It is the 21st century! Where IT has revolutionized the concepts, guidelines, and status of cloud safety, hacking software and malware are also refined and have become more powerful. Honestly speaking, no company is completely safe and can be victimized anytime, anywhere! Unfortunately, on-site or cloud disasters can negatively influence your business permanently. We will discuss cloud disaster recovery best practices in this article.
Any disaster can happen that could be power outages, viruses, disk or hardware problems, natural disasters, human error, or malware attacks compromising the work quality and team’s productivity, the company’s reputation and causing a huge downtime that might make you lose the potential clients. After all, no one tolerates the delayed delivery of services or products.
What is the Difference Between Backup and Disaster Recovery?
No doubt, Cloud disaster recovery, and backup are vital aspects of any successful business and are required for trouble-free working. Implementing one or both in your company can help maintain productivity along with sustaining the continuity of services delivery. Yes, up to some extent, they are interchangeable terms, but in reality, they are two separate components used for safeguarding the information and overall IT infrastructure.
- Backups – It generates a point-in-time duplication of the existing files. Whenever the disaster hits, you can use these replicated files, simply returning the entire IT system to the previously saved state.
- Cloud disaster recovery plans – It comprises a set of measures and procedures to help you keep the operations running remotely with no trouble. It will keep your procedures afloat when the disaster hits.
Cloud Disaster Recovery Best Practices to Plan out a Strategy
- Start with understanding your IT infrastructure, so you get familiar with every aspect of your system. It will help you outline the possible risks.
- Carry out a detailed Business Impact Analysis to understand the possible limitations you will experience in your daily operations at the time of the disaster.
- Produce a detailed Cloud disaster recovery plan based on your Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO). Highlight the reasons you need DR for. The reasons could be “backup, standby, full replication, etc.”
- Get in contact with the reliable and trustworthy Cloud Partner. Look for certain aspects while choosing your service provider, such as the speed of recovery it provides, usability, scalability, security, and ease of installation/setting.
- Once you are done consulting, start planning the design and setup you will implement in your DR infrastructure.
- Write the essential points, instructions, and guidelines of Your Cloud disaster recovery Plan on Paper in the form of a flowchart, so each and every person involved in your plan gets familiar with the process and terms.
- Do not forget to test the planned Cloud disaster recovery strategy to check for loopholes. Or else, you will not be able to know its reliability.
Cloud Disaster Recovery Best Practices
Here are the cloud disaster recovery best practices to get success.
Capable and Suitable DR Service Provider
If you really want to protect your data from disasters, you need to identify and prioritize your IT system along with its dependencies. Many procedures must be well-defined throughout the strategized DR planning. And you cannot do it all by yourself without having any expertise.
It is only possible if you get a service provider capable of carrying out a comprehensive business impact analysis. That is why always pick your provider as intelligent, practical, and smart enough to help you create an effective Cloud disaster recovery plan.
A skilled and expert cloud DR service provider will assist you in identifying the potential dangers your company/IT system might face. The right cloud DR provider will provide what you need!
Encrypt the Data you Back Up
Always go for the backup solution that keeps your data encrypted either when you are communicating, sharing, or simply have saved it in your cloud. Data encryption is the primary step to security.
Plan for Smaller as Well as Large-Scale Recoveries
One cannot imagine the magnitude of the disaster and the impacts it will leave. Typically, most of the disruptions are small-scale and restricted to a specific area but always be ready to face the more significant situation. On the safer side, plan for the large-scale recoveries in Cloud disaster recovery, as well.
The best approach will be adding full backups and creating manifold point-in-time snapshots or copies of the existing/saved data. Why? It will give you more frequent recovery points.
Keep your DR Plan Updated
IT is evolving that is why your system needs to be updated regularly. Considering the fast-paced technology, your company must keep changing the IT and cloud infrastructure to combat the disaster through upgrading the DR plans.
Every enterprise must contain a transitory Cloud disaster recovery plan evaluation with each significant technology deployment, procedure improvement initiative, product promotion, procurement, or new branch merger.
Proper Testing
Never ignore the importance of regular testing. A detailed test should be performed at every level, ensuring safety, security, and good performance. The best option is to conduct cross-functional tests for various mission-critical procedures.
