How to Plan an Effective Cloud Disaster Recovery Strategy?
When deploying disaster recovery on the cloud, businesses are at an incredible advantage. The cloud can present an amazing zone for disaster recovery, compared to what businesses had to deal with in data centers for recovery options. There are different cloud disaster recovery options, each possessing different strengths and weaknesses.
They may also go by different terms and definitions, but they differ in terms of methodologies. Below, the article will discuss some of the cloud disaster recovery methodologies that you can implement to your business.
Backup Plus
Backups are an integral element of a disaster recovery strategy. Backups driven by the cloud requires you to make machine images of every type of server that you have. You have to then move these machine images to the cloud. You have to then basically take your data and copy it at frequent intervals.
In other words, disaster recovery includes backing up your data and moving them to the cloud. In the event of a probable disaster, you would have to launch the virtual machines and then you would have to leave your data there. There are strengths and weaknesses of this disaster recovery approach.
One of the most evident strength of this approach is that this is an incredibly cheap form of disaster recovery, and it is also highly effective. It is effective since it allows you to copy all the data to a highly safe virtual space that is subject to through inspection and monitoring.
In addition to that, the method is also very cost effective since you cloud services allow you to only pay the storage fees. The only downside for this strategy would be towards the fact that you have to make machine images and bringing them back online may be time consuming.
Synchronizing Databases
This is another cloud disaster recovery option, and it allows companies to make machine images of all your servers and move them to the cloud. In this instance, you have to take your data and periodically synchronized to the cloud. Simultaneously, you also have to keep the database in the data centers or VPC.
By doing so, you have to synchronize each data sets and move them to the cloud. By doing so, you not only have the data base on the cloud, but you also have them synchronized to the dataset in your VPC or data center. This helps keep your businesses system updated, with machine images and synchronized database.
This option helps counter the issues of the first option. It helps you leverage from both, machine images of your server, along with a synchronized database. This helps businesses move data faster online due to synchronization. This is also a very cheap option for companies for both, disaster recovery and cloud computing.
Stand By Option
This cloud solution for many people is one that prioritizes performance, making it a great option for companies that want to initiate performance. Many people would call this a warm standby. It involves taking your data centers or VPC and replicating it to the cloud with small computer instances.
It also uses auto-scaling groups, which helps IT managers to create a smaller and more manageable version of the IT infrastructure. To initiate this server, you have to set up a DNS policy which will go from your data center to the disaster recovery option.
As soon as the DNS detects the failure, your online traffic will undergo rerouting to your disaster recovery center. This is most likely just a VPC in the cloud and the systems will be online with auto scaling. This will allow the system to dynamically come online and manage all of your customers as well. In other words, this option allows you to incorporate a cost-effective small instance alongside your servers.
It keeps your databases synchronized, along with your data synchronized as well. It automatically begins to scale in the instance of a disaster and outage. Overall, businesses can opt for this option if they want a moderately low cost solution that offers high availability. Even though it may take some time to move your data online after a disaster, it can help do that in an automated fashion.
Complete Mirroring
Many organizations opt for this option as their primary cloud solution for disaster recovery. Whatever they have in their data center or VPC, they will keep a complete mirror image of it in the cloud. This imaging will be at a hundred percent full capacity, running all the time. If you have a hundred web servers in your data center, then you will also have a hundred data centers running in your disaster recovery cloud.
If any disaster or malware intent shows itself, your DNS will run a health check and this will allow you to run a health center and VPC. The DNS will then reroute your traffic to your disaster recovery option, within seconds, you will be able to achieve complete business continuity. Overall, this is the faster cloud method when it comes to bringing your systems online. However, it is also one of the costlier options. This is because it requires you to have a copy of your data center in the disaster recovery region.
Cloud Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)
For a long time, companies have solely relied on backups as their core disaster recovery strategy. However, as time progressed, many people have soon come to realize that this may not be the best option. This is largely because it may not help businesses get back up and running in the instance of a major disruption. A good disaster recovery plan on the cloud not only prioritizes security, but is designed to integrate quick recovery after a disaster.
Why Choose Prescient Solutions for Disaster Recovery Strategy?
Prescient Solutions is a managed service provider that will help your business incorporate a cloud based model in regards to disaster recovery. More importantly, Prescient tailors the cloud integration according to the nature, scale and budget of your business. By doing so, you can leverage from a cost efficient and successful strategy.