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Disaster Recovery & The Cloud

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DRaaS offerings are mature and dependable. Now IT just needs to think differently about continuity. >>

It’s 3:30 a.m. in a raging supercell thunder-storm. Do you know where your disaster recovery plan is? How about your backup data, redundant servers, and off-site facil-ity? Can you spin up mission-critical busi-

ness applications? And no, two out of three isn’t good enough.Everyone pays lip service to the impor-

tance of resiliency, but CIOs have a lot of pri-orities, with more added every day: figure out whether software-defined networking is a fit, how much of the IT budget the CMO now controls, and how the heck DevOps would ever work here. Spending hundreds of staff hours and seven figures to mitigate a 1%, or even 10%, risk scenario — and then keeping that plan current in today’s level of technol-ogy churn — doesn’t seem like a great re-turn on investment when you’re struggling

to meet new service requests. As a result, just 41% of respondents to our InformationWeek 2014 State of Enterprise Storage Survey say they have a disaster recovery and business continuity plan and test it regularly.

But what if you could shift the cost equa-tion of disaster recovery one decimal point to the left by being open to a new way of doing business?

Cloud-based disaster recovery services combine public cloud infrastructure and SaaS automation software to make implementing world-class continuity easier than it’s ever been. Today’s disaster-recovery-as-a-service market includes big IaaS shops such as Ama-zon Web Services and IBM as well as special-ists including PHD Virtual and Zerto. For data transport between on-premises and cloud-hosted systems, IT can take advantage of

enterprise-class cloud backup and replication software from firms like Asigra, CommVault, and TwinStrata. Cloud providers maintain geographically distributed datacenter facili-ties with state-of-the-art uptime and security.

If you tier your data and prioritize services and applications, you can take advantage of granular subscription models that reflect a wide range of cost, performance, availability, recovery time and recovery point objectives, and redundancy options.

When does a DRaaS offering reach the level of enterprise class? It needs to go beyond the basic cloud-based backup services we profile in our InformationWeek Cloud Storage, Backup and Synchronization Buyer’s Guide to include a full panoply of application encapsulation, data replication, failover/failback automation, and testing services that deliver familiar IT

April 2014 2informationweek.com

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By Kurt Marko @krmarko

DOWNLOAD PDF Disaster Recovery & The CloudDRaaS offerings are mature and dependable. Now IT just needs to think differently about continuity.

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Next Wave Of Business Tech

Engage with Oracle president Mark Hurd, Box founder Aaron Levie, UPMC CIO Dan Draw-baugh, GE Power CIO Jim Fowler, former Netflix cloud architect Adrian Cockcroft, and other lead-ers of the Digital Business move-ment at the InformationWeek Conference and Elite 100 Awards Ceremony, to be held in conjunc-tion with Interop in Las Vegas, March 31 to April 1. Click here for full agenda.

April 2014 3informationweek.com

runbook processes in a service model. Backup is purely about data protection,

while disaster recovery is restoration of the entire application infrastructure at another facility, explains Network Com-puting contributor David Hill. Business continuity is about both operational re-covery and disaster recovery. “Operational recovery pertains to recovery from a spe-cific problem at a primary site, such as a server, application, or disk failure,” writes Hill. Cloud DR and BC services bundle three elements: off-site data protection, automated infrastructure and application recovery, and, in the case of DR, cloud-hosted virtual infrastructure.

From IT’s perspective, automating the disaster recovery process and turning it into a service simplifies testing and valida-tion and allows for easier setup of multi-ple failover snapshots for different system and application configurations. Further-more, moving DR to the cloud means there’s no redundant infrastructure that you build and maintain but that sits idle most of the time, and few software im-ages to keep patched and updated.

The existing approach doesn’t inspire great confidence. Our 2013 Backup Tech-

nologies Survey shows 66% still back-ing up directly to tape and just 27% ex-tremely confident in their ability to get the business up and running again in a reasonable time frame after a major disas-ter takes out the main datacenter. Scary, but likely accurate given the pace of new applications coming online.

Cloud makes the DR scenario less com-plicated and highly reproducible. So why isn’t everyone buying in? One reason is that the total cost of cloud DR isn’t al-ways clear cut, and another is that familiar cloud concerns around performance and security hold some back.

Moreover, the stumbling block to quick business recovery is usually not data, it’s applications. In fact, one bright spot is that most enterprises are quite rigorous about retaining data. Our backup tech-nologies survey found 71% of respon-dents clone 90% or more of their physical systems weekly.

Recovering applications is where the breakdown occurs. Eleven percent of backup respondents haven’t tested the restore process for some or all of their ap-plications, while 45% do so haphazardly.

Our advice for the cloud-wary is to look

[DISASTER RECOVERY & THE CLOUD]

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Education And Networking

Learn how cloud computing, software-defined networking, virtualization, wireless, and other key technologies work together to drive business at Interop Las Vegas. It happens March 31 to April 4.

IBM Resource CenterJ�Virtualized data

management and resiliency services

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J�Leveraging the cloud for business resilience

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J�A “how-to” guide on using cloud services for security-rich data backup

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J��Avoiding the pitfalls of outdated disaster recovery plans

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J�Cloud Disaster RecoveryDOWNLOAD NOW

April 2014 4informationweek.com

at adopting DRaaS as a three-step process: Get some cloud storage, then backup, then go all in on disaster recovery.

Embrace Simpler StorageFifty-three percent of our storage survey

respondents say their companies aren’t using cloud storage at all. Most IT-sanctioned adop-tion is tied to specific applications — think a custom PaaS app with a cloud back end.

But let’s be honest: The vast majority of your company’s employees have accounts with cloud file storage services like Box, Dropbox, and Google Drive. You can’t beat them, so get comfortable with the technology and economics of cloud storage. IT should move to integrate cloud with existing on-premises storage pools via gateways, which can greatly simplify data movement to and from the cloud. (We discuss how to make this happen in our State of Storage report.)

Get A Backup PlanJust about one-third of respondents to our

backup survey officially use cloud backup, whether a basic storage platform like AWS S3 or Nirvanix or a full-featured backup service like Mozy, Carbonite, CrashPlan, or EVault. Look for a service capable of backing up

data from local and cloud repositories for all these endpoints: mobile devices, desktops, and physical and virtual servers. End users and IT should be able to restore individual files, directories, app-related data containers (for mobile apps), and entire devices or disk partitions on a self-service basis. Check on whether agents are required. Supporting ser-vices, such as protection for databases and/or database-backed applications like Exchange or SharePoint, are nice to have.

Once you’ve integrated primary storage and are comfortable backing up to the cloud,

move on to disaster recovery. Start by taking an inventory of applications

and data sets and querying business users about how critical each service is. Then work in technical concerns about how much pro-tection each needs by setting RPO (recovery point objective) and RTO (recovery time ob-jective) parameters and whether the work-load can effectively operate on virtualized cloud infrastructure. Most probably can. Be realistic here, since there’s a trade-off be-tween cost and availability. The tighter your RPO and RTO, the more you’ll spend. Business

[DISASTER RECOVERY & THE CLOUD]

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Get This And All Our Reports

Our full report on cloud storage is free with registration. This report includes 34 pages of action-oriented analysis, packed with 27 charts.

What you’ll find:

> 11 biggest enterprise data protection challenges

> Most popular cloud storage uses

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How do (or will) you incorporate cloud storage in the disaster recovery process?

22%19%

13%

15% 13%

1%17%

Cloud Storage And Disaster Recovery

Data: InformationWeek Cloud Storage Survey of 225 business technology professionals at organizations using or planning to use cloud storage services, May 2013

We use/will use a SaaS DR service that incorporates cloud-based storage

We keep/will keep cloud backups of our non-cloud-hosted production data store

Our production data store is/will be on the cloud, as well as our backups

Our production data store is/will be on the cloud and our backups are/will be in a noncloud location

Don’t know

Other

We don’t/won’t incorporate cloud storage into the disaster recovery process

April 2014 5informationweek.com

units that categorize everything as “critical” should be shown their cost (you are allocat-ing these, aren’t you?) to bring the full slate of services and data back up quickly. Then priori-tization tends to get easier.

DRaaS providers typically put together a bundle of features including:

>> Snapshot backups or continuous data replication;

>> Virtual compute servers (typically mult-itenant IaaS, but can be dedicated);

>> Automated failover and failback with ap-plication orchestration; and

>> Data restoration software that creates application virtual machines, reconfigures IP addresses, and runs needed customization scripts.

Typically, DRaaS vendors can deliver full ap-plication recovery in half a day. For example, SunGard will guarantee a server RTO of four hours for up to 50 systems and an RTO of “near zero” for data stores.

It’s easier for a company to adopt cloud DR services if it has already virtualized applica-tions and is running from consolidated storage, whether on common physical arrays or logi-

cally centralized by distributed cloud file sys-tems. However, a full-fledged private cloud isn’t a prerequisite. As this AWS case study profiling a UK power company illustrates, the primary requirement is to create virtual images for all key applications. The applications don’t need to be running virtualized under normal condi-tions, but you do need to test them on VMs.

Cost ControlWe’ve all heard horror stories of millions of

dollars in losses from multiday system out-ages. But many companies live with that risk because the cost to buy and host redundant infrastructure and run a disaster recovery drill every six months is too high versus the perceived risk. The cloud will change the eco-nomic calculus. How much depends on how you do DR today.

If you pay for idle facilities and equipment, whether in a company-owned datacenter or colocation cage, DRaaS eliminates the need and cost for those idle resources. If your DR plan doesn’t include dark sites and instead re-lies on migrating VMs around geographically dispersed live datacenters or colo facilities, it means your infrastructure must be overprovi-sioned to handle a DR event. Such overprovi-sioning is another expense DRaaS can elimi-

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Previous NextDo you have recovery time objectives or recovery point objectives for data stored in the cloud?

5%

49%

11%

35%

Up And Running

Data: InformationWeek Cloud Storage Survey of 225 business technology professionals at organizations using or planning to use cloud storage services, May 2013

Yes, RTO

Yes, RPO

Yes, both RTO and RPONo

[DISASTER RECOVERY & THE CLOUD]

nate And that’s just the infrastructure cost. IT pros must still operate the replication and failover processes themselves. With DRaaS, these are automated as part of a usage-based service subscription.

Best case, some vendors advertise 90% cost savings for modestly sized, fully virtualized VMware environments. We find that plausible in select cases, where IT funds the overhead of redundant infrastructure and staff time for DR training, testing, and implementation.

As you evaluate DRaaS providers, though, don’t just focus on the base spec sheet. Op-tions can hit you with hidden costs. Ask about storage and compute services and ad-ditional network costs, testing fees, and per-incident charges. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any publicly available pricing calculators, so you’ll have to request a quote from each service to see the details.

Elephant In The RoomIT pros still have a mixed view of the public

cloud. They like the cost and convenience but are wary of performance, reliability, and most of all the safety of their data.

Virtually every time we ask survey respon-dents what’s holding them back from cloud services — for storage, applications, test and

dev platforms, you name it — the No. 1 issue is security. Our storage survey found that of those not using or considering cloud services, security trumped every other concern by more than 30 points.

Frankly, we counter with the observation that most internal IT operations aren’t exactly paragons of impenetrability. Just ask Target. Indeed, among respondents to the Informa-tionWeek Cloud Security and Risk Survey, over half said their cloud providers’ controls are as good as or better than their own. AWS now meets the stringent FedRAMP security standards. How many enterprise IT shops could clear this hurdle?

Small And Branch Offices At Most RiskCompanies with retail locations or remote

branch offices and small and midsize busi-nesses are particularly vulnerable to disaster-driven downtime. Few IT staff are monitoring the health of remote data and applications — our backup survey finds 43% of respondents don’t back up remote office data at all. The majority of those who do back up keep the media in the same location, providing weak relief from a disaster. Pretty difficult to recover if the office is under 5 feet of water.

Another reason small shops and branch locations are great candidates for cloud DR is that their data sets tend to be of modest

April 2014 6informationweek.com

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2014 2013

Do you have a disaster recovery and business continuity strategy and process?

Disaster Recovery And Business Continuity

Yes, and we test it regularly

Yes, but we rarely test it

No, but we plan to implement one in the next 12 months

No

Data: InformationWeek State of Enterprise Storage Survey of 242 business technology professionals at organizations with 50 or more employees in January 2014 and 303 in January 2013

41%41%

45%41%

10%14%

4%4%

[DISASTER RECOVERY & THE CLOUD]

April 2014 7informationweek.com

size. Gartner estimates that of the thousands of DRaaS customers, 85% to 90% are small, typically with three to six production applica-tions, somewhere between five and 60 VMs, and less than 10 TB total storage. Our backup survey, which skewed to the smaller end of the spectrum with just over half of respon-dents from organizations with fewer than 500 employees, found that 56% back up less than 50 TB. This places them solidly in the cloud service sweet spot, where it can be difficult and expensive to regularly move hundreds of terabytes over the Internet.

Clogged PipesThat brings us to our last critical consider-

ation: network bottlenecks may be caused by off-site data replication, whether to public clouds, dedicated colo equipment, or even internal backup sites. When buying DR or backup services, it’s essential to understand what size pipe you need to get replication done in a reasonable amount of time. Even if you have a small data set, don’t ignore WAN sizing. You won’t get satisfactory results with an entry-level DSL circuit.

Many shops are up against the wall, band-width-wise: 68% of respondents to our 2014 InformationWeek Next-Gen WAN Survey say

they expect demand to increase in the com-ing year or two. That’s up dramatically from just 34% saying the same in our 2013 sur-vey. Clearly, mobility and use of public cloud services are behind this spike. Nearly half are planning or already in the midst of WAN upgrades.

Successful DR is as much about process discipline as policies and technology. Unfor-tunately, as anyone who has failed to make good on a New Year’s resolution knows, con-venience, habit, and inertia beat good in-tentions every time. But the more complex

your technology and processes are, the more likely they will fail under the stress of a disas-ter. And one thing is for sure — IT isn’t get-ting any less complicated. If you’ve avoided looking at your DR setup and processes lately because you didn’t think you could afford to do it better, reconsider.

Kurt Marko is an IT industry veteran. Catch his interactive Interop session on whether enterprises are acting like dino-saurs when they want rigid control and precise planning, or if the new startup sensibility is a flash in the pan. Write to us at iwletters@ubm.com.

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Previous NextWhat is your typical recovery time for system data stored in the cloud — meaning, how long would it take to restore a business system from backup?

11%4%

10%13%

16%

16%

10%

20%

Recovery Time

Data: InformationWeek Cloud Storage Survey of 103 business technology professionals at organizations with recovery time objectives for data stored in the cloud, May 2013

< 15 minutes

15-30 minutes

30 minutes-1 hour

1-2 hours4-8 hours

More than 8 hours

We have no idea

2-4 hours

[DISASTER RECOVERY & THE CLOUD]