSmart today for industry leading DRaaS cloud solutions.

Phone: 1-866-456-3211

partnersupport@appsmart.com