SingleHop, a leading provider of on-demand managed cloud services, today officially introduced SafetyNetTM - a complementary private cloud environment for customers unable to access or restore their Veeam cloud backups due to a devastating infrastructure failure. The environment is available to customers within 24 hours and is free to use as a production site for up to 30 days.

The feature is included in every SingleHop Cloud Backup for Veeam Cloud Connect service plan. While not a substitute for a Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solution due to a higher recovery time and point objective (RTPO), its data recovery functionality can significantly soften the often crushing, bottom-line impact of emergency events, as well as remove the added burden and time spent sourcing, provisioning and configuring new equipment in the midst of a disaster.    

Protecting Customers from the Unthinkable

While cloud backups are critical, they are not insurance against the failure of critical infrastructure.  Reports of natural disasters have increased considerably in the last three to four decades racking up trillions of USD in economic loss.1 Beyond storms, floods, earthquakes, tornados and the like, data centers are subject to cooling malfunctions, fire, water and chemical damage that could completely shut down operations. According to a study by Ponemon Institute, the average cost of downtime per minute was $7,900 in 2013 up from $5,600 in 2010.2    

"We designed SafetyNet for the millions of businesses that understand the value of backing up data offsite but either want an extra layer of infrastructure protection or do not yet have the resources for a more robust disaster recovery tool," said Jordan Jacobs, vice president of products at SingleHop. "As a partner to our customers, we never want to see downtime threaten their businesses' survival. SafetyNet can not only help to mitigate those worst-case scenarios, it initiates conversations around next steps for bulletproofing business continuity plans across the board."   

Supplementing Business Continuity Plans

First Direct, a fast-growing direct marketing solutions firm based in metropolitan Omaha, chose SingleHop's cloud backup service due in part to the benefits afforded by SafetyNet. With redundant infrastructure already in place for customer-facing database products, First Direct's president and founder, Joel Buhr, views SafetyNet as a supplement to his existing business continuity plan.    

"If I had a critical outage, SafetyNet is an assurance that my backups can be wound up in a virtual environment rather quickly," said Buhr. "I hope we never have to use it, but its availability provides peace of mind that my business can keep running despite any traumatic failure of equipment or natural disaster."

SafetyNet will protect against any prolonged outage for First Direct's growing and increasingly important local infrastructure.

How SafetyNet Works
SingleHop Cloud Backup customers may initiate SafetyNet whenever a catastrophic event renders their critical systems inaccessible or prevents them from restoring backups within a reasonable timeframe. After contacting SingleHop:        

1. SingleHop provisions a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) with 128 GB RAM and 32 CPU cores to serve as the temporary target for backup restoration.

2. Once the VPC is live, SingleHop begins to restore data and operations for critical VMs.

3. During the restore, the customer is able to configure networking and firewall rules for their VMs using vCloud Director.

4. Within 24 hours of the initial request, customers can use the VPC as their production environment, which is available free of charge for 30 days while normal operations are restored. Additionally, customers have the option to retain the VPC service with SingleHop or upgrade its resources.  

"With SafetyNet, our ServiceFirstTM professionals are at the ready to spin up a full VPC environment for BaaS customers experiencing a calamity that could take their businesses out," said Jacobs. "It's not that it's a simple task, but we consider the 24 hours of teamwork required to create and provision a new environment worth it to save our customers from potentially irrecoverable damage to their brand, reputation and revenue."

As an emergency-only environment, customers cannot pre-provision the SafetyNet VPC or pre-configure application-specific connectivity and firewall settings. For customers interested in full-scale disaster recovery options, SingleHop offers two powerful DRaaS solutions powered by Veeam and Zerto.

SafetyNet environments, however, are fully supported by SingleHop's ServiceFirst team through the duration of use.