Cloud Disaster Recovery Explained

Data is valuable, so are the other digital assets. Lost data and apps can ruin your organization. You do everything in your capacity to protect them from all outside attacks. However, be it a physical server or cloud infrastructure, you never know when a disaster will hit and destroy the system. Thus, keeping this risk factor in mind, you must always have a plan in place to recover your system. Here comes the role of Cloud Disaster Recovery, which is essentially an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solution. It is more efficient and less time-consuming than the traditional approach of disaster recovery.

What are the types of disasters we are talking about?

Disasters are unpredictable and can hit anytime without warning. Disasters that affect IT infrastructure can be divided into three categories:

  1. Natural disasters
  2. Technical glitches
  3. Human errors. 

Natural disasters include floods, storms, earthquakes, or fire incidents. If a natural disaster hits the area where your server is located, it may disrupt services and even destroy the server. Then you will require an efficient disaster recovery plan to survive the loss.

Technical glitches are the most common disasters in any IT environment. Technical failure including, a power outage and loss of connectivity, falls under this category. Human error is the third type of disaster. It can result from misconfiguration or other lapses in human judgment.

What is cloud disaster recovery?    

Cloud disaster recovery (CDR) is a cloud-based service that aims to protect resources and business continuity. In this process, a remote cloud server includes the back up of the designated system data. So, when disaster hits, the affected resources including, data and application, quickly restores to resume operation. 

The purpose and objective of CDR are the same as a traditional disaster recovery plan. However, in CDR, the whole process is way faster and more cost-effective. It eliminates the need for a secondary data center and significantly reduces downtime. 

How does cloud disaster recovery work?

While implementing the cloud disaster recovery plan, the entire server including, the application software, operating system, data, and patches, are compressed into a virtual server. The service provider then backs up this virtual server to an offsite cloud data center. It is a much faster process of transferring OS, apps, data, and patches from one server to another. In the event of a crisis, you can access your system in a secure virtual environment and recover your mission-critical data within minutes.

The service provider is responsible for keeping the systems and application software up to date. The process of cloud disaster recovery is automated and thus requires minimum intervention on the user’s part. Automation also minimizes the scope of human error.   

Ai.NET offers enterprise-class storage and disaster recovery infrastructure. It helps you set up a robust private/hybrid cloud environment for your business. Visit Ai.NET to know more about our services and plans.