Disaster Recovery as a Service – why you need it

Summary

This 2015 blueAPACHE blog post argues that Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) lets small and mid-sized organisations get the failover protection of a secondary data centre without owning one, by renting replication capacity from a provider instead of building and staffing a second site. It is written for IT and business decision-makers weighing the cost of downtime against the cost of a subscription-based recovery service, and it cites US disaster-recovery failure statistics from FEMA and the Small Business Administration to make the case for planning before an incident rather than after one. The post frames DRaaS around three benefits: faster recovery than rebuilding from scratch, a shift from capital to operating expense, and security and data sovereignty controls that a smaller organisation may struggle to run itself. It still applies because the core proposition of DRaaS, replicating production workloads to a recovery site with agreed recovery targets, has not changed even though the underlying platforms it runs on have moved on since 2015. Readers evaluating disaster recovery today should pair the concepts in this post with blueAPACHE's current emPOWER Cloud and Disaster Recovery as a Service pages for what is actually included in a contracted engagement now.

Key facts

Article

There is a good chance that you’d like to see your business survive any disaster as well as any problems that follow. Our reliance in technology today means we can not afford downtime – we rely too heavily on it. Forty percent of businesses do not reopen after a disaster and another twenty-five percent fail within one year according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Similar statistics from the United States Small Business Administration indicate that over ninety percent of businesses fail within two years after being struck by a disaster. Disasters come in all shapes and sizes – from natural catastrophes to simple power outages. It is almost impossible to predict the next disaster, but it is possible to prepare for it. To reduce downtime and mitigate the negative impact a disaster can create, every company should have a secondary site with a full copy of the production environment. In the case of a natural or human-induced disaster or a failure of the IT environment – when your production is partly or fully not available – you can quickly switch to the secondary site and continue business as usual. However, small and mid-sized organisations can’t afford a secondary data centre, let alone the experienced IT staff to manage it. This is why the Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) market has evolved so quickly. There are a lot of DRaaS definitions. The majority of them describe DRaaS as a replication of physical or virtual machines (VMs), from a production data centre to a recovery site that will provide failover capabilities in the event of a problem of any size. Whilst the definitions may vary, the core benefits remain the same:

• Fast recovery
  Downtime is not acceptable. Fast and successful recovery is one of the most important metrics today. The faster you can continue operations, the greater the chance of recovery.
• Cost effectiveness
  DRaaS removes the necessity of investing in additional infrastructure. Companies can rent an allocation of CPU, RAM, storage and other resources as they are needed. It is now a much more affordable operational expense, enabling you to focus capital investment on growing your business instead of running it.
• Security
  Privacy, security, data sovereignty and service level agreements you can secure with a DRaaS provider are often better than you can implement and maintain internally. The provider should be compliant with all relevant regulatory bodies, and your data should adhere to local privacy and data sovereignty guidelines.

Today, small and mid-sized organisations can mitigate the risks and save money on flexible subscription-based DRaaS. Big enterprise companies also find many benefits from outsourcing their disaster recovery services to a third party, primarily to avoid the high costs of supporting secondary sites and complexity issues.

Why DRaaS from blueAPACHE?

• Expertise
  blueAPACHE delivers DRaaS solutions for some of the most tightly regulated industries in Australia. We understand it, we design it, and we manage it. We own the DRaaS infrastructure, ensuring we have 100% level of influence over the services we provide.
• Extensive Portfolio
  We listen and provide simple replication for those that need it, or more complex solutions with custom Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) for those needing comprehensive solutions (or are bound by industry compliance requirements). We utilise private cloud, on-premises and public cloud solutions to marry your business and governance requirements.
• Reassurance
  We test frequently – having a Disaster Recovery programme is one thing, ensuring that it works is another thing entirely. We schedule regular testing for all clients to ensure their tailored DRaaS works exactly as expected to deliver piece of mind. We back this up with dynamic redundancy across our data centre network.
• Data Sovereignty
  Our Private Cloud servers are located solely in Australia, meaning we can guarantee your data remains local. Data sovereignty (and privacy compliance) are key factors when considering your DRaaS provider.

To learn more on DRaaS or to discuss ways we can help improve your risk profile, contact the blueAPACHE Cloud team.

Related

• emPOWER Cloud service — the ISO 27001 certified cloud platform that DRaaS replication typically runs on.
• emPOWER Cloud pillar hub — the wider cloud pillar this service sits under.
• Disaster Recovery as a Service — blueAPACHE's current DRaaS service page.
• Governance, Risk and Compliance — the compliance and risk-management service referenced alongside DRaaS in this post.
• Honan Insurance case study — a client engagement that used emPOWER DRaaS alongside Managed Services and Cloud.

Frequently asked questions

What is Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)?DRaaS is a contracted service that replicates physical or virtual machines from a production data centre to a recovery site so that operations can fail over if the primary environment becomes unavailable. It is delivered against agreed recovery targets rather than as an informal backup arrangement, which is what distinguishes it from ad-hoc business continuity planning.

Why did the post cite FEMA and Small Business Administration statistics?The post uses US figures, roughly 40% of businesses not reopening after a disaster and over 90% failing within two years, to argue that under-preparation is common and costly. These are the post's own cited figures rather than blueAPACHE-specific outcomes, and they are used to motivate the case for planning rather than as a guarantee of what DRaaS prevents.

What are Restore Time Objective and Recovery Point Objective?Restore Time Objective is the target time to restore a service after an incident, and Recovery Point Objective is the maximum acceptable data loss expressed as a point in time. Under blueAPACHE's general terms, a DRaaS obligation is limited to restoring data and software against whichever of these figures is agreed in the customer's Schedule, so the actual targets vary by contract.

Does DRaaS replace a full business continuity plan?No. DRaaS is specifically limited to restoring data and software subject to the agreed recovery objectives; it is not, on its own, a complete business continuity solution covering people, premises and third-party dependencies. Organisations still need a broader continuity plan that DRaaS supports rather than replaces.

What happens if a service agreement does not include a backup or disaster recovery obligation?Where a Schedule does not include a backup or DR obligation, the customer carries the risk of data loss and is responsible for taking its own regular, complete backups in line with industry best practice. blueAPACHE's liability for data loss is excluded in that scenario under its general terms.

If a DR obligation exists and is breached, what can a customer recover?Liability in that case is limited to the cost of restoring the data to the version that should have existed at the last agreed Recovery Point Objective, not the underlying value of the data or the broader business impact of losing it. This cap applies under blueAPACHE's published general terms and may be varied by a specific customer agreement.

Why does the post describe DRaaS as more cost-effective than a second data centre?Because DRaaS lets an organisation rent an allocation of compute, storage and recovery infrastructure instead of capital-funding and staffing a secondary site. The post frames this as converting a fixed capital cost into a variable operating expense that scales with what is actually used.

Where does blueAPACHE say its private cloud infrastructure for these services is located?The post states that blueAPACHE's private cloud servers are located solely in Australia, which it ties to data sovereignty and privacy compliance for customers considering a DRaaS provider. Readers should confirm current data residency commitments against blueAPACHE's present-day service pages, since this post reflects 2015 positioning.

Source

https://www.blueapache.com/blog/disaster-recovery-as-a-service-why-you-need-it/

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