Cloud computing breaks tradition, opening new chapter for disaster recovery

With the advance of the times, it is not possible for companies to record data as they did ten years ago, and to check their lost files by file records. Companies like Google, ebay or electronic medical records now have to rely on their IT systems, and if they lose their IT infrastructure, speaks will be unthinkable.

Traditional disaster recovery

For production-local environmental security considerations, traditional data backup typically requires a copy of data at least two copies, one in the data center to ensure normal data recovery and data query recovery, and the other to be moved offsite to ensure minimal data recovery after a disaster in production. As a result, traditional disaster-recovery (DR) costs are expensive, time-consuming, and error-prone, and the traditional way of backup now faces many challenges.

Recovery latency-delays in recovery due to retrieval and transmission of offsite backup data

Tedious – the operating systems, patches, and configuration of each Web site's servers need to be backed up to a cold station. In addition, the last configuration that the application installs to the server requires backup

Time-consuming – When disaster recovery is performed, it is a long process to align and debug all patches corresponding to the final configuration, based on patch Management records

Error prone – Recovery of data from data backup tapes can be as high as 40%, and the network needs to be properly configured on cold sites, including VLANs, virtual private networks (VPNs), DNS, and firewall rules.

Another problem with traditional disaster recovery is that many plans are written as a one-time failover program. And most of the plans ignore the most critical step, how will the data be restored once the disaster strikes again? The annual data recovery test is also an important step that is often overlooked. Because of the time consuming and other inconveniences of performing a disaster recovery plan, these tests are only partially run and rarely have a complete disaster recovery test run.

Choice of traditional disaster recovery

Traditional disaster recovery time from simple local backup-to-disk to hot-station backup, with less time spent and more expensive. It usually takes a few days to restore a local backup of the disk, and the heat station only takes a few minutes and the price is expensive. As shown in figure one, the CEO or CFO usually takes into account costs and benefits when choosing a disaster recovery plan.

Local backup to disk is undoubtedly the most cost-effective disaster recovery option, but it usually takes days or weeks of recovery time for hardware problems to complete recovery. On the other hand, heat stations, which are fully mirrored sites, can provide very rapid recovery time, but the price is much more expensive. This service, which provides high speed recovery of hardware and software, even increases your IT infrastructure costs by one times.

What kind of change does cloud computing bring?

Cloud computing, especially virtualization, brings a different approach to disaster recovery than traditional approaches. With the virtualization process, the entire server, including the operating system, applications, patches and data, is encapsulated into a single virtual server. This allows the entire virtual server to be replicated or backed up to offsite data centers and virtual hosts in just a few minutes.

Because virtual servers are stand-alone hardware, operating systems, applications, patches, and data, it can be safely and accurately transferred from one data center to a second data center without having to reload every component on the server.

As can be seen in Figure II, the balance between recovery time and cost-effectiveness of disaster recovery becomes more pronounced due to the impact of cloud computing (Red Arrows). This makes it easier for business managers to make choices.

When the cost of online backup in a cloud computing environment falls to the same time as local disk backup, the only advantage of local disk backup is gone. It may be that local backup to the disk will have some effect only in the case of years of data archiving. In any case, online backup in the cloud computing environment has shown its cost-effectiveness.

There is no cold disaster recovery in the cloud environment (traditionally provided by third parties) because it looks too outdated in the cloud computing world. The warm station disaster recovery system is both cost-effective and can recover all data from a shared or dedicated host platform within minutes.

With San to SAN replication between sites, the hot-station disaster recovery system, which can recover data in a very short time, is also an attractive option. One of the most exciting features of disaster recovery in a cloud computing environment is the ability to provide multi-site availability. San Replication not only provides a quick failover to a disaster-recovery site, but can also return to the normal web site after a test or disaster event ends. This process is rarely possible with Dr Systems.

One of the benefits of disaster recovery in a cloud computing environment is the ability to fine-tune the cost and performance of the Dr Platform. Those business-critical applications and servers can receive a higher priority recovery to ensure that the business is working properly and adequately supported.

A new critical path to disaster recovery--Network

With the dramatic changes in the disaster-recovery system caused by cloud computing, various settings can be backed up to recover quickly when problems occur. The critical path for disaster recovery operations is the network, including IP address mapping, firewall rules and VLAN configuration, these network configuration is correct to ensure the success of remote data recovery.

Intelligent Data Center operators provide complete disaster recovery services, not just backups between servers in the datacenter, but also backups of the entire network configuration, which restores the entire data center as quickly as possible.

Changes in disaster recovery in a cloud computing environment

In the cloud environment there are many benefits, efficient use of resources, rapid configuration, good scalability and flexibility. One of the most notable advantages of cloud computing is that it has revolutionized the way disaster is restored. Disaster recovery becomes more cost-effective in a cloud computing environment, and more companies are willing to accept the price and set up a disaster recovery system to create a complete data recovery system for the entire IT facility. Providing shorter recovery times and multi-site availability in a cloud computing environment makes it easier for these businesses to recover from the disaster.

The combination of DR and cloud computing is expected to grow more in the coming year, with more and more companies willing to deploy their disaster recovery plans in a cloud computing environment.