The Need for Multicloud Disaster Recovery
Datacenter disruptions can result from a variety of factors that are natural, manmade and technical in nature. During an emergency, recovery from the disaster and restoring operations are the IT department’s primary concerns. That is why backups are so important.
Datacenter disruptions aren’t always localized. Cloud based services and virtual machines can be suddenly and unexpectedly impacted, leading to irreparable loss of large volumes of data.
Relying solely on a single provider – be it local or cloud based – for all your backup needs can be risky if you don’t have a guarantee on the integrity of the backup service being provided.
A single backup option is no longer sufficient to ensure that your data stays protected. Multiple backups across the web over various cloud platforms and in different locations have become a matter of necessity.
Multicloud Disaster Recovery
Multicloud disaster recovery is about maintaining data copies on multiple cloud platforms. This is an essential need for many businesses.
Many cloud solutions provide automated backups that periodically synchronize web applications and data to more than one location. Although theoretically simple, this can be quite difficult to implement given the complications that can arise.
Geographical distance also plays a vital role. For instance, it is very rare that two datacenters located thousands of miles apart will be affected by the same disaster.
Multicloud Disaster Recovery Benefits
Geographical location is usually the deciding factor when putting together a multicloud disaster recovery solution, especially if backup and recovery are your primary concerns. It is always preferable to deploy a multicloud disaster recovery solution that spans the length and breadth of the country.
In the case of a single cloud backup solution with multiple datacenters, if one datacenter becomes unavailable, users need not necessarily be able to access the backup data stored at other datacenters. Load balancing further complicates the situation. All the cloud service provider’s customers would be simultaneously trying to gain access to their data at the alternate datacenter, creating bottlenecks that slowdown or even jam the network.
This is where multicloud disaster recovery saves the day. You can have multiple backups stored at datacenters belonging to different cloud providers in geographically dispersed locations. Your organization’s operations can seamlessly switch from one server to the next.
Implementing Multicloud Disaster Recovery
- Planning
- Establishing goals & objectives
- Selecting the right personnel & tools
- Chalking out a schedule for all deployment stages
- Carefully selecting cloud service providers based on the location of their datacenters
Vendors provide cloud based backup using different interfaces. You could take into consideration the existing skills of your personnel; identify gaps based on which training programs are developed. But it would be more convenient and economical to choose providers whose technology your personnel are familiar with.
If time isn’t an issue and your IT team has the necessary skills, you can manually deploy the multicloud disaster recovery solution. Alternately, if your company only wants to backup data without having to manage web applications and complex tools, you can choose a solution that’s specifically designed for multicloud disaster recovery.
Once up and running, you would still have to periodically test and update the solution. You can improve the efficiency of your multicloud disaster recovery capability when it is periodically subjected to stressful exercise drills that expose vulnerabilities. Infrastructure, cloud services and even personnel need to be challenged in simulated scenarios to identify how the system can be improved.
Conclusion
Ensuring continuity of operations is mission critical in today’s business world. And multicloud disaster recovery is a decisive step in that direction, whether you want to just safeguard big data, ensure high availability for web applications or implement a complete backup and disaster recovery solution.