A backup is simply a snapshot of your virtual machine, typically taken once a day after close of business. Backups are stored for a set period of time, with a retention policy such as "one a day for a month and one a month for a year." They are usually kept in a place that is separate from the primary system, like a basement, another data centre, or, in the case of Backup-as-a-Service, in the cloud.
In my opinion, backups are great for legal and regulatory reasons, data protection and so on. However, they are not so great for business continuity.
Why do I say this?
The most recent copy you have is from last night, which is usually stale as most business applications change significantly during a working day. Equally, to re-awaken a system from a backup takes time. First, you need a ready and working system, rebooted and running smoothly, and then you have to mount the backup. If the backup is (more safely) stored elsewhere, there is also the travel time of getting it to the primary location to factor in as well. The whole process is not renowned for being very fast.
So how does this compare to Disaster Recovery?
Disaster Recovery (DR) systems replicate your data on an ongoing basis from a primary location to a secondary location. Usually, replication periods are measured in minutes, or even seconds, so the last copy of your data is fairly fresh. The secondary copy is held in stasis until it is re-animated via a failover trigger. The secondary location can be another data centre in another region, or even the cloud, in the case of DRaaS.
In my opinion, DR is fantastic for business continuity because you can trigger a failover and be live at the secondary location in minutes. While some systems do enable an archiving-type function, most people agree that replication itself is not really the right tool for long-term data storage.
This is where I believe that Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) really comes into its own. If you don't have access to a secondary location, or you don't want to pay for it, DRaaS enables you to execute the same Disaster Recovery replication with the cloud as your secondary location. In this instance, the speeds involved are similarly fast—it takes minutes or seconds to recover systems. With some providers, you only pay for storage while the systems are replicating/in stasis, and once they failover, you'll pay for CPU and memory resources as you consume them.
That said, you will want to vet the cloud as an operating environment for your workloads. Levels of security, customer support, compliance and transparency vary greatly from provider to provider. It’s important to understand the needs of your business and choose a DRaaS provider, accordingly.
DRaaS is a great way to achieve business continuity goals quickly and more cost-efficiently than owning a secondary data centre yourself. But don’t just take my word for it; take a look at how one of our customers, a multi-national financial services company, Bluestone, reduced its costs by 40 percent with our DRaaS solution.
With offices in the UK, Ireland and Australasia, Bluestone is at the forefront of delivering innovative financial services to customers in a rapidly changing market that is subject to stringent compliance requirements. Facing aging infrastructure and expiring supplier contracts, the company was pushing towards a cloud-first IT strategy to stay ahead of evolving customer and regulatory demands.
Krisztian Kenderesi, the head of Global IT Operations for Bluestone, said it best: “Our IT team runs lean and mean and we don’t want to build our own DR solution or hire a DR expert-–for us, that expert is iland. The iland DR solution reliably runs in the background. I know it works and I don’t have to worry about the infrastructure availability, compliance and security. Our usability and maintenance overhead for the iland DRaaS solution is basically zero—much less than the headaches of an on-premise DR solution.”
Below is a summary of the key benefits that Bluestone has found since using our DRaaS:
· Avoided downtime while simplifying its DR management – Bluestone can quickly recover from any IT incident, achieving recovery time objectives measured in minutes and recovery point objectives measured in seconds.
· Protected customer data with integrated advanced security – In the event of a failover, Bluestone’s workloads are protected against emerging IT threats with features like antivirus and malware detection, vulnerability scanning, whole disk encryption, SSL-VPN, intrusion detection and prevention, event logging, deep packet inspection and other advanced capabilities.
· Simplified industry compliance – In addition to FCA regulations, Bluestone must maintain the ISO 27001 standard, which has clear requirements for considering security in a Disaster Recovery environment. We, therefore, support Bluestone with security and compliance reporting to speed up and simplify its auditing processes.
· Reduced IT resiliency costs by 40 percent – With our straightforward pricing model, Bluestone only pays for compute resources when it requires a failover. The company has achieved a reduction of 40 percent in the overall cost model of its DR solution.
