How to Implement Next Generation Disaster Recovery

In our previous two posts in this series, 4 Major Challenges with Traditional Disaster Recovery and Top 7 Innovations for the Next Phase of Disaster Recovery, you learned the challenges that most companies face with disaster recovery today and the 7 disaster recovery innovations that can solve those challenges.

With that knowledge in hand, how do you go about implementing the latest and greatest disaster recovery innovations that are available today? It’s common to have a lot of questions anytime you consider making a change to your disaster recovery infrastructure. Let’s cover those questions, one at a time.

How difficult is it to migrate from existing DR solutions to next-generation solutions?

Because most of the new DR solutions are software- and cloud-based, it’s very easy to evaluate and migrate to these types of solutions. For companies who are using backup tape only for DR, they would continue to use their backup tapes and offsite storage for worst-case data protection as they ramp up the replication of first their most critical applications (and later all applications) offsite using software-based replication.

For companies who have existing and costly hardware- based or other dedicated replication solutions, these solutions could be phased out as the new software-based replication solutions are brought online and confidence is gained with them.

Would there be any capital expenditure needed to move to next-generation cloud-based DR solutions?

With cloud-based solutions that use the pay-as-you-go model, no there’s no upfront capital expenditure. Over time, your monthly cost would increase proportionally to the amount of data that you replicate to the DR cloud provider’s storage.

What are the steps that you would take?

The steps to take to get started with software-based and cloud-based disaster recovery begin with simple product is valuations, typically through working with a value-added reseller (VAR) or Reseller. This process typically involves obtaining a list of your applications and the size of your data set. From there, the consultant would help you to define the RTO and RPO for those applications and then make recommendations on the cloud-based disaster recovery solution that would best fit your needs.

Whether you’re at a small or large company it’s likely that you have struggled at some point with disaster recovery. Even for companies that have the budget for traditional high- performance DR solutions, almost everyone still struggles to keep the disaster recovery plan up to date and tested with the ever-changing modern data center. For these reasons, companies small and large welcome the latest innovations that we’ve discussed in this chapter on disaster recovery.

Finally, if you need help updating any aspect of your company’s disaster recovery plan, or would like to begin the process of adopting a new DR plan, check out our Disaster Recovery Strategy Kickstart. Our expert consultants will be happy to help keep your company safe.