Insights On Recovering From Disaster...BaaS And DRaaS

Below discusses the benefits of a cloud-based DR solution....  

WHY DISASTER RECOVERY? 

Evolve IP knows we are facing an ever-changing threat landscape. We have all the traditional concepts of what constitutes a disaster whether that’s a regional or geographic issue. Natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and tornados as well as human-made disasters such as power or network interruption, intentional malice, accidental loss, and negligence are catalysts for Disaster Recovery. The new reality is that ransomware and new zero-day malware variants are the biggest threat facing modern IT departments. Evolve IP believes that while having all the right security solutions in place is important the best method of protection is recoverability.  So, what constitutes a recovery window for a client environment?  

• Recovery Time Objective (RT0) – How much downtime is acceptable, and have you quantified the cost of the acceptable downtime on a per-application basis? 
• Recovery Point Objective (RPO) – How much data loss is acceptable to the business and have you quantified the cost of the acceptable loss?  

RTO and RPO are a factor for both disaster recovery and backup. To determine which is the right solution you’ll have to look at a few different things:  

• Service Levels  
• Application Availability and Impact 
• Retention  
• Recovery Options 
• Failover/Failback Capabilities 

Evolve IP approaches backup and disaster recovery by providing the full spectrum of the solution. They believe in scalability and the continuum of client administration, they can go anywhere in the spectrum from fully self-administered to full management. Evolve IP does the same when it comes to their disaster recovery and backup solutions, there are varying degrees of protection available through different solutions.  

DISASTER RECOVERY OR BACKUP?  

Disaster recovery is a subset of business continuity; it is preparing for recovery or continuation of technology infrastructure vital to an organization after a natural or human-induced disaster. It ensures that data is available quickly after an outage. Backup, on the other hand, refers to the copying and archiving of computer data so it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The backup system contains at least one copy of all data worth saving, and the data storage requirements can be significant. Organizing this storage space and managing the backup process can be a complicated undertaking. The primary difference between disaster recovery and backup Is that the former is focused on continuing operations with minimal interruption while the latter is focused on restoring operations in the wake of an interruption.  

       Disaster Recovery delivers very aggressive service levels 

• Recovery point objectives of seconds  
• Recovery time objectives of minutes 

Backup delivers service levels that are better suited for a tier 3 application  

• Can you lose 12-24 hours of data? 
• Can the business survive without the application for 12 hours or more? 

Both backup and disaster recovery can leverage ‘replication’ technology in their solutions. What differentiates them is what can be done with the resulting data: 

Another difference between disaster recovery and backup is retention. Here is how they differ in this area:  

THE EVOLVE IP DIFFERENCE  

To help organizations manage costs while receiving contractually guaranteed recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTO/RPO), Evolve IP applies a tiered approach to DRaaS services. Based on needs and resources, clients can choose between self-managed and managed DRaaS.  With the additional layering of Managed IT, customers are provided full stack, end-to-end application disaster recovery as well as configuration changes in protected environments. With their diverse service portfolio ensures you can recover all the data you need as soon as you need it. So, why Evolve IP?  

• Blue-Chip Vendors – Their Suite is composed of Blue-Chip vendor verified, support and integrated solutions. They use the technologies, tools, and interfaces your team trusts and your executives know including Veam, Zerto, VMware, Nimble, EMC and more. 
• The Evolve IP Compliance Cloud – Verified through third-party compliance auditors, The Compliance Cloud includes true client isolation, encryption in transit and at rest, private VLANs, firewalls and more. 
• Best-of-Breed Solutions – Noted as a “Visionary” in Gartner’s 2017 Magic Quadrant for Disaster Recovery as a Service, our DR Suite is analyst-acclaimed, vendor-validated and client recommended. 
• Custom Tailored Solutions – Evolve IP will architect what other CSP’s will not, for example, a robust reverse replication solution. Additionally, they accommodate legacy systems like AS400, by providing rack space, power, and network integration. 
• World-Class, Compliant Architecture – Evolve IP’s compliant cloud solutions and intellectual property are built on top of the world’s leading technologies, leverage our globally redundant data centers, and run over the industry’s most robust network architecture. 
• The Evolve IP OneCloud – They are the only provider that can deploy both cloud computing and cloud communications in a secure, virtual private environment. Leveraging Evolve IP for multiple services compounds the ROI of your IT investment by improving efficiencies, decreasing costs and eliminating cloud sprawl. 

To learn more and request a free quote....simply ask here:

Disaster Recovery Solutions

Data Protection And Recovery....How To Get It Right

We can all agree that data is extremely valuable, so it seems reasonable to also say that data protection is important. Data protection and recovery is all about things that can be or are lost and how to find them or get them back. There are two main areas when it comes to data protection, backup and storage. The following are the two most fundamental considerations when it comes to this:

• Recovery Point Objective (RPO) - How much data are you prepared to lose or can you lose?
• Recovery Time Objective (RTO) - How long are you prepared to wait or can you wait to have it?

These two things in the context of backup and DRaaS are similar, but they are not the same.  So what is different between them? It wasn’t that long ago that a really good disaster recovery strategy consisted of tapes, a hot site, or some express-ship gear. This is no longer true. The difference today between backup and DRaaS is that in the case of backup you’re generally backing up data only. DRaaS goes up the stack and covers data, your operating system, applications, and configurations. Having all of your data somewhere safe is very important, so backup is a common consumer product, but it might not be the best choice if you are a business looking to eliminate downtime. Keep in mind that backup is mainly useful when you are just trying to get files back. Some questions you should be asking yourself are:

• Do I have gear on which to reinstall OS and Applications?
• Do I have a place to house the DR gear?
• Are all configurations documented?

The economics are pretty simple—more protection costs more money. Essentially, if people want to spend a great deal of money on having their data protection strategy in place, they can count on having extremely low data loss. On the other hand, people who don’t want to spend money on this will have to deal with more data loss. The trick to having a good strategy is to balance the two things and to find a point where the business is well served by having some things protected in a faster way while other things are protected more slowly. It is important to remember that you do this because the business suffer badly if you have data loss or downtime.    

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BASIC CONSIDERATIONS OF BACKUP

TierPoint offers a full portfolio of managed and unmanaged backup services to help clients protect their data and adhere to relevant government compliance regulations. Backups have always been a critical component of business continuity programs. In case of a malfunctioning or infected disk, they offer a restore point that allows users to recover data before damage took place. Today, a big trend among businesses is to deploy them in conjunction with a Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solution to maximize protection and speed the restoration process. Want to learn more about what TierPoint’s backup offerings include? Click here. 

There are four fundamental questions you should be asking your clients when starting a conversation about backup:

1. What are you going to back up?

• Back up things that matter 
• Back up things that change

2. How often are you going to back up?

• Hourly? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? 
• Full backups? Incremental backups?

3. How long are you going to keep it?

• Retention schedule

4. Where are you going to keep it?

• On-site? Off-site? Disk? Tape?

THE BASICS OF DSAAR

Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) has moved beyond a preventative measure for data protection to be a strategic option that provides many benefits. IT organizations recognize that protecting corporate data and making sure it is available to users is one of their top priorities. TierPoint believes in providing organizations with an affordable and customizable DRaaS solution that lets you choose your personalized mix of cloud, colocation, and your own data center. So how does DSaaR work? 

These are a few questions you should be asking your clients when it comes to Disaster Recovery as a Service:

1. What are you going to protect?

• Best practice is to identify the workloads that are most important to shaping cost
• Complete DR strategy may have several components for different RTO and RPO

2. How do you identify what is most important?

• Do a Business Impact Analysis to identify what is most tied to critical business functions
• Document the needed boot order to most quickly get workloads back online

3. What else is important to have a good DR strategy?

• Test the strategy!

To learn more about all the options available to you for meeting your data protection and recovery requirements...including from TierPointe...simply ask us at the following link.  It's as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Data Protection And Recovery