Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 12 | Page 49

FEATURE: DISASTER RECOVERY of the moment. Organisations will always want to ensure that the actual decision to fail over to the disaster recovery plan is made by an actual human, preferably a C-level executive, because once the decision is made to fail over it’s difficult to rewind. That being said, once the big red button is pushed, automation, except at a few key points, is extremely helpful. Embrace DRaaS – The next Generation in disaster recovery solutions For comprehensive data protection and recovery, particularly in case of disasters, organisations should follow the 3-2-1 rule; they should have three copies of the data, stored on two different kinds of media, with one of them stored offsite. This means that in addition to the primary date, organizations should have at least two more backups as having more copies of the data reduces risk of losing the data during a disaster. In terms of storing the data, organisations should keep the copies of the data on at least two different storage types (such as internal hard disk drives and removable storage media like tapes, external hard drives, CDs, etc.) or on two internal hard disk drives in different locations. Finally, while storing the data on different media is important and a good start, it really isn’t a good idea to keep the external storage device in the same room as the production storage in case of a catastrophe like a fire. It is prudent to physically separate the copies and keep at least one offsite. Specifically applied to Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), the offsite workload should be ready to go in a usable form. One way to meet that require is with replicated workloads. There are a number of options available to organisations when it comes to deployment of DR systems – organisations can either choose to deploy a secondary physical www.intelligentcio.com GREGG PETERSEN Regional Director, Middle East and SAARC, Veeam Software SINCE MOST OF THE PROCESSES ARE AUTOMATED, OPTING FOR A DRAAS SOLUTION ALSO FREES UP IT RESOURCES AND GIVES THEM THE FLEXIBILITY TO FOCUS ON BUSINESS CRITICAL APPLICATIONS, THAT CAN YIELD TANGIBLE BUSINESS BENEFITS, RATHER THAN ON SUPPORT FUNCTIONS site (either owned and manage by the organisation or hosted by a service provider) or adopt a DRaaS model. An overwhelming majority of organisations still prefer to use secondary sites in large part driven by some of the prevailing misconceptions that surround the clo ud – lack of control, security and compatibility with existing infrastructure. However, as we continue to debunk the myths around the cloud and organizations begin to understand the value of DRaaS, the adoption levels will only rise. In fact, according to the ‘Disaster Recovery as a Service Market by Solution (Disaster Planning & Testing, RealTime Replication, Backup Solution, Data Security & Compliance), by Service Provider (Disaster Recovery, Cloud, Telecom & Communication) – Global Forecast to 2020’ report by MarketsandMarkets, the DRaaS INTELLIGENTCIO 49