Business Continuity and Cloud DRs

What Is Cloud Disaster Recovery? 

Cloud disaster recovery (DR) involves storing and maintaining backups of computing resources on a cloud platform instead of relying on self-managed infrastructure. It allows organizations to access critical systems and data in the event of outages or disasters, minimizing downtime and data loss. 

The cloud’s elasticity ensures that resources can adjust according to the needs of an organization, providing scalable and efficient recovery solutions comparable to traditional hardware-based methods. Cloud-based services can be used to replicate workloads and data in a cloud environment, avoiding the complexity of managing secondary data centers. 

Cloud DR capitalizes on the cloud’s inherent advantages, such as remote access, high availability, and redundancy. It reduces upfront costs since companies typically pay only for minimal resources used to maintain recovery readiness, without having to purchase and maintain a full secondary environment.

Key Features of Cloud Disaster Recovery Solutions

A cloud disaster recovery solution should offer the following capabilities.

Continuous Data Replication

Continuous data replication ensures that data changes made on the primary system are immediately copied to the backup environment, reducing the risk of data loss during a disaster. By capturing changes in real-time or near real-time, organizations can achieve lower RPOs. Continuous replication methods often use techniques like log-based replication, where only changed blocks or transactions are transmitted, minimizing bandwidth usage. 

Cloud-based replication often supports asynchronous or synchronous modes, depending on the organization’s requirements. Synchronous replication ensures that data is written simultaneously to both the primary and backup locations Asynchronous replication is more bandwidth-friendly and is commonly used when slightly higher RPOs are acceptable.

This feature is particularly useful for mission-critical databases like SQL Server, ensuring every transaction is mirrored in near real-time to minimize potential data loss.

Automated Failover

Automated failover ensures that systems automatically switch to backup environments when primary systems fail, reducing downtime and minimizing manual intervention during emergencies. Failover orchestration is typically configured in advance using predefined runbooks or scripts that specify the sequence of recovery actions. 

For example, critical databases may be prioritized for recovery before less essential systems, optimizing business continuity. Cloud-based solutions often improve automated failover by integrating with monitoring and alerting systems. When an outage is detected, the failover process triggers automatically, activating backup resources and redirecting traffic to them. 

Geo-Redundancy

Geo-redundancy involves replicating data and applications across geographically dispersed data centers to protect against localized disasters, such as power outages, floods, or cyberattacks. By storing data in multiple regions, cloud DR solutions ensure that even if an entire site becomes unavailable, operations can resume from an unaffected location.

Most cloud service providers implement multi-zone and multi-region replication strategies, offering options for automated failover between regions. In addition to improved resilience, geo-redundancy improves data availability by distributing replicas closer to end users, potentially reducing latency and improving performance during recovery scenarios.

Multi-Cloud Support

Multi-cloud support allows organizations to distribute disaster recovery workloads across multiple cloud providers, enhancing resilience and preventing vendor lock-in. For instance, a company may back up its critical databases to AWS while replicating less critical applications to Azure, creating redundancy at the provider level.

This approach offers flexibility in workload migration, enabling organizations to shift operations between clouds depending on cost, performance, or availability. Multi-cloud DR solutions typically include unified dashboards to manage recovery processes across providers, simplifying orchestration and monitoring. 

Compliance and Regulatory Support

Compliance and regulatory support ensures that cloud DR solutions adhere to industry-specific data protection standards, such as SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI-DSS. This feature is crucial for organizations operating in regulated sectors, as non-compliance can lead to legal liabilities or financial penalties.

Advanced solutions provide encryption for data in transit and at rest, role-based access controls, and detailed audit logs to support compliance audits. Additionally, providers may offer tools for maintaining data residency requirements by allowing organizations to specify geographic regions for storage and recovery. Built-in reporting features enable ongoing monitoring of compliance metrics, helping organizations meet regulatory obligations.

Cloud DR Solutions 

Veeam Backup & Replication

Veeam Backup & Replication is a data protection solution to secure backups, enable clean recoveries, and build data resilience across hybrid, virtual, and physical environments. It uses a software-defined approach to backup and recovery, which eases integration with existing infrastructure. 

Key features include:

• Instant recovery: Achieves rapid recovery times, ensuring minimal disruption during outages or attacks.

• Ransomware protection: Protects backups with end-to-end immutability and ransomware detection, preventing reinfection and ensuring reliable recovery points.

• Hybrid cloud resilience: Secures data across hybrid and multi-cloud environments with cloud-native backup for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. 

• Threat mitigation: Uses built-in malware detection powered by AI to identify and block threats during the backup process, including YARA-based content analysis for pinpointing ransomware strains.

• Secure cloud storage: Stores backups in predictably priced, secure cloud storage with Veeam Vault, integrated into the Veeam Data Platform.

Limitations of Veeam:

• Limited deployment options: Deployment of Veeam Backup for AWS is restricted to CloudFormation templates, offering less flexibility compared to solutions that support manual deployment or custom naming conventions.

• Complex backup configuration: Setting up backup policies is not user-friendly and often requires tagging resources, making it difficult to exclude specific volumes without in-depth knowledge of the infrastructure.

• Lack of multi-tenancy: The solution does not support multi-tenancy, limiting its use for MSPs who need to provide separate backup consoles for individual clients.

• Recovery limitations: The recovery process is cumbersome, requiring users to know specific resources for restoration, as policies are not searchable or linked to the recovery workflow.

• File-level recovery concerns: File and folder-level recovery allows restoring to the same instance, raising potential security risks as this access could inadvertently introduce malware.

• Immutability gaps: Veeam does not support immutable EBS snapshots for AWS but does offer S3 object lock for certain storage classes. However, it lacks support for cost-efficient options like S3 Infrequent Access.

• Ineffective cost estimation: The cost estimation tool for archives often provides inaccurate calculations due to its inability to account for all variables, reducing its utility for budget planning.

• Inefficient cleanup: Unused backups can only be cleaned up once daily, potentially leading to unnecessary storage costs until the next cleanup cycle.

Cohesity DataProtect

Cohesity DataProtect is a policy-driven data protection solution that secures enterprise data across traditional, modern, and cloud-native workloads. Available as self-managed software or Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS), it consolidates multiple data protection tools into one platform. Designed with zero trust principles, DataProtect offers security features like immutability, WORM (Write Once Read Many), and encryption. 

Key features include:

• Workload support: Protects virtual, physical, and containerized environments, including databases, NAS systems, SaaS applications, and cloud-native workloads. Compatible with VMware, Hyper-V, Kubernetes, Oracle, Microsoft 365, and Salesforce.

• Fast recovery: Ensures near-instant recovery times with capabilities like mass restore for VMs, large datasets, and databases. Features global search and Helios unified control plane for efficient data location and retrieval.

• Immutable backups and ransomware protection: Implements measures like WORM, AES-256 encryption, and anomaly detection using machine learning. These features prevent unauthorized changes, detect potential threats, and enable recovery.

• Flexible deployment models: Offers deployment on-premises, in public or hybrid clouds, and as a BaaS solution. 

• Public cloud integration: Integrates with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud for long-term retention, disaster recovery, and native cloud backup. Includes tools like CloudSpin and Cloud Snapshot Manager for cloud management.

Limitations of Cohesity:

• Reporting limitations: Many users have noted that the reporting capabilities are basic and lack customization options. Reports often do not provide granular insights or detailed metrics about data protection activities, which limits their usefulness for large enterprise environments. Additionally, generating advanced reports often requires support tickets or leveraging APIs, which may not be ideal for all users.

• Inefficient restore process: Several users have experienced delays during file-level restores, with even small files taking hours to recover. This inefficiency could lead to operational disruptions, especially during critical recovery scenarios. Some users have also reported challenges with restoring SQL databases or instances due to the lack of batch recovery options.

• Cost and licensing concerns: Some users believe the pricing could be more competitive. Certain features, such as advanced cyber resilience tools, are limited or require additional costs, reducing affordability for smaller organizations.

• Interface and usability issues: The user interface, while functional, is not as intuitive or user-friendly as competitors’ platforms. Navigation can feel clunky, and certain tasks require additional steps or workarounds. Users also mentioned that search functionality, such as locating backups, could be more precise and efficient.

• Support for legacy systems: Organizations with older systems have reported difficulties with legacy hardware and software support. For example, Cohesity lacks comprehensive compatibility for older operating systems and backup platforms like Windows 2003 or legacy Oracle workloads, which some competitors still support.

• Delays in feature rollouts: Users have expressed frustration with the pace of feature releases. For example, capabilities such as advanced AI-based analytics, enhanced reporting, and simplified cloud migration tools are often delayed. Additionally, while some features exist, they may not be as robust as expected, requiring frequent updates or fixes.

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is a cloud-based data management platform for secure, highly available storage across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Built on NetApp’s ONTAP storage software, it provides a unified storage experience for hybrid and cloud-only environments. It extends the same storage operating system used on-premises into the cloud.

Key features include:

• Workload support: Supports NAS (NFS, SMB) and SAN (iSCSI) protocols to meet diverse application requirements, including development, testing, and production environments.

• Data management: Features NetApp Snapshot™ for near-instant, zero-impact point-in-time backups and SnapMirror for replication across environments. 

• Hybrid cloud integration: Extends on-premises storage operations to the cloud, allowing organizations to create hybrid architectures that optimize storage efficiency and performance.

• High availability and disaster recovery: Enables nondisruptive operations for critical applications with recovery options, ensuring data is accessible and protected against outages.

• Elastic scalability: Leverages the scalability of public clouds to dynamically adjust resources based on storage and performance needs.

Limitations of NetApp:

• Complex initial setup: The platform’s initial setup is often cited as a significant hurdle. Configuring mounts and paths on NAS systems, addressing differences between Windows and Linux environments, and assigning Active Directory (AD) user access require technical expertise. 

• Steep learning curve: For organizations unfamiliar with NetApp or cloud-based storage, the learning curve can be steep, potentially delaying implementation.

• Frequent maintenance windows: Frequent and sometimes poorly communicated maintenance windows have frustrated users. Notifications for high availability failovers are often sent with little notice, disrupting workflows and causing inconvenience for critical applications. This lack of advance warning can make it difficult to plan operations around maintenance periods.

• Integration challenges: Users have experienced difficulties integrating NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP with third-party applications. The software’s complexity, including the need to remember and execute various commands, complicates workflows and reduces overall efficiency. 

Commvault Disaster Recovery

Commvault Disaster Recovery is a solution to protect critical workloads and ensure business continuity in the face of disasters or cyber threats. Powered by the Commvault Cloud Platform and Metallic AI, it combines automation, security, and scalability to deliver recovery across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. 

Key features include:

• Rapid recovery at scale: Enables mass recovery of applications with infrastructure auto-scaling to meet enterprise demands without compromising recovery objectives.

• Sub-minute RPOs and near-zero RTOs: Offers continuous and periodic replication to achieve minimal data loss and maximize uptime. Supports hot site recovery for critical workloads and cost-efficient warm site recovery for less urgent needs.

• Recovery validation: Provides orchestrated recovery testing with pre- and post-script support, ensuring that recovery processes are thoroughly validated at every stage.

• Isolated recovery testing: Allows organizations to test recovery readiness in sandbox environments without impacting production workloads, verifying the integrity of recovery plans.

• Secure forensic analysis: Integrates with custom forensics tools and SOAR systems through APIs to perform secure analysis and mitigate risks during the recovery process.

Limitations of Commvault:

• Access management concerns: As a SaaS solution, Commvault’s reliance on cloud-hosted services raises potential privacy and access management challenges for organizations handling sensitive data.

• Limited snapshot archiving: Commvault cannot archive RDS snapshots to cold storage solutions like S3 or Azure Blob, which limits cost-effective long-term storage options.

• Complex cross-cloud recovery setup: While cross-cloud recovery is supported, it requires a virtual server acting as an HTTP/HTTPS proxy, introducing additional costs and a potential single point of failure.

• Restricted DR backup flexibility: Disaster recovery backups must be stored in object storage (e.g., S3 or Azure Blob), which can lead to longer recovery times compared to snapshot-based DR backups.

• Challenging infrastructure optimization: Architecting and scaling deduplication servers and optimizing backup jobs require expertise, making the platform less accessible for teams without dedicated specialists.

• Policy limitations: Users cannot include multiple resource types in a single backup policy, which may complicate backup management for diverse workloads.

• Incomplete VPC backup support: Commvault only backs up attributes of EC2 instances within a VPC, not the entire VPC itself, limiting comprehensive recovery options for cloud environments.

• No VPC cloning or recovery scenario features: The platform lacks tools to easily clone VPCs or orchestrate rapid, full-infrastructure recovery, reducing efficiency during large-scale disaster recovery operations.