When disaster strikes, the ability to recover applications and data quickly can mean the difference between business survival and failure. Every minute of downtime means lost revenue, increased operational costs and customer churn.
The public cloud has made disaster recovery easier and more cost-effective for organizations of all sizes. Instead of replicating hardware and software in a DR site — an option once available to only the largest enterprises — organizations can leverage the public cloud. Continuous replication means applications and data are always up to date on the cloud platform.
Microsoft Azure is an ideal choice for backup, replication and DR in the cloud. Azure offers a true hybrid cloud environment capable of supporting both on-premises and cloud-based workloads using the familiar Microsoft paradigm. However, implementing and managing cloud-based DR can be difficult for many smaller organizations.
DR-as-a-Service is a great option for these organizations. The DRaaS provider will handle the configuration, monitoring and management of the cloud DR platform and ensure recovery in the event of disaster or unplanned downtime.
Why Organizations Are Using Azure
In one recent survey, Microsoft Azure held a slight lead over Amazon Web Services, with 80 percent of respondents stating they had adopted Azure. Azure led in five of the six top-tier spending categories, with 45 percent of respondents stating they had “significant workloads” on Microsoft’s public cloud platform.
Organizations that have used Microsoft enterprise server and desktop software for decades have adopted Azure cloud technology in a hybrid cloud model. Hybrid cloud combines the cost-efficiency and flexibility of a public cloud environment with the control and security of an on-premises, private cloud environment. Organizations can choose where to run workloads based on requirements for performance, security, compliance and other factors.
Azure can seamlessly integrate with existing IT infrastructure to provide a consistent architecture across any cloud environment, public or private. Azure makes it easy to deploy and manage applications, while pre-built templates simplify the process of developing new cloud-based services.
Azure’s Built-In DR and Data Protection
Azure offers two primary tools for backup, replication and disaster recovery.
- Azure Site Recovery helps keep applications running during outages. It replicates workloads to a secondary site so organizations can fail over in the event of an unplanned outage. It can also be used to migrate workloads between Azure regions or from on-premises to Azure.
- Azure Backup protects data from loss due to ransomware, hardware failure and human error. It’s a centralized service that can back up a variety of workloads, including virtual machines, databases and file shares. It includes built-in monitoring and alerting capabilities and enables policy-based automatic backups.
These tools enable organizations to monitor, manage and protect workloads across hybrid cloud environments. Organizations can extend their existing backup solution to Azure or use Azure’s application-aware backup and replication in their on-premises environments. By using Azure, organizations can reduce costs and eliminate the need to manage an onsite backup platform while gaining a more scalable solution.
Benefits of DRaaS for Azure
Despite their benefits, Azure Site Recovery and Azure Backup come with a learning curve. If organizations don’t install and configure them correctly, they may not be able to fail over their workloads or recover their data. That’s a big risk to take.
DRaaS solutions reduce that risk by putting backup and DR in the hands of professionals. These solutions typically include design and implementation, around-the-clock maintenance and support, and periodic testing and validation of backup and replication. IT experts will manage the DR process from end to end to ensure recovery.
Verteks offers DRaaS for Azure as part of our comprehensive suite of managed services, managed security and data protection services. Let us help you take advantage of Azure to protect your cloud, on-premises and hybrid workloads and recover rapidly in the event of an unplanned outage or disaster.
