Every business has backups of some kind. Far fewer know how long it would take to be running again if their server, office or data center went offline. Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) exists to answer that question with a number you can rely on.
Backup vs. disaster recovery
A backup is a copy of your data. Disaster recovery is the ability to run your systems again after a failure. Restoring a large server from a backup onto new hardware can take days. DRaaS shortens that by keeping a ready-to-start copy of your servers in the cloud.
How DRaaS works
- Your servers are replicated to a cloud provider continuously or on a short schedule.
- If your site fails, those servers are started in the cloud.
- Users connect to them over a secure connection or through hosted desktops.
- When your site is repaired, data is moved back and normal operation resumes.
RTO and RPO in plain English
- Recovery time objective (RTO): how long you can be down. Four hours? A day?
- Recovery point objective (RPO): how much recent work you can lose. Fifteen minutes? Last night?
The shorter both numbers are, the more the solution costs. The right answer comes from the cost of downtime to your business, not from the technology.
Do you need DRaaS?
Ask three questions:
- Do you still run servers on site or in a single location?
- Would a day without those systems cost more than a year of DRaaS?
- Do your insurer, clients or regulators expect a tested recovery plan?
If you answered yes to any of them, DRaaS is worth pricing.
What to look for
- Recovery tested regularly, with written results.
- Backups that are immutable or kept separate from your network, so ransomware can't delete them.
- A clear process for who declares a disaster and how users connect.
- Coverage for cloud data too: Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace need their own backup.