The right IT disaster recovery solutions can help you get your business back up and running after a disruption, protecting data from loss, as well as ensuring that critical IT processes and systems are available at all times. However, the right solution depends on the specific needs of your company, including data protection and security requirements and scalability for growth. In addition to deploying a robust backup and recovery system, it is important for companies to train employees in emergency procedures to keep business going while working from home or other locations away from the office.
While it is impossible to protect against every possible disaster, the IT recovery solutions you deploy should be able to minimize downtime and restore business continuity without breaking the bank. To accomplish this, organizations must carefully consider their priorities and the risks that will impact productivity if an outage occurs. For example, it is often more cost-effective to prioritize “must-have” infrastructure than “nice-to-have” infrastructure in an IT disaster recovery plan. A network diagram can help you identify these infrastructure dependencies.
To reduce costs, many businesses are opting for a cloud-based DR solution to save on hardware and infrastructure maintenance. This type of managed IT service provides complete DR capabilities, from backup and storage to failover and recovery, through a SaaS model that is easily scalable. In addition to providing cloud-based backup and disaster recovery, a DRaaS solution can include built-in orchestration to automate processes and reduce the manual overhead involved in implementing and maintaining an IT disaster recovery plan.
Unlike traditional backup and recovery systems, a DRaaS solution leverages virtual machines (VMs) instead of physical hardware to run IT systems. This eliminates the need to invest in and maintain a separate physical server for DR purposes and allows you to scale up or down your VMs depending on your IT environment’s needs. Moreover, the scalability of a DRaaS solution reduces your overall IT spend by enabling you to pay for only what you need.
When deploying it disaster recovery solutions, it is critical to test and verify that they work properly when an outage occurs. An experienced MSP can perform a variety of tests, including screenshot verification, to ensure that your backup and recovery systems will work when needed. This testing can also identify any issues that might be overlooked during a crisis and ensure that your IT disaster recovery solution is ready for action when it is needed.