Five Key Considerations for Backup & Recovery
Cloud computing and disaster recovery/business continuity (DR/BC) fit well together. Indeed, the very nature of the cloud approach accomplishes the distribution of assets and de facto redundancy that DR/BC experts have always advocated.
In a post at Markets Media, James Russell, principal in the information technology group at consultancy Rothstein Kass, spelled out the DR connection:
“That is one of the strengths of the cloud and providers with multiple data centers,” Russell said. “With the right provider, DR is almost a by-product of their infrastructure design. This allows about any company to have a good DR solution without having to put down a large capital expenditure like in the past. Now it can be built into the solution and instead becomes an operating expense.”
Indeed, the serendipitous fit is generating research and new products. According to Newsfactor, IBM this week added DR and security to its SoftLayer clients. The story defines SoftLayer as IBM’s “high-performance, self-service Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering.” It says that the new feature will give customers using it access to Big Blue’s Cloud Virtualized Server Recovery (VSR) managed service. This provides automatic recovery of mission-critical applications, servers and data that is stored in the cloud.
Another piece of news came from VMware, one of the pioneers and leading vendors in the virtualization sector. This week, VMware launched what Tech Radar calls “a cloud-based disaster recovery service.” The story highlights the long name and important task of the new service:
VMware’s main selling point for the disaster recovery service, VMware vCloud Hybrid Service – Disaster Recovery, is that it can automate the replication and recovery of critical applications and data without the need to duplicate the entire data infrastructure or maintain an additional data center with replicated information.
A third meeting of DR/BC and the cloud this week is a partnership, reported in Talkin’ Cloud, between eFolder and Acronis. Under the agreement, eFolder will distribute Acronis Backup Advanced with eFolder’s cloud-based storage and recovery capabilities. The goal of eFolder BDR for Acronis is to provide disaster recovery capabilities to managed services providers (MSPs).
A fourth piece of news came from fiber networking firm FiberLight and Cirracore, a provider of VMware infrastructure-as-a-service (IAAS) services. FierceTelecom says that the companies are partnering on a cloud-based IAAS DR/BC offering. Initially, the service is available to tenants of two FiberLight-served buildings in Atlanta and Dallas.
