With enterprises going global and spanning multiple geographies, a single cloud provider may not meet all requirements.
Cloud adoption is a critical element of IT modernization. As organizations move their data and applications to the cloud, disaster recovery measures become imperative. With enterprises going global and spanning multiple geographies, a single cloud provider may not meet all requirements. Hence, adopting a multi-cloud strategy is the right choice for many organizations. Multi-cloud infrastructure can involve distribution across many IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS instances, each catering to different needs. It improves uptime, enables compliance with regulatory standards, and even lowers operational costs.
As many as 89% of companies use a multi-cloud approach, while 80% take a hybrid approach, utilizing public and private clouds. Cloud providers offer disaster recovery services today, and businesses are increasingly adopting these services to protect their data and applications. Multi-cloud adoption is one of the most straightforward disaster recovery strategies
Disaster recovery is vital as data backup is not a regular habit with staff, and the increasing threat of cyber-attacks and ransomware puts critical applications and data at risk. Hence, businesses use multi-cloud disaster recovery services. For example, a company will want to protect its CRM or ERP system, which is core to its business. In the same way, a healthcare organization will want to protect its electronic health records (EHR) system.
A well-crafted disaster recovery strategy in the cloud is essential for ensuring data protection, business continuity, and cost-effective recovery. It minimizes downtime, upholds customer trust, complies with regulations, and prepares businesses to recover from unforeseen disruptions swiftly, ultimately mitigating risks and enhancing overall resilience.
Option 1: Using multiple cloud providers.
Option 2: Using separate services of a single cloud provider.
Using multiple cloud providers: Implementing multi-cloud disaster recovery with multiple providers offers various advantages, like avoiding vendor lock-in in case of upward price changes or service issues. You can always switch cloud providers if necessary.
Having data across different service providers mitigates the risks of data loss. With multi-cloud environments, you get the flexibility to restore critical data and systems to a location of your choice. Ensure clear Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) for each application or service to guide the Disaster Recovery (DR) planning process and resource allocation. Design your multi-cloud DR architecture to minimize downtime and maximize data protection by using a variety of DR techniques, such as replication, failover, and backup.
On the downside, implementing a Disaster Recovery (DR) plan with multiple cloud providers can involve complexity and higher costs and demands a lot more effort and continuous support. You must also train your staff and new joiners on DR exercises. Monitoring multi-cloud spread across various locations is time-consuming compared to a single cloud. Managing multi-cloud servers can be complex and lead to missed updates or defects if not monitored efficiently. However, using automated tools like the emma multi-cloud management platform will help you gain more visibility and control in multi-cloud environments and enable leveraging the multi-cloud disaster recovery advantages.
Using separate services of a single cloud provider: You can establish secure disaster recovery procedures if you are happy with your single cloud provider. In that case, you need to plan well to regularly create multiple backups, test backups, and disaster recovery scenarios and ensure quality and prompt support from your cloud service provider. It's better to go with a trusted cloud vendor with proactive support.
Creating a reliable multi-cloud disaster recovery strategy will keep your business operations working at their best. While mapping out your multi-cloud strategy, consider these five essential points.
Choose cloud providers who can store your applications and data across multiple locations rather than a single location. A multi-cloud disaster recovery approach will protect assets better with a wider multi-cloud footprint for DR. However, having multi-cloud servers in the same country is better than having multiple countries to avoid legal and regulatory complications.
At a minimum, one should have at least two different Cloud Service Providers (CSP)in the disaster recovery strategy. If one fails, the other will be available. The chances of two different CSPs failing together are extremely rare. If the cloud DR locations are in the same country, it will be helpful and easier to adhere to legal policies.
It is advisable to test the multi-cloud disaster recovery with a small sample project so you can analyze the results. Kick-start your DR strategy by selecting data sets of low criticality and multiple cloud providers. You can then analyze results and extend the strategy to other assets. On the compliance and legal side, adhere to industry-specific compliance requirements and legal regulations relevant to data storage, privacy, and disaster recovery when planning and executing the multi-cloud DR strategy. It should be a part of your DR testing plan too.
With automated tools, you can efficiently replicate workloads to different clouds and automate multi-cloud migrations. Orchestrating and streamlining your DR processes with automated tools will enable faster and more efficient failover and failback procedures.
Applications and data get regularly updated. It is advisable to schedule disaster recovery drills periodically to assess the multi-cloud disaster recovery time and ensure how functions will perform in a disaster. DR drills simulate disasters; if the results are not up to your expectations, you can discuss them with your cloud service provider.
The emma platform provides comprehensive capabilities to help organizations to manage their multi-cloud environments and supports effective disaster recovery strategies:
The emma platform supports a wide range of cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This makes it easy for organizations to implement a disaster recovery strategy that spans multiple cloud platforms.
A single pane of glass provides a view into all cloud resources, regardless of which cloud provider they are hosted on. This makes it easy to identify and manage potential risks, and to develop and implement disaster recovery plans.
The platform can automate the recovery of cloud resources in the event of a disaster. This can help to reduce the time it takes to recover critical business applications and services, and to minimize downtime and disruption.
On top of the above, using the provided tools and features, organizations can improve their disaster recovery readiness and reduce the impact of disasters on their business operations:
Monitor continuously all cloud resources for potential risks. This helps to identify potential problems early on, before they cause a disaster.
Alerts and notifications are sent to IT staff in the event of a potential or actual disaster. This helps to ensure that IT staff are aware of the problem and can take corrective action quickly.
The emma platform provides a variety of reports and analytics that can be used to track disaster recovery performance and identify areas for improvement.
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