Cloud disaster recovery

What is cloud disaster recovery?

Cloud disaster recovery is a managed service or solution in the cloud that helps you quickly recover systems and data after a disaster or emergency. Cloud disaster recovery is the process of replicating your important data and applications to a remote cloud location, where they can be easily restored if your primary site experiences an outage.

Why is cloud disaster recovery important?

Cloud disaster recovery is important because it protects your company from losing data or access to critical applications and networking systems that people depend on to keep the business running. Outages can happen when there is a natural disaster, a ransomware attack, a power failure, or other unplanned events.

Today, cloud disaster recovery is more critical than ever, as the frequency and duration of outages are increasing over time. The Uptime Institute’s 2022 Outage Analysis reported that businesses’ efforts to reduce the frequency of outages are “falling short,” and causing both the costs and consequences of outages to escalate. The study found that the number of severe outages costing more than $100,000 has dramatically increased in recent years.

Cloud data backup provides a scalable and cost-effective way to ensure that your critical systems and data are protected and can be rapidly recovered in the event of an unexpected outage.

Cloud disaster recovery is important for several reasons:

• Business continuity — Cloud disaster recovery protects you from natural disasters, cyberattacks, power outages, hardware failures, and human errors that could disrupt normal business operations. Such circumstances can result in financial and productivity losses, while also potentially damaging your reputation. By implementing cloud disaster recovery, you can ensure that your critical data and applications are available even after a disaster occurs, enabling you to maintain business continuity.
• Cost or budget efficiency — Cloud disaster recovery solutions offer cost savings compared to traditional disaster recovery solutions. Many traditional solutions can be costly to set up and maintain, as they require dedicated hardware, software, and trained personnel. Cloud disaster recovery eliminates the need to invest in infrastructure and personnel. Instead, you pay only for the cloud resources you need while taking advantage of the expertise of cloud disaster recovery service providers to develop a reliable recovery strategy that fits your needs.
• Cyber resiliency and security — Cloud disaster recovery service providers typically offer robust security that safeguards your organization from data breaches. Leading disaster recovery solutions can be tailored to meet your specific data protection and compliance requirements.
• Flexibility (financial and operational) — Cloud-based disaster recovery solutions allow you to scale up or down as required. This can be particularly useful if your business is growing or experiencing fluctuating demand, such as during busy holiday shopping seasons.
• Ease of use — Cloud disaster recovery solutions can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection, allowing you to recover data and applications quickly and easily, regardless of where you are located.

How does cloud disaster recovery work?

Cloud disaster recovery works by backing up critical data and applications from your environment—whether on-premises or in the cloud—to a remote cloud environment, where they can be quickly restored in the event of an unexpected disruption.

To set up cloud disaster recovery, you first must identify the critical systems and data that need to be protected. Then, choose a cloud disaster solution service provider that offers the capabilities required by your organization. Next, set up a secure connection between your environment and the cloud disaster recovery environment. This connection enables you to replicate data and applications from the primary environment to the cloud environment.

Once the data and applications are replicated to the cloud disaster recovery environment, it is important to test and validate your disaster recovery plan. Such tests involve switching from the primary environment to the cloud environment. In the event of a disaster, a failover process will be initiated to switch from the primary environment to the cloud disaster recovery environment while maintaining access to critical data and applications. Once the primary site has been brought back online, a failback operation will allow the resumption of normal operations.

How to create a cloud disaster recovery plan

Creating a cloud disaster recovery plan involves several steps. Here is a general outline of the process:

1. Identify critical assets and potential risks if disrupted — Start by identifying the critical assets and data that your business relies on, and then assess the potential risks that could affect them should downtime or disruption occur. This can include natural disasters, ransomware and other cyberattacks, hardware failures, power outages, and human errors.
2. Establish recovery objectives — Determine acceptable recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) goals for your business, applications, and data.
3. Understand resource requirements — Identify the resources required to execute your disaster recovery plan, including hardware, software, personnel, and facilities.
4. Document recovery procedures — Develop step-by-step procedures for recovering your systems and data after a disruption, including specifying who is responsible for each task.
5. Test your DR plan — Regularly test your disaster recovery plan to ensure that it works.
6. Review your DR plan — Regularly review and update your plan so it remains effective and relevant.

Cloud disaster recovery vs traditional disaster recovery

Cloud disaster recovery differs from traditional disaster recovery in several ways. The most critical factors are the location and infrastructure used for storing and recovering data and systems when a disaster occurs.

In traditional disaster recovery, data and systems are stored on-prem or at an offsite location. In the event of a disaster, the data and systems are recovered using backup tapes, disks, or other physical media. Cloud disaster recovery, on the other hand, stores your data and systems in cloud infrastructure managed by your cloud disaster recovery service provider. Your data is continuously replicated to a remote cloud and can be quickly recovered in the event of a disaster.

Here are some other key differences between cloud disaster recovery and traditional data recovery:

Flexibility and scalability — Cloud disaster recovery can be easily scaled to meet your evolving business needs, whereas traditional disaster recovery may require additional hardware or software to be procured, managed, and maintained.

Budget impact — Cloud disaster recovery is more affordable for smaller businesses or businesses with limited budgets, as it is not necessary to purchase and maintain physical infrastructure.

Security of data and systems — Cloud disaster recovery and traditional data recovery both require robust security measures to protect data and systems, but cloud disaster recovery can offer additional security features such as encryption, multi-factor authentication, and network isolation.

What is the difference between DR and failover?

Disaster recovery and failover are related, but they have some important differences.

Disaster recovery refers to the process of restoring your critical systems and data after a significant disruption has occurred. This may include natural disasters, cyberattacks, hardware failures, power outages, and human errors. Disaster recovery is specifically designed to minimize the impact on your business by quickly restoring critical systems and data to normal operations.

Failover, on the other hand, is a specific technique used to minimize the downtime of your systems in the event of failure. Failover typically involves the use of redundant systems that take over the workload of the failed system. For example, in a database environment, failover may involve the use of a secondary database server that takes over the workload of the primary database if a failure occurs.

Cohesity and cloud disaster recovery

Because data and applications power digital business, you can’t afford disruptions to systems or data loss. Cohesity brings data security and data management capabilities together in a cloud disaster recovery solution that gets your organization back to business fast.

Cohesity offers a seamless path to data restoration after an unplanned event with cloud-based orchestration for automated disaster recovery failover and failback. Simplify recovery and minimize downtime at a lower total cost of ownership by paying only for the cloud capacity you use. Eliminate costly hardware and recover with confidence to any point in time to meet your SLAs.

Cohesity’s cloud disaster recovery solution is different from others in the market in a number of ways:

• Automated failover and failback — Cohesity’s cloud disaster recovery solution includes automated failover and failback features, which can decrease downtime and reduce the impact of a disaster.
• Integrated data protection and management — Cohesity’s cloud disaster recovery solution integrates data protection and management into a single platform that can help you simplify operations and reduce costs. The solution protects data across physical, virtual, and cloud environments, and supports numerous types of workloads and data sources.
• Multicloud support — Cohesity’s cloud disaster solution supports multiple cloud environments, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This gives you more flexibility and choice in terms of where you store your data and how you manage your operations.
• Rapid recovery time — Cohesity’s cloud disaster recovery solution is purpose-built to provide rapid recovery times, which can help you minimize downtime and maintain business continuity. The solution can replicate data to a remote location and provide near-instant recovery times in the event of a disaster.
• Ease of use — Cohesity’s cloud disaster recovery solution is easy to use with an intuitive interface and simple workflows. This can help you reduce the time and resources required to manage your data protection and disaster recovery operations.

Discover Cohesity cloud disaster recovery here.