Disaster recovery (DR) is a process for recovering data, infrastructure and applications in the event of a disaster that disrupts business operations. DR plans also include strategies to prevent disasters, such as continuous monitoring for configuration errors and compliance violations.
The goals of a disaster recovery plan are to minimize disruption, limit damage and mitigate the costs associated with downtime. Beyond the obvious IT costs of a disaster, companies may incur customer dissatisfaction, diminished productivity and lost revenues, among other costly consequences. Having the right disaster recovery solution in place can significantly reduce these beyond-IT costs, while helping organizations reposition their brands and reputations.
A good DR plan will identify the systems and processes that are critical to your organization, identifying which are dependent on one another and how they interact. It will also document how your IT staff will restore those systems in the event of a disaster, including backup and recovery procedures. Depending on the IT infrastructure of your organization, you can choose from several different options for DR solutions. These range from remote backups with mirrored data to managed DRaaS capabilities offered by a third-party provider.
In a managed DRaaS scenario, your third-party provider takes on the responsibility of managing your IT infrastructure and applications, providing you with significant cost savings and improved performance. Unlike manual backups that can require considerable time to recover, automated DRaaS solutions offer near-zero downtime and reduced RTO and RPO times.