Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) has become increasingly popular, as it allows businesses to replicate and host their physical or virtual servers in a third-party cloud computing environment, ensuring business continuity in the event of a natural disaster, power outage, or other disruptions.
In this article, we’ll explore the different types of DRaaS models available, as well as the difference between DRaaS and Backup as a Service (BaaS).
We’ll also discuss the best disaster recovery software options available in 2023.
Are you ready?
What is DRaaS, How Do They Work & When Is Needed?
Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) is a service offered by a third-party vendor, enabling an organization to replicate and host their physical or virtual servers in the event of a natural disaster, power outage, or any other type of business disruption.
A service-level agreement (SLA) usually outlines the vendor’s expectations and requirements.
If a disaster occurs, the vendor offers failover to a cloud computing environment, either through a contract or pay-per-use basis. DRaaS provides an off-site disaster recovery capability, eliminating the need for maintaining secondary data centers.
This approach has made DR accessible to organizations that previously couldn’t afford it.
The DRaaS provider offers its infrastructure to serve as the customer’s DR site when a disaster is declared, including a software application or hardware appliance for replication to a private or public cloud platform.
Managed DRaaS involves the provider taking responsibility for the failover process and overseeing the failback task.
Other forms of DRaaS may require customers to manage some or all of the tasks. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) can benefit significantly from DRaaS, which eliminates the need for in-house experts to devise and execute a DR plan.
Additionally, outsourcing infrastructure is an advantage for smaller organizations, who may find the costs of running a DR site prohibitive.
Overall, DRaaS allows an organization to back up its data and IT infrastructure in a third-party cloud computing environment, with all DR orchestration provided by the service provider through a SaaS solution, helping them regain access and functionality to their IT infrastructure after a disaster.
Speaking of service models…
Different Types of DRaaS Models Available in 2023
There’s no doubt the Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) model has become a popular solution for organizations that want to outsource their disaster recovery planning. There are three primary models offered by DRaaS providers, as outlined by several sources.
- Managed DRaaS: The provider takes full responsibility for disaster recovery. This option is best suited for organizations that lack the expertise or time to manage their disaster recovery. However, close cooperation with the provider is required to keep all infrastructure, application, and service changes up to date.
- Assisted DRaaS: In-house specialists offer their expertise and resources to optimize disaster recovery procedures when they’re available, even when the responsibility lies mainly on the customer’s side.
- Self-service DRaaS: The cheapest option, where the customer is responsible for planning, testing, and managing disaster recovery. The vendor provides backup management software and hosts backups and virtual machines in remote locations.
This option is ideal for organizations with in-house disaster recovery and cloud computing expertise, but careful planning and testing are required to ensure that operations can be immediately failed over to the vendor’s remote data center and easily recovered when local resources are restored.
Regardless of the model chosen, it is essential to work closely with the DRaaS provider to ensure the best possible disaster recovery plan is in place.
What Is The Difference Between BaaS and DRaaS?
Are you wondering if BaaS is the same software model as DRaaS or at least if they’re somehow similar?
Well, Backup as a Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) are both cloud-based solutions for data protection, but they have some fundamental differences.
DRaaS is designed to ensure business continuity in the event of a disaster by replicating an organization’s entire IT infrastructure in the cloud. This allows the business to continue operating even if the on-premises environment is down.
In contrast, BaaS only backs up data to a third-party provider’s storage systems, leaving the responsibility for infrastructure restoration to the organization.
The recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) for BaaS are typically measured in hours or days because it may take some time to transfer large datasets back to the organization’s data center.
In contrast, DRaaS can provide RTO and RPO in minutes or even seconds because a secondary version of the organization’s servers is ready to run on a remote site.
The costs of BaaS are significantly lower than DRaaS because it only requires storage resources for backups, while DRaaS requires additional resources, including replication software, computing, and networking infrastructure.
BaaS is often used for archiving data or records for legal purposes, but most organizations that use BaaS combine it with other disaster recovery tools to ensure business continuity.
Best Disaster Recovery Software in 2023
Disaster recovery is an essential aspect of any organization’s IT strategy, and there are a variety of DRaaS providers in the market today. These providers range from companies that specialize in data protection and storage to large IT and cloud vendors.
In 2023, the best disaster recovery software options are:
- Azure Site Recovery: This DRaaS solution from Microsoft offers an affordable and user-friendly set of backup, disaster recovery, and reporting features, with pricing starting at $16 per month per protected instance.
Although it only works with Microsoft Azure, its excellent functionality has earned it an Editors’ Choice award when compared to other DRaaS solutions like Zerto Virtual Replication.
- VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery: This DRaaS offering replicates virtual machines (VMs) to a Scale-out Cloud File System, allowing users to store hundreds of recovery points with recovery point objectives (RPOs) in as low as 30 minutes.
VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery is highly reliable, easy to use, and has fast recovery capabilities while keeping the total cost of ownership low.
- Zerto Virtual Replication: Zerto’s cloud data management and protection platform enables customers to simplify the protection, recovery, and mobility of on-premises and cloud applications. It offers continuous data protection at scale by converging disaster recovery, backup, and data mobility.
Trusted by over 9,500 customers globally, Zerto Virtual Replication is a powerful solution for any business looking to ensure high availability.
- Druva Data Resiliency Cloud: This data protection and management platform centralizes management and backup for cloud apps like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Salesforce.
It simplifies backup, archival, and compliance to reduce the cost and complexity of protecting online data, ensuring regulatory compliance, and improving data visibility.
Druva Data Resiliency Cloud is an excellent solution for businesses seeking to protect their cloud-based data.
Other DRaaS providers in the market include Acronis, AWS, Bios Middle East, C&W Business, Carbonite, Databarracks, Expedient, Flexential, IBM, island, Infrascale, InterVision, Net3 Technology, RapidScale, Recovery Point, Sungard Availability Services (AS), and TierPoint.
When selecting a disaster recovery solution, organizations should carefully consider their specific needs, budget, and goals to choose the option that is the best fit for them.