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Dramatic events like the Covid-19 pandemic and the widespread power outages in Texas in February 2021 highlight what many IT professionals already know; many businesses disaster recovery and business continuity plans are sorely lacking. Businesses need disaster recovery plans that will ensure they remain operational even in extreme situations when an entire region loses power or physical access to offices and data centers is cut off. Creating this kind of resilience usually means incorporating the cloud into disaster recovery.

Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), is one of the most common use cases for organizations starting to explore the cloud. It allows an organization to back up and recover data and IT infrastructure in a third-party cloud computing environment, rather than to a backup server of their own. Like other as-a-service models, the cloud infrastructure provider handles management of the resources used for the backups and charges the customer based on usage. Cloud-based DRaaS can offer several benefits over on-premise DR, but there are several considerations that organizations should keep in mind when setting up their DRaaS program. Lets go through these in detail.

Different companies have different needs for their disaster recovery, so its important for each organization to customize their arrangements as much as possible to help ensure business continuity. Here are some considerations for organizations that are evaluating a DRaaS program. Ultimately, the goal is to determine if the cloud is the best fit for their needs and what parameters and details should be included in their contract with the service provider.

With all these considerations in mind, DRaaS makes sense for many if not all customers. Its typically a lack of understanding, confidence or the right skillset that holds companies back from trying the cloud. In many cases, organizations are understandably reluctant to do anything that could negatively affect long standing traditional applications that their business depends on! In this scenario, DRaaS can be a toe in the water for companies to experiment with the cloud without significant risk. By taking such a step, organizations will get a better understanding of how the cloud works, how these per-use cost frameworks are beneficial and build up a level of comfort before considering migrating other workloads that could benefit from the cloud.

George Stamos, Director of Strategic Alliances and Solutions Architecture, Skytap

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Benefits and considerations for disaster recovery-as-a-service - ITProPortal