What Is Disaster Recovery as a Service And How Does It Work?

Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) is a cloud service delivery model offered by third-party service providers.

Among the most advanced offerings of cloud technology, DRaaS enables businesses to continue their operations even if their location has been hit by a natural disaster such as earthquakes, floods, or a human-inflicted activity such as office fires, cyberattacks, etc.

Disaster Recovery as a Service is being adopted by businesses worldwide to accomplish business continuity in all circumstances. According to MarketsandMarkets, the DRaaS market will rise to USD 12.54 billion by 2022 as compared to USD 1.72 billion in 2016.

But to understand DRaaS, let’s first dig into the basics of disaster recovery.

What is Disaster Recovery?

Consider the scenario where all your IT infrastructure, including the production and backup servers, is created in the local premises. The data and business applications are, therefore, hosted on the local servers.

What will happen if the entire area gets affected by a disruptive event, like an earthquake, or a ransomware attack? What is your plan to protect the critical business data then?

Disaster Recovery, as the name suggests, is the process of keeping the business running even if your local premises is hit by a disaster. Here is how disaster recovery is accomplished.

1. The workload from the local IT is replicated (not backup) to offsite server locations, which acts as a secondary IT infrastructure for your applications.
2. Replication means that the entire business process (data and applications) is mirrored to redundant servers in real-time. Whereas, during backup, the data is stored in redundant servers at a particular time.
3. When you are affected by a disruptive event at the office location, the access of your local IT infra is shifted to the remote DR site. This process is called Failover, and the offsite location is called Failover Site.
4. Hence, you can keep working even amidst a disaster from the failover site with minimum to no downtime.
5. When the after-effects of the disaster have been dealt with and your local IT comes into a normal working state, the access can be restored with a process called Failback.

So, what is Disaster Recovery as a Service?

Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) is the disaster recovery solution provided by a service provider. The providers create a failover site in remote data centers and replicate your business process in their cloud environment.

This frees you from all the hassles of building and maintaining a failover site. You can just pay the provider as per the pricing plan, and they will take care of the rest.

Types of DRaaS

Broadly, Disaster Recovery as a Service can be classified into –

1. Self-Service DRaaS – In this kind of DRaaS solution, your business is replicated on the cloud environment of the third-party provider. However, that is all you get; you are solely responsible for performing recovery during the disaster. You also have to manage and test the system yourself. Self-service DRaaS costs the least among all the DRaaS models.
2. Assisted DRaaS – With the assisted solution, the provider will be available to assist you in failover during the disaster. However, you must ask for their assistance if needed, as they are not liable to offer you support.
3. Managed DRaaS – Just like any other managed cloud services, the DRaaS provider is responsible for every aspect of disaster recovery. Apart from offering you with the infrastructure, they will manage, test, upgrade the DRaaS solution. They are bind by an SLA (Service Level Agreement), which clearly defines the level of support that they guarantee to the customers.

Although all the three DRaaS solutions can be opted as per the budget constraints and the requirements of the business, managed DRaaS offers a more effective and hassle-free approach.

Here are some benefits of opting for manged DRaaS service from a competent service provider.

Benefits of DRaaS

1. No Downtime

Downtime during business hours costs a company not only revenue but also its reputation. However, nothing can be done when the entire area is the victim of a disaster, whether natural or human-inflicted.

By opting for DRaaS, all your applications and up-to-date data are replicated in a remote location, which you can access in the case of a disaster. The reliable DRaaS providers ensure a swift failover process so that you experience minimal to no downtime.

2. Cost-Effective

One option to achieve disaster recovery is to build a failover site of your own. However, it involves substantial costs, along with significant workforce utilization. The cost of purchasing high-end servers and equipment (power, cooling, cabling, etc.) itself takes a big chunk of the budget. Added to it, the cost of employing a dedicated IT team and keeping them on stand-by for the occurrence of a disaster.

DR as a Service eliminates all the capital and operational costs related to disaster recovery. The DRaaS provider is responsible for building an advanced cloud failover site for your business. Consequently, maintaining and upgrading the site also goes to the provider.

3. Scalability

Scalability is a major factor to account for in the case of disaster recovery. The failover site is the mirror image of your entire business process. Hence, as your business expands, so does the size of your cloud disaster recovery system.

However, in the case of Disaster Recovery as a Service, you do not have to worry about scalability. As the business process grows, the DRaaS providers automatically scale the cloud DR solution. In certain circumstances, if you want to downscale the business process for some period, it can also be done easily. The provider will charge you only for the resources you use.

4. Security

Disaster Recovery involves the transfer of access from your location to the failover site in the event of a disaster, and back to the local infra during failback. Also, you are working from remote cloud servers for the indefinite time that the local IT is down. With the increasing number of cyberattacks each year, it is imperative for the cloud provider to ensure data protection during transmission and at the server level.

The competent DRaaS providers do not any stone unturned when it comes to data security. The cloud failover site is built in state-of-the-art data centers with physical security compliances, multi-redundant infrastructure, and 24/7 server monitoring. During failover, the network is constantly scanned for any dirty traffic. To top it all, the DRaaS providers deploy end-to-end transmission to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.

5. Support

During a business-threatening event, you would certainly want all the help you can get. Although you might have a highly skilled IT team at your disposal, they might not have expertise in disaster recovery situations.

The managed DRaaS providers have an expert team exclusively looking into the issues related to disaster recovery. The team is available round the clock to offer support whenever the disaster occurs.They ensure a quick and error-free failover process.

6. No IT hassles/Maintenance

A failover site needs to accommodate all the applications and data of the local infrastructure. It should offer a performance level comparable to the local IT infrastructure, even while the users are accessing it remotely. Hence, cloud infrastructure needs to be maintained and updated regularly.

Opting for DRaaS solutions relieves you from all the IT hassles. The providers take care of all the IT tasks at the failover site, whether it is managing the servers, looking after the security, or upgrading them.

Ensure Business Continuity with DRaaS

The sustainability of a business depends on continuously offering solutions and services to the customers. However, a disruptive event like natural disasters or cyberattacks can halt your business for days, if not weeks. Opting for Disaster Recovery as a Service will ensure that you continue serving clients throughout the year.

Want to know the best Disaster Recovery as a Service for your business? Get in touch with our Solutions Consultant at 855-223-4887.