N-able, Inc. announced that it has expanded the Continuity features in Cove Data Protection with the introduction of Standby Image recovery in Microsoft Azure. This new feature delivers smarter disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), helping MSPs and IT professionals provide a full range of recovery services to end users-from fast, straightforward file-level restore to flexible, affordable disaster recovery, now including recovery in Microsoft Azure.

Cove's innovative SaaS architecture reduces the time and costs associated with data protection and improves ransomware readiness by providing backup storage isolation by default. Cove's cloud-first approach keeps primary backup storage in the cloud, out of the reach of ransomware on the local network. Cove's Continuity features provide proactive recovery options to deliver higher service levels, including automated Recovery Testing and Standby Image. With the addition of Azure support, Standby Image now offers even more recovery location flexibility: to a local device onsite, to a secondary location, or to the Azure cloud-all without the need for expensive proprietary backup appliances.

"Azure and Cove offer a smarter way to solve the issue of failing over to the cloud," commented Chris Groot, general manager of Cove Data Protection. "It's free to send data into an Azure tenant, and you only pay for Azure compute when you boot up the virtual machine (VM). Cove allows you to create a bootable image after every backup and store it there until it's needed. In the case of an outage, Azure gives you full control over compute resources, and the cost of running in Azure during an outage is more affordable than buying and maintaining an expensive backup and disaster recovery (BDR) appliance you may never use. You can also continue to run your VM in Azure, if you choose, as part of a larger cloud-first IT strategy."

Previously, many IT professionals thought they needed to bear the heavy cost burden of proprietary appliances to meet customer expectations around DRaaS. With Cove's Standby Image recovery in Azure, it's possible to deliver enhanced disaster recovery while experiencing up to 60% cost savings over traditional appliances.

"We looked at the various disaster recovery options, including very expensive BDR appliances, and realized that as an MSP, we wanted a rock-solid product that would also help us keep our costs down. We found that with Cove," said Lionel Naidoo, director at Dragon IS. "The IT landscape continues to change, and you have to stay agile and take the time to investigate new and fresher approaches in order to stay ahead."