Disaster Recovery with the Hybrid Cloud

One of the benefits of the hybrid cloud is disaster recovery.  Organizations can run their workload in both on-premises data centers and third party data centers. Cloud service providers are helping the organizations to create a disaster recovery plan. If the on-premises servers are not reachable, the IT team can start running the cloud servers remotely.  So, the hybrid cloud is very helpful in Disaster Recovery along with the ability to scale the resources up and down on demand.

Without a hybrid cloud strategy, organizations have to invest more money in hardware, data center space, cooling and in staff training.  This kind of costlier disaster recovery plan is not possible by many SMBs . These organizations can use the hybrid cloud strategy to implement the Disaster Recovery System without any upfront cost.

Organizations can even get the dedicated hardware from their  cloud service provider to create a hybrid strategy even with a regularity compliance in place.

Data loss can even shut down the operations of an organization. These companies may come back to an operating state again, or they may not. The reputational damage may take years to recover – for most small businesses it can be insurmountable. So, the protection of data has to have a critical role in an organization.

Disaster Recovery is easier nowadays using the advanced technologies available. The cost of DR implementation is becoming more affordable every year.

Without any upfront investment, SMBs can architect their own Disaster Proof IT operations by linking on-premises and third party data centers in a hybrid cloud model.

Organizations are advised to back-up not only their mission critical applications, like ERP and financial systems, but are also advised to create a back-up plan for their day to day office documents, emails, and general data.

There are two acronyms to consider in Disaster Recovery: Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO).

The Recovery Time Objective is the amount of time it takes a business operation to be restored after a disruption/disaster to avoid the consequences of the loss of data and business. For example, if a disaster occurs at 8:00am and the RTO is 2 hours, the Disaster Recovery process must ensure the recovery by 10:00am.

The Recovery Point Objective is the amount of data lost, measured in time. For example, if the RPO is 1 hour, the disaster recovery team should recover all data prior to 7:00am, because the disaster occurred at 8:00am.

Organizations need to analyze and decide the right RTO and RPO for their business by considering the business impact of a disaster. Then, the organization can cut down the cost by choosing cloud service tools to implement in their Disaster Recovery System.