4 Reasons Disaster Recovery is Better in the Cloud
Whenever you turn on the news, it might feel like there’s a new disaster that’s happening somewhere in the world. Maybe it feels like it will never be you, but the truth is that it’s somebody.
And those businesses experiencing that disaster? Hopefully, they have a robust disaster recovery plan or the disaster might just spell the end for them. More than 40% of businesses never reopen after a disaster and for those that do, only 29% are still in business two years later.
The fact is, a disaster can cause enough damage that it can be nearly impossible to recover. The only way to minimise the risk is by creating a disaster recovery plan to cover all the bases.
Disaster recovery planning has recently come into the spotlight due to the cloud. Before, disaster recovery was reserved only for the largest of enterprises because the cost associated with doing so was so astronomical. Today the cloud offers a cost-effective option for even medium to small businesses.
Cloud solutions take a different approach to disaster recovery, and backups in particular, than traditional solutions. Unlike tapes (one of the most common ways to backup data), which save data and data alone, cloud solutions can create working virtual servers including operating systems and applications. This virtual server can then be duplicated and spun up on a virtual host virtually instantly so that employees can get back to work rapidly. Recovering data from tapes, on the other hand, means that the server itself with the operating system and applications needs to be rebuilt before importing the data back into the OS (if the data even can be).
Why do organisations continue to use tapes when cloud backups are possible? It could be that organisations do not realise the benefits of moving to the cloud to host their disaster recovery solutions.
1. Reduced capital investment.
Unlike with other backup solutions, disaster recovery in the cloud comes with little initial capital investment because it is likely that you will be paying for your backup solution on a pay-as-you-go basis instead of investing in infrastructure.
2. Faster recovery in the event of a disaster.
Many cloud disaster recovery providers offer additional services like intelligent deduplication and single-step recovery so that you recover the data you need quickly. Without intelligent automated tools, data recovery can become a tediously slow process at best and at worst, you may find out that your data is recoverable the way you thought it would be. Furthermore, unlike tapes and disks that can fail, recovery from the cloud is successful 99% of the time.
3. Your backup has backups.
Choosing a disaster recovery solution in the cloud means that no mission-critical data is stored on-site. It is important to keep in mind that some natural disasters can cause damage across a large geographic area, which means that if your backups are kept in an offsite, but nearby location, it is possible that they could become destroyed due to the same disaster that destroyed your office. Just think about Hurricane Katrina in the United States and the wide path of destruction it cut across the South. Cloud backups are kept in a virtual space often far from where your office is located meaning that the chances of a natural disaster taking out both your office and your backups is virtually impossible.
Furthermore, reputable cloud disaster recovery providers will have designed their services to be redundant and they will have a disaster recovery plan of their own. Compared to traditional tape backups, data saved in the cloud is significantly safer.
4. Easily scalable.
A cloud can virtually keep expanding, which means that your disaster recovery solution can scale to fit a growing organisation’s needs. Since most cloud backup solutions are modelled on a pay-as-you-go scale, organisations also have the option of choosing which data is considered mission critical and therefore backed up and what data is not to further reduce cost associated with disaster recovery.
It is critical for organisations to recognise that data protection is only half of the pie when discussing disaster recovery. Data protection only matters if the data can then be recovered and used. If it can’t, then it’s like the data was not saved in the first place. Physical tapes are vulnerable to corruption and physical failure, unlike a cloud solution, which exists in virtual space and can be deployed from anywhere. Choosing a cloud-based disaster recovery plan is the only step that makes sense with all of the advantages the cloud can bring to the table.
Macquarie Cloud Services offers a dynamic disaster recovery plan powered by Zerto with easy one-click testing and powerful replication abilities. If you’re interested in pursuing a disaster recovery plan based in the cloud, speak with an expert from Macquarie Cloud Services today.