With the continuous emergence of technologies in the social and mobile world, businesses have had no choice but to be more yielding and responsive in their daily activities. However, as much as these business entities have been evolving with evolving technologies, the risk of disaster striking is high. The notion behind this argument is based on the fact that people with negative intentions may decide to attack a network for their ill motives. Apart from this, system crashes are common occurrences in the world of technology, and businesses have recorded losses as a result. This brings to light the importance of having a stable network that can either withstand an attack or recover from the attack in no time.
With this in mind, an essential factor to consider is how long, as a business, can you afford to go through downtime or complete unavailability? An estimated 50% of the recorded IT outages are network and software related, meaning that when such disruption occurs, a more significant percentage of the business will stall. It is therefore vital to take the required steps to mitigate such risks and protect your livelihood from such issues.
According to researchers, an estimated 43% of business entities that have been subjected to network attacks or downtime instances are more likely to succumb to the disaster, with no chances of recuperating. An extra 50% of the affected businesses tend to close down within two years after the attack. Only 6% of companies that encounter these network disasters are likely to recover and continue with their daily activities. This clearly shows the gravity that a network attack or a downtime error can have on a business as a whole.
With this in mind, it is of the essence for a business entity to design a way in which it protects itself from such an outage. Additionally, it is essential to lay down some measures that can be taken to restore services back to normal just in case an attack happens. A solution that most companies can take to save their businesses is by employing a disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) option.
Disaster recovery as a service is a cloud computing service that is primarily designed to protect data or an application from a human or a natural disaster at one location, by promoting a full recovery of the affected system in the cloud. Even though the data recovery method employed by disaster recovery as a service is done via the cloud, it is totally different from a cloud-based back service. This is because disaster recovery as a service protects data by providing a standby computing service on demand, that in return facilitates a more rapid recovery process.
Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) are services offered through the hosting of a physical or virtual server, by employing a third party to assist, just in case a catastrophe occurs. This service plays a crucial role in network management because it helps in safeguarding a company from different IT outages, while at the same time, building an IT resilient system that can maintain a network and provide support in the event of a network drop. Disaster Recovery as a Service backs up vital data and replicates your entire production systems and its processes onto a recovery or secondary infrastructure that later enables you to transition the stored data into a backup environment. This lets you and your business, in general, operate as usual.
Disaster Recovery as a Service is structured into different architectural models for simplified usage. These models may vary based on the location or source of production, or the data to be used for backup purposes. These architectural models are as follows.
To-cloud Disaster Recovery as a Service: This service is applied when the primary source of the application is present in the user’s primary data center, and the cloud system is used as a recovery or a backup target.
In-cloud Disaster Recovery as a Service: This is applicable when both the recovery site and the source are located in the cloud.
From-cloud Disaster Recovery as a Service: This occurs when the primary application, or the data in question, is present in the cloud, and the backup target is a private data center.
Advantages
With disaster recovery as a service, the time that would have been used to return the affected applications or data is reduced. This is due to the fact that there is no need to replace the data or restore it over the internet.
Since disaster recovery as a service is primarily delivered in a cloud-computing platform, the recovery resources services are only paid for when they are used. This is of great importance because it saves the company money. Additionally, this data recovery process is more efficient as compared to the traditional option where a company would always pay the service provider because the process was always running in the background.
Disaster recovery as a service is useful for small and medium-sized companies that mainly lack the prerequisite expertise to configure, provision, and test an effective and highly reliable disaster recovery plan. By using disaster recovery as a service, organizations do not necessarily have to invest heavily in their own off-site disaster recovery environment.
Disaster recovery as a service plays a crucial role when the company or organization is ready to move its services to its original servers immediately after replication services have resumed. This step is vital because it protects the company from future outages.
Time and money are saved when a disaster recovery as a service is applied. The notion behind this argument is based on the fact that the company does not necessarily need to initiate a data recovery process of already lost data because the data is safe and stored in the cloud.
By using a third-party data recovery process, the time required for data recovery is fast. At the same time, the IT department mandated with managing the system after a data breach can be tasked with repairing the system, hence reducing the risk of human error which can occur as a result of working under pressure when trying to stabilize the situation.
With a dedicated disaster recovery system, one can easily optimize their recovery strategy hence ensuring that it is ready for use when disaster strikes, Thanks to the regular tests and updates present in the disaster recovery systems, the IT department of an organization is up to par with their systems hence making data recovery swift.
With cloud-based disaster recovery as a service, the need for an organization to invest in its own off-site disaster recovery platform allows the company to make a predictable monthly cost. The money invested, on the other hand, can be scaled to suit the needs of the business.
Disadvantages
Issues of mistrust between the business and the service provider is a significant disadvantage encountered by most organizations. This may be brought about by prolonged periods required to backup and recover data.
Performances issues are common during the process of returning data from a data center. This is usually common in cloud-based applications and services.
In situations where upfront planning is required, disaster recovery as a service does not mitigate each task involved in data recovery. This is a common occurrence in major IT shops especially those with a mix of physical and virtual resources.
If a company does not perform the required legwork, unexpected costs and unwarranted incompatibilities can occur, especially in instances where disaster recovery needs do not correlate with the provider’s requirements.