With always-on consumers, unrelenting cyber threats and the cost of downtime, backup and disaster recovery solutions have become essential components of any successful business. However, when deciding on the appropriate solution, decisionmakers are often mistaken about what constitutes disaster recovery and what backup. As often they think backup is a complete or sufficient solution should disaster strike.
What is Backup-as-a-Service
Backup in the simplest terms means copying data into a secondary form such as an archive file to use in the event of a disaster to restore the original file. Backup-as-a-Service refers to cloud-based backup connecting systems to a private, public or hybrid cloud which is in turn managed by an outside provider. Backup-as-a-Service is the most basic connection between on-prem and the cloud. Service levels for BaaS are based on the level of service contracted such as setting up backup windows and establishing recovery time and recovery point objectives.
What is Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service
Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (or DRaaS), on the other hand, is a strategic plan to protect an enterprise against natural or human-induced disasters. It concerns failover processing to a standby site (failover site) in the cloud to ensure uninterrupted production. The failover site could be located on either the public cloud or a DRaaS vendor-owned cloud. It can even run on-prem in a private cloud. This site continues to run until IT repairs the on-prem environment. Failover can either be manual or automated.
What is the difference and why do I need both?
From the definitions above backup and disaster recovery is clearly not synonymous but do go hand-in-hand to facilitate business continuity. To contextualise: the difference between backup and disaster recovery comes down to breadth. Where backup is the actual copying of files and data, disaster recovery is the plan or strategy to put the backups into action when responding to a disruptive event such as a hurricane or a cyberattack. Disaster recovery can, therefore, be seen as the umbrella term under which backup resides.
Backup certainly is important, but a disaster recovery plan ensures full protection. To do this, the first step is storing your backups offsite either through a cloud-hosted backup or at a separate location away from your servers. Cloud-hosted backup is the most reliable solution and the easiest and fastest to access. In the event of a disaster, time is of the essence and a major advantage of a disaster recovery plan it that it mirrors your drives and servers which allows for faster recovery. Virtual servers with proper disaster recovery installed can recover in as little as minutes.
For the majority of organizations, backup and disaster recovery strategies are absolute essentials to maintain the health of their business. It is therefore important to understand the difference between backup and disaster recovery in order to formulate effective plans focused on minimizing downtime. Don’t wait for disaster to strike, act today.
Stage2Data offers cloud backup by Cohesity as well as DRaaS at 25 USD through expert partner, Veeam.
