All businesses need a Business Continuity Plan. This crucial plan ensures that a business is prepared for internal or external events or threats to business operations. A Disaster Recovery Plan is a critical part of the overall Business Continuity Plan and helps to ensure business resiliency.

A Disaster Recovery plan is a set of policies, tools and procedures to enable restoration or continuation of vital technology infrastructure and systems following a natural or human-induced disaster.

Questions that need to be careful considered are:

What is needed to a provide minimum amount of service?

What is needed to restore full service?

What is the business impact if downtime progresses?

What is the cost of downtime?

What amount of money will be spent on Disaster Recovery preparation as compared to the value of potential losses?

In general, there are four models of Disaster Recovery to consider for cloud computing services. All of the models use a Virtual Private Cloud as the Disaster Recovery location. (VPC-DR)

Model 1 - Backup and Restore

Machines images are made of every server and stored in the VPC-DR. Back up of data is stored within the VPC-DR and updated frequently. When an event occurs, the machine images are used to launch virtual machines.

Advantages: Low cost, this is the cheapest option, no cost to store data on the Cloud, opportunity to provide innovative customer service to mitigate perceived poor service.

Disadvantages: Recovery time measured in hours (~12 hrs), requires real-time manual configuration, negative effects on business brand, potential lost of customers.

Use Case: Non critical business, business that have very little capital

Model 2 - Synchronize Databases

Machines images are made of every server and stored in the VPC-DR. Back up of data is stored within the VPC-DR and updated frequently. A database is created within the VPC-DR and synchronized with the original database. When an event occurs, the machine images are used to launch virtual machines and the database is already active.

Advantages: Relatively low cost, opportunity to provide innovative customer service to mitigate perceived poor service.

Disadvantages: Recovery time measured in hours (~8-10 hrs), requires real time manual configuration, negative effects on business brand, potential lost of customers.

Use Case: Non critical business

Model 3 - Small Scale Replication

Strategically replicate a few original servers into the VPC-DR using small sized virtual machines. Place the new servers into autoscaling groups that remain running. Create DNS policy and configuration to failover to the VPC-DR. When an event occurs, traffic will be dynamically routed to the VPC-DR and servers will automatically scale to accommodate demand.

Advantages: Cost savings by running small scale system, doesn’t require any manual configuration, minimized damage to business brand

Disadvantages: Recovery time measured in minutes (~45-60 min), inadequate restoration time for critical business

Use Case: Business that need high availability and high performance

Model 4 - Total Replication

Create full scale replication of entire system in the VPC-DR. Create DNS policy and configuration to failover to the VPC-DR. When an event occurs, traffic will be dynamically routed to the VPC-DR and cloud computing services will continue as usual.

Advantages: Recovery time measured in seconds, maintain business brand, doesn’t require any manual configuration

Disadvantages: High cost, most expensive option

Use Case: Highly critical businesses that need high availability and high performance

Disaster Recovery Plans are critical to business operations and continued success. Expertise is needed to evaluate and update policies, implement procedures and train employees. An examination of statistical data should set off alarms of the catastrophic effects of not having a Disaster Recovery Plan.

Statistical Data

It is reported that 54% of companies have experienced prolonged downtime, 40%-60% of small businesses never reopen after a disaster, 90% fail if they don’t reopen quick enough and 1 in 5 companies don’t have a disaster recovery plan. These statistics and more are included in the following links:

invenioit.com/continuity/disaster-recovery-..

comparitech.com/data-recovery-software/disa..

Written by Kenya Carl 4/20/22