Until recently, implementing quick fail-over to a remote site came with significant costs, complexity, and time commitments—making it accessible only to large companies with deep pockets. However, advancements in technology and the internet have made Disaster Recovery (DR) more affordable for businesses of all sizes. Today’s consumers expect uninterrupted service, driving companies to seek out DR fail-over solutions to avoid business disruptions.
What is DRaaS?
Hosting a disaster recovery site on your own can be cost-prohibitive, both in terms of money and resources. The costs of maintaining a remote site, managing servers, applications, backups, replication, and performing regular tests can add up quickly.
This is where Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) comes in. DRaaS allows organizations to leverage service providers like Managecast to protect virtual servers in a cloud environment. Service providers offer the infrastructure, software, and management needed for DR solutions—helping businesses reduce costs and complexity.
Failover: How It Works
With DRaaS, organizations replicate their data either continuously or periodically, depending on their Recovery Point Objective (RPO), to the service provider. In the event of a disaster, businesses can fail-over all or part of their environment by powering on their virtual machines (VMs) in the service provider’s cloud infrastructure, ensuring continued operations.
Organizations can access failed-over replicas through predefined methods:
- Partial Failover: If only some servers fail, the organization’s local network can be extended to the cloud-DR environment, allowing access to servers as if they were still hosted locally.
- Full Failover: In a complete failure, organizations can access their servers remotely through a web console, VPN, or remote desktop services. Service providers can also provide new public IPs to minimize downtime for public-facing applications.
Once local infrastructure is restored, fail-back is possible. This involves replicating any changes made in the DR environment back to the production environment.
DR Testing
Regular DR testing is essential to ensure the failover process runs smoothly during an actual disaster. Most DRaaS providers allow businesses to perform their own tests. Testing can be as simple as logging into the service provider’s web console, powering on a VM, and verifying application or service functionality.
Cost Structure
The pricing model for DRaaS varies among providers, but a common model is usage-based billing—charging businesses only for the resources they use during a failover event.
Management and Support
In addition to offering the infrastructure, many DRaaS providers offer extra management services. These can include:
- Monitoring replication processes
- Alerting organizations of potential issues
- Providing fully managed solutions
While disaster recovery may seem like an additional cost for organizations, for DRaaS providers, backup and replication are their primary focus. By using a service provider for DRaaS, businesses gain access to expert management and support for their DR needs.
In Conclusion:
DRaaS has transformed disaster recovery by making it accessible and affordable for businesses of all sizes. By utilizing a service provider, companies can safeguard their operations without the massive expenses and complexity that traditionally came with DR solutions.
