What Are Backup and Disaster Recovery Solutions?

Whether you have documents, files, servers, or applications that your business relies on, data loss can have a profound impact. It can result in financial losses, a damaged reputation, and in the worst-case scenario, lawsuits or regulatory actions against your organization. Backup and disaster recovery solutions help protect your information from data loss and provide a path back to operations when you experience an outage.

Generally speaking, there are two types of backup and disaster recovery solutions: backup-only or a complete solution that also includes Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). Both options can be sourced from cloud services providers and managed service providers, and the best solution will be based on your specific business needs and requirements.

Backup is the process of copying data onto a separate storage medium or device, often on a regular basis, to reduce the amount of time needed to restore the original data. While this provides some protection, it is a manual and often insufficient method for protecting your organization against unplanned data loss events, especially if the backup is not stored offsite.

Onsite backup is where a physical storage device is kept on-site, usually in a storage closet or data center. It is typically connected to the computer being backed up via a local area network (LAN) connection or a USB or other external hard drive. This method is susceptible to hardware failures, and the longer it is between backup copies, the more potential for data loss in the event of a restore.

The other type of backup is offsite backup, where a hard drive or other storage device is regularly moved offsite to another location. This can be more secure and reliable than onsite backups, as the data is less likely to be affected by a local disaster. However, it does add cost and complexity to the system being backed up.

There are many different vendors that offer backup and disaster recovery solutions, including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Rubrik, Veeam, and more. The best solution will be based on your specific requirements, including your business continuity needs and budget. Some solutions will be more comprehensive than others, offering DRaaS in addition to backup, archiving, and test/dev.

For example, Axcient offers a single platform that incorporates data protection, disaster recovery, archiving, and more. It provides one-hour RTO and eight-hour RPO, and it supports hybrid IT environments with a self-service architecture and a cloud mirroring option.

Another vendor to consider is IBM, which provides a backup and recovery solution for VMware and Hyper-V environments. Its Spectrum Protect platform combines backup, archiving, and recovery for physical and virtual infrastructures with searchable catalogs and role-based administration. The solution is also available as an as-a-service option, and it is recommended for buyers looking to protect highly virtualized on-premises and cloud IT environments. cloud disaster recovery services