Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2015. Read them in this VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed article by Walter Angerer, CEO, Quorum
DR and DRaaS: Don’t Fly Too Close to the Sun
You
would be pretty worried if you didn't have fire safety and evacuation plans in
your office, so why would you not put the same risk assessment strategy in
place for your data? 2015 will be an important year for
businesses as they look to the cloud to fulfill their disaster recovery (DR)
needs. Disaster
recovery as a service (DraaS) or cloud-based DR strategies are now making data,
server and application recovery plans far less complicated and highly efficient
for businesses in 2015.
Greater Adoption of
DRaaS
DRaaS offers a flexible platform that
uniquely empowers businesses to resume operations seamlessly in the event of a
disaster-rather than simply recovering data-and achieve incredible value even
in the absence of a disaster or data interruption event. Moreover, advances
in DRaaS have enabled an
industry-first: the ability for businesses to decide the level of protection at
a server level; mission-critical servers can be set to recover instantly while
other servers with less critical data might be set to recover at a longer RTO,
creating incredible cost efficiency. Because DRaaS is
easy to deploy and manage when compared with traditional non-cloud disaster
recovery solutions, we can expect to see a rapid increase in adoption,
particularly in the mid-market.
Faster DR Planning and Testing
One of
the hurdles to most business continuity plans is that regular testing, just
like the office fire alarms, must occur to ensure that everyone is prepared
should a disaster happen. Communications, data, server and application recovery
are often the key focus to disaster recovery testing. The testing process
enables companies to conduct planned maintenance and also train staff in
disaster recovery procedures.
Traditionally
tests have been complex and disruptive, and are far from popular. But a
hybrid-cloud approach to DR has changed the testing landscape for the better,
combining public cloud and SaaS automation software to make continuity planning
easier than ever. Companies gain data backup, fail-over of servers and the
ability to have a secondary data center at a different site to allow for regional
disaster recovery.
With
DRaaS solutions, there is also computing capacity on standby to recover
applications if there is a disaster. This can be easily tested without
impacting the production servers or unsettling the daily business routine. A so called ‘sandbox' copy is created in the
cloud which is only accessible by the system administrator. These copies are
created on demand, paid for while being used and deleted once the test is
complete. This makes testing simple, cost effective and does not disrupt the
business.
Hybrid-based DR will be Big business for the Channel
As demand for
next-generation cloud-based business continuity solutions
accelerates, the channel is well-positioned to benefit from an explosion of
lucrative opportunities. There are financial benefits to cloud-based
testing. Service providers regularly
offer sliding scales for DR testing. Putting a DR solution in the cloud also
means there isn't a redundant in-house infrastructure that is sitting unused
most of the time. There
is speculation that some traditional vendors are collaborating to provide
a DRaaS solution by end of
2015.
The cloud gives small to medium-sized business the same
capabilities that larger companies have had for years. This means that no company has an excuse
today not to have a BC/DR plan in place and test it regularly. People learn by repetition, so just like fire
drills we have to create practice DR drills, which are critical to a DR plan. If
you don't, your business could be flying too close to the sun.
##
About the Author
Walter Angerer,
Chief Executive Officer of Quorum.
Walter
Angerer has nearly 20 years of experience in building and leading successful
teams in storage, backup, and data protection. His vision and focus on quality
and execution has built him a sterling reputation in the field. Quorum provides
mid-size businesses with fool-proof disaster recovery plans, all without the
complexity or high cost of data center replication. With the Quorum Hybrid
Cloud Service, clients' recovery solutions are tested daily! And if disaster
strikes, up-to-date VM clones of their protected servers take over. With just
one click.