Disaster Recovery as a Service on the AWS Cloud
All companies that store systems and applications in a data center are at risk for data loss whether it be caused by software error, hardware malfunction, or natural disasters. Disasters are sometimes inevitable and data loss, without a doubt, will cause detrimental effects on the company’s finances and reputation. It is absolutely mandatory for a company with assets in a data center to have a business continuity plan. Until recently, business continuity planning has been costly and complex due to the necessity for replicating physical environments. This consequently limits the company’s capacity to protect all of its assets leaving some servers prone to risk.
Disaster Recovery on the Cloud
Running and storing applications on the cloud has decreased the need for companies to purchase physical hardware. The cloud allows for endless scalability at a significantly lower price than physical hardware without compromising security or compliance. More and more enterprises are ditching their data centers, and start-ups are deploying their applications straight to the cloud. The cloud has proven itself reliable and in just a matter of time will be the future computing for all companies. Those companies who are not ready to give up their data centers can still leverage the benefits of the cloud by creating a cost effective business continuity plan. Instead of doubling infrastructure, a company can simply replicate its environment on the cloud, pay for only the cost of standby servers and possibly never have to launch the replicated environment resulting in an economical Disaster Recovery solution.
VMware to AWS
Sounds too good to be true, right? Well fortunately for VMware users it’s not. AllCloudd has leveraged a combination of technologies in order to create a first of its kind DR service which enables VMware users to directly recover their Virtual Machines on Amazon Web Services(AWS). Until now, there hasn’t been a way for these two platform giants to communicate. There are few cloud options for VMware users and none of them leverage AWS, the world’s leading cloud platform. AllCloud is the first in Israel to connect the world of Virtual Machines with the world of Amazon Web Services. AllCloud’s fully managed DR service allows for backward and forward recovery with an option for partial recovery only, as well as complete visibility of virtual infrastructure and backup at all times.
Why AWS?
AllCloud has chosen to use Amazon infrastructure for its DR solution because Amazon is the leading public cloud platform, proving itself reliable, flexible, cost-effective, secure and scalable. AWS offers the storage, compute, and networking components necessary for a redundant DR solution for VMware Virtual Machines.
Storage
Amazon S3 offers a storage infrastructure designed for critical and primary data storage. Objects are redundantly stored on many devices across multiple facilities within a region which is designed to provide a 99.99% durability. Amazon EBS provides the ability to create point-in-time snapshots of data volumes which can be used as the starting point for new EBS volumes, and protect data for long-term durability because they are stored within Amazon S3. After a volume is created, it can be attached to a running Amazon EC2 instance. EBS volumes provide off-instance storage that persists independently from the life of an instance and is replicated across multiple servers in an Availability Zone to prevent the loss of data from the failure of any single component.
Compute
Amazon EC2 which act as virtual machines provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Within minutes, Amazon EC2 instances can be created under complete controlled. For DR purposes, the ability to rapidly create virtual machines that you can control is critical.
Amazon Machine Images or AMIs are preconfigured with operating systems, and some preconfigured AMIs might also include application stacks. In the context of DR, configuring and identifying your own AMIs is strongly recommended so that they can launch as part of the recovery procedure.
AWS Regions consist of one or more Availability Zones. Availability Zones are distinct locations that are engineered to be insulated from failures in other Availability Zones. They also provide inexpensive, low-latency network connectivity to other Availability Zones in the same region. By launching Instances in separate Availability Zones, applications can be protected from the failure of a single location.
Networking
Amazon Direct Connect makes it easy to set up a dedicated network connection from premises to AWS. In many cases, this can reduce network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and provide a more consistent network experience than Internet-based connections.
Benefits
Let’s review the benefits of using AWS for Disaster Recovery:
-
Security
-
Elasticity
-
Automation
-
High Availability and Performance
-
Cost-effectiveness
-
Adherence to strict compliance regulations
-
Fast retrieval avoids fines for missing compliance deadlines
-
Ability to quickly add any amount of data
-
No need to purchase hardware or licenses
-
Backward and forward recovery
-
Virtually no downtime
Consult with us!
If your company is currently running VMware and operating without a comprehensive business continuity plan, it will be beneficial to take this step on the AWS cloud. If you already have a plan that involves physical hardware, it may be worthwhile to do a long term price comparison with AllCloud’s DR-as-a-Service on AWS. For more information on the complete service and pricing visit, contact us.
Stay tuned for more blog posts and case studies about the details and success of our DR-as-a-Service.