Cloud Disaster Recovery Explained
When you run a business, you can’t afford downtime, and you definitely can’t afford to lose gigabytes of company and client data. While there are many benefits to cloud computing for business, the cloud can play an integral part in your disaster recovery plan. Cloud disaster recovery is an excellent way to make sure that, even if your business does experience a major shutdown, you won’t lose critical data.
What is Cloud Disaster Recovery?
Cloud disaster recovery (also called cloud DR) is a strategy that involves backing up all of a company’s electronic files onto a cloud server. In the event of a power outage, natural disaster, or even a man-made disaster, these files are stored safely in the cloud so that the company can recover data or even operate using the cloud system as a secondary option if the primary one fails.
How Does This Differ from an On-Site Disaster Recovery System?
With cloud DR, your company is not solely reliant upon on-site systems. So, for example, if a tornado or hurricane rips through your office building and destroys your server systems, your invaluable company files are still safe and sound (and retrievable!) in the cloud. Plus, you can set your disaster recovery plan to fail servers over to a second site, if needed, so work can continue from an alternative location, or you can enable employees to work from anywhere until your primary systems are back online. Even better, because cloud disaster recovery is hardware-independent, you can virtualize the entire server. As a result, you don’t have to reload operating systems and application software, which shortens recovery time significantly.
Selecting Cloud Disaster Recovery Services
If you’re looking for cloud disaster recovery solutions, you’ll want to carefully research all providers that you are considering. When searching for the provider who offers the best cloud DR services for your company, consider the following:
- Bandwidth: Make sure that your chosen service has enough bandwidth to handle peak data loads at peak times.
- Capacity: Your service should have flexibility when it comes to how much you can store so that you can scale your cloud DR services to match a growing business.
- Network Infrastructure: Ensure that your chosen provider has the software to keep your data secure, such as firewalls, encryption, etc.
- Physical Facilities and Location: Your provider should NOT be in the same area as your company, or they should have additional facilities outside your area. If there is a disaster, you don’t want to find out that your cloud services are down, too, since they were affected by the same catastrophe. Also, these facilities should be properly secured with access control systems, as well as climate-controlled.
- Recovery Time Objectives: Identify how long it will take for a provider to have your data recovered and accessible in the event of a disaster, if it won’t be immediate. This can range from one hour to a couple of days, and the faster the RTO (recovery time objective), the more expensive it might be.
- Support: Find out what kind of support technicians and protocols they have if you have issues or if they need to perform maintenance.
- Cost: Balance all of these considerations with the cost of the service. Which is the most cost-effective option for what your company needs?
Cloud Services (Including Disaster Recovery) from C1C
Customer 1st Communications offers cloud services with the security and scalability businesses need to operate and recover, and with these services, we offer complimentary IT Cloud Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Services. Let us help you keep your business running on an everyday basis and when disaster strikes. Give us a call at 855-TECH-C1C (855-832-4212) or contact us online to schedule your free consultation.
