Disaster recovery (DR) is one of the most crucial concerns for many organizations. Having the ability to ensure business continuity while keeping spending down is also just as important. Any event that negatively impacts business resiliency can be considered a disaster. It might be a power outage, physical damage to the building, human error, a network outage, software failure, hardware failure, or something type of major disaster.

Disasters can strike at any time, and it’s one of the most significant risks associated with running a business. To mitigate the potential damage, many companies spend a large amount of time creating a DR strategy as well as training staff how to manage disasters. Further, for the sake of business continuity, organizations must have a plan for system restoration such as a backup site or alternative platform. Managing a second storage facility, and hardware, is just too expensive and time-consuming for most businesses. As a result, many are transitioning to the cloud to help minimize potential damages.

Further, the most-used cloud service is Amazon Web Services (AWS). So, yes, you can use AWS for DR. In fact, AWS is very strategic and comprehensive about their DR resources and cloud services. They are continuously maintained with a scalable and pay-as-you-go billing structure so that any size of business can include AWS in their DR budget. Let’s learn more about how AWS addresses DR.

Orchestrate deployment

As an organization, you can significantly boost your recovery capability by investing in post-startup software installation/configuration and deployment automation processes. Some of the tools that you could use include:

To create effective DR protocols, it’s vital to invest in an automated deployment service. Automation can help to immediately bolster recovery without any manual configuration necessary. Some options from AWS managed services include:

● AWS CloudFormation: Enables the building and provisioning of AWS disaster recovery services.
● AWS ElasticBeanstalk: An agile service designed for deploying applications and services built on Java, Node.js, PHP, .NET, Docker, and more.
● AWS OpsWorks: This is an application management service that allows users to layer tiers of applications.

You can also opt to use the following resources from AWS disaster recovery services:

● Amazon Redshift: Database service which can replicate your entire data warehouse.
● Amazon DynamoDB: Offers single digit, millisecond latency.
● Amazon Relational Database Service: Scale and operate relational cloud databases to use in recovery and restoration.

One thing that is nice about AWS disaster recovery services is you can store primary backups in another country – and advantage should a widespread disaster occur. Some of the regions offered include the Americas, Asia Pacific, and EMEA.

Why use AWS disaster recovery services?

For many, AWS managed services is the ideal choice since it provides higher scalability with an improved Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). As big data continues to overwhelm organizations, the job of protecting and storing that data becomes much more difficult. Can AWS managed services meet your archival needs? Well, yes.

You see, AWS is a flexible and user-friendly platforming providing tools that perform the heavy lifting so you don’t have to worry about backup and recovery. Your data can be stored in any location around the globe that meets your compliance requirements. Further, AWS is certified for compliance based on Service Organization Controls (SOC). AWS has a data center in 12 geographic regions with 32 availability zones. Each data center has its own facility, and every facility is connected via a fiber optic network so you can store applications in multiple availability zones.

Investing in the construction, maintenance, and staffing of a data center is a large expense that not all companies can afford. Setting up the data center to support disaster recovery adds to the cost and complexity. Even leasing space in a hosted data center requires significant investments in contracting, support, and logistics. In contrast, AWS offers a cost-effective backup, storage, and DR solution that enables firms to significantly reduce their capital expenses.

Reduce your capital expenses by using AWS on-demand, paying only for what you use. DR resources can be left dormant until you need it. According to the IDC, AWS customers enjoy a 64% reduction in TCO of managed cloud services.

AWS disaster recovery services can also be set up in under an hour, depending on the components. It is designed to easily integrate with your existing systems so that you can focus on productivity and not on worrying about uncontrollable disasters.

In addition, AWS is fully scalable for when you need more computing resources during a disaster. However, you don’t have to make a large upfront investment. The AWS structure works on-demand. Your need for a DR solution may vary during the year such as increasing capacity in the hurricane season or winter storm season and decreasing demand during milder weather-related months.

Businesses are also naturally concerned about cyber security, and AWS disaster recovery services come with built-in cyber security around infrastructure and inventory. It also offers identity and access control, data encryption, logging, and monitoring. Once you become an AWS managed services customer, you have complete access to Amazon’s massive and reliable bandwidth.

Ready to learn more?

It’s time to focus on what you do best: Running your business. SSI offers AWS disaster recovery services which seamlessly replicates your on-premises infrastructure to the cloud. AWS managed services also easily integrate with the technologies you already use. For a completely optimized DR framework, contact SSI today.