Cloud-based disaster recovery (DR) is one of the most beneficial back-ups and restore strategy that helps to store and maintain electronic records of data in a computing environment as a security measure. Cloud DR aims to offer a generalized way to recover data or implement fail-over in the event of man-made or natural disaster.
The technical advancements have resulted in the possibility of creating a cloud-based recovery site that can be used if the primary data center becomes incapacitated. However, there is a number of alternative strategies that can be chosen while implementing the cloud-based disaster recovery and prevention processes.
Let us discuss 5 key considerations in detail.
Cloud-based Disaster Recovery Implementation: 5 Key Steps
1. Understand the need for data protection:
Firstly, it is important to evaluate the need for data protection as per the requirements of your organization. Knowing the requirement solves major security factors and determines the infrastructure and configuration to facilitate cloud-based data protection. Some of the organizations keep the primary backup onsite but replicate them to cloud storage. While others, replicate entire virtual machines (VMs) to the cloud.
2. Choose your Cloud Service Provider:
After analyzing the needs of data protection, the next step is to identify cloud services providers that help accommodate the requirements. You need to choose your managed cloud service provider wisely as not all provider is equipped well to handle every situation. To build a cloud-based disaster recovery, users must evaluate the capabilities of the service provider along with costs and service agreements.
3. Cost Estimation:
After identifying a viable cloud provider, users must estimate the cost of the required cloud-based disaster recovery services. Each provider offers a unique set of services with different pricing models.
Typically, the cost estimation of these services are based on:
- A monthly subscription fee
- Amount of bandwidth used
- Amount of storage used
- Number of VMs required
Some of the providers charge the subscription fee on a pro-rated basis, while others based on their service policies. It is advisable to go for affordable, yet sustainable DR services.
4. Strategizing Bandwidth Management:
Developing an Internet bandwidth management strategy is another important factor to determine the cloud-based DR services because of the listed reasons:
- Many providers charge for bandwidth consumption
- Provider can also impose a monthly cap on bandwidth consumption or can even charge for using excess bandwidth
- Users must offer adequate bandwidth to allow data to be backed up on a regular basis
- Users must ensure that the replicated data does not consume extra bandwidth and space to suffer from bandwidth inadequacy
The approach of copying data determines the method used for bandwidth management. The built-in bandwidth scheduling features are used by some of the backup software and cloud storage gateway appliances that allow users to limit the overall bandwidth of data copying apps and may increase the limit during off-peak hours.
5. Replicating Virtual Machines:
Clustering is not an appropriate solution for every situation, and not every application or virtual server can be clustered. Simply replicating the VMs to the cloud can be an alternate technique for using cloud-based disaster recovery. The benefits of VM level replications are as follows:
- Point-in-time image-based recovery
- Mounting a cloud-based copy of a VM and able to extract data
- Redirecting users to a cloud-based VM replica in the occurrence of an on-premise failure
Also, IP address injection and DNS record modifications are the toughest challenges that occur while redirecting users to a cloud-based VM in the event of a failure.
The bottom line of cloud-based DR:
Cloud-based DR uses an excellent approach to cloud and virtualization technologies. The advancement of server virtualization, hybrid backup solutions, and cloud services has made the cloud-based disaster recovery a real-time viable option, especially for organizations that could never justify the traditional DR infrastructure.
Affirming the requirement of backup and recovery of business-critical data and applications, Velcode Solutions offers a full range of cloud-based backup and disaster recovery solutions that keep the infrastructure protected in their highly-redundant data centers. Being able to win the trust of thousands of customers from past 20-years, the Velcode Solutions offers round the clock assistance, proven solutions, and supports multiple platforms through quick and easy restoration processes.
Call our cloud experts at +91 1145694931 , +91 9310905611 and share your queries to sales@velcodesolutions.com.
