For smaller companies, where the previous cost of DR means that their RTO and RPO targets are large, then a cloud-based approach can bring down this gap in an affordable way.
For larger organisations, the cloud can complement their existing continuity strategy: the number of machines that are protected can be increased, while it can also offer another location for data to be stored in the unlikely event of multiple sites being affected.
A cloud-based DR strategy can also overcome the issue with downtime experienced during the recovery phase. If you are putting full server instances into the cloud, then you can potentially run those workloads in the event of a disaster affecting the main site. This is the main difference between online storage being used for DR, and a full use of the cloud for recovery.
This approach does require that technical resources are available from the cloud provider, such as the ability to handle larger boot volumes, as well as the scale to cope with multiple workloads being booted and run at the same time.
However, it gets around the problem of lost time while any data is recovered. This option to work with an up-to-date copy of their data and applications reduces the potential window of downtime, by shrinking the RTO for users to get back online and productive.
Filed under: Workload Optimization
