Having a data resiliency strategy is essential for maintaining business continuity. A good data resiliency strategy includes two factors: backup and disaster recovery solutions. Backups provide recovery points for data or systems that are lost in some capacity. Disaster recovery provides a process by which portion of an environment, or an entire environment that is unavailable can be brought online in another datacenter with minimal data loss and downtime. A well-designed business continuity plan relies on an optimized data resiliency strategy.
Backup
Backup is a critical component of a business continuity strategy. Backup in the cloud is a cloud computing service that copies and stores an organization’s data in a secure, offsite location. Data backup enables organizations to establish long-term operability, mitigate against data security risks, and ensure their business is protected against potential data loss.
Flexible Backup Method
Comprehensive backup ensures long-term retention. Azure Backup can be configured to occur at any time and include full, incremental, and differential backup types. Daily and weekly backup data is sent to the cloud (instead of an off-site tape). Azure Backup can be used with or without existing on-premises disk backup so it can be either the primary backup target or a secondary copy of backup data. Data retention is highly customizable and can be set to match business and compliance requirements.
Likewise, disaster recovery planning is another key component of a business continuity strategy that helps companies, in the face of an unforeseen disaster, continue to operate with normal functionality by addressing how critical data, information, and resources will be maintained and recovered. Cloud disaster recovery is an economical and efficient solution for disaster recovery planning. Azure offers a Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service tool called Azure Site Recovery (ASR), which allows physical and virtual server replication into Azure datacenters and failover into Azure virtual machines. Unlike other disaster recovery solutions, the Azure solution minimizes monthly costs by only allocating virtual machines during testing or true disaster recovery scenarios.
Improved Disaster Planning
By transferring your data to the cloud, you will pay only for the compute resources you use, benefit from industry leading infrastructure, and have access to near infinite storage capacity.
Azure allows you to automate data replication. This eliminates the need for your team to oversee or update DR hardware and perform software patching and generates cost savings by outsourcing the critical infrastructure required to replicate data.
Reduce your potential operational downtime with an automated, “set it and forget it” solution and leverage an easier process to replicate back to a VM for recovery. With consistent replication of virtual machines, applications, and data, you will significantly decrease your RPO and RTO. This will expedite the disaster recovery process, helping you to revamp operations and return to business as usual.
Benefits of Business Continuity in the cloud
Resiliency
- Azure Backup
Azure helps organizations to achieve the optimal 3-2-1 balance for sound data backup by hosting multiple copies of backed up data in the Microsoft Azure datacenters. Geo-replicated storage options are also available to provide geo-distant copies of backed up data across two Microsoft Azure datacenters.
- Azure Site Recovery
Azure Site Recovery replicates physical and virtual servers to a geo-distant Microsoft Azure datacenter as virtual hard disks that are attached to VMs when failovers are initiated. The Azure Storage Accounts that host the virtual hard disks are copied twice for redundancy.
Leveraging geo-distant options for better disaster recovery, Azure significantly mitigates the risk for complete data loss and backs up data centers, satellite offices, remote workers, VMware virtual machines, physical servers, and applications and protects data both on-premise and Azure to Azure. And security parameters undertaken by MSP’s ensure your backup is safe and resistant to disaster.
Cost Savings
Cloud options for disaster recovery and backup offer cost savings benefits, especially by eliminating expenses associated with traditional backup media.
- Azure Backup
By eliminating expensive tape and disk solutions, the cost of growing your operations, and therefore your stored data, is significantly reduced. Rather than having to invest in more space and hardware, a lot of which can go unused, you pay only for the data you use.
- Azure Site Recovery
Leveraging cloud computing helps you to eliminate the burden of maintaining disaster recovery sites for critical workloads. With ASR, you no longer need to invest in a second facility that replicates and houses your data. Charges, including personnel, facilities, technology, and utilities, dissipate, which saves you time, money, and resources. Additionally, Azure does not charge you compute, network, or facility fees needed to facilitate the replication
Time Savings
Azure data backup and disaster recovery solutions offer organizations a comprehensive approach to recovering and restoring operations. With these benefits, you can be assured that your business is impervious to threat and operations are sustainable.