The traditional methods of data recovery that depended on hardware and tape-based solutions are now a thing of the past. More and more companies are moving to cloud-based data recovery solutions that offer smarter means of recovering critical data in the event of any disruption. The IT managers are confident that the cloud-based Philadelphia data recovery solution they choose provides more reliable data storage and retrieval coupled with efficient data recovery.
When selecting cloud-based data recovery solutions, you have the option of transiting selective and sensitive data that is critical for a business to the cloud while maintaining other data on site. Such hybrid solution is often a cost-effective method of integrating cloud services with the day-to-day operation of the company in backup and recovery.
Why you might need cloud backup and recovery
Quick data recovery holds the key to maintaining business continuity by minimizing operational downtime. If you have faced problems in this regard, that resulted in business disruption, then the cloud solutions could work well for you. There might be reasons why you would require speedier data recovery, primarily to comply with some regulatory requirements to ensure minimal or no disruption for which the cloud recovery solution is just the answer. For raising the bar of IT performance, you might set the goal of making the data recovery and restoration system much more efficient by attaining recovery speeds that match the organization’s performance standard for which you have to depend on cloud data backup and recovery solutions.
Balancing budget and performance
When you move to the cloud, the expenses of operation automatically convert from capital expenditure to operational expenditure. Naturally, the budget becomes a prime consideration to justify the performance enhancement that you achieve by migrating to the cloud. There must be the perfect balance between the budget and performance. There are some more factors to consider before you take a final call.
Analyze the cost of cloud
The scope of cloud services should include backup and recovery of databases, files, server images for both virtual and physical servers without any restrictions on the number of endpoints and servers together with round the clock support of the engineers. All these push up the cost of cloud services. To contain the costs within budget, you must be selective about using the cloud services for critical data only. Moreover, you have to keep in mind the additional cost that can arise from scaling up the services that might be required to accommodate additional data in future.
Judge the backup speed
The speed of data recovery and capacity handling abilities of the cloud solutions are essential determinants in selecting the optimal cloud service. Speed is necessary to recover data quickly and meet the backup window. To ensure that systems and applications backup happens with minimal disruption within a specified window, you have to rely on the high rate of data transfer that can even go up to 5 TB data within 12 hours.
Shifting the focus away from hardware-based recovery
Legacy data recovery systems that depend on tape and hardware are incapable of handling today’s complex data efficiently, and it is also not cost effective at all. Moreover, it takes quite long time for recovery to restore normalcy during unplanned downtime and especially when affected by natural disasters like hurricanes and storms. According to data available from surveys, organizations experience on an average 10 to 20 hours unplanned downtime annually, and this does not include outages occurring from natural disasters. Considering that the average hourly downtime cost is $100,000, the financial impact on business is enormous. The cost increases further when organizations have to wait for the replacement of an appliance.
Switching over to cloud does away with the waiting for hardware and the speed of recovery is much faster. In the event of a disaster, organizations can get to work immediately in recovering data without having to wait for any external assistance of hardware or other resources.
Recovery time objective (RTO) setting
The time that the organization can afford to maintain business continuity without accessing data represents the recovery time. Once you know the recovery time, you can ascertain the parameters you need to provide backup and storage that helps to select the suitable cloud solution. The recovery time varies according to organizations needs and can range from one hour to one day.
Provide better user experience
The flexibility in accessing the cloud solution from any location enables better managing of the IT systems, as the cloud is accessible via the web. The continuous live support of the cloud service provider is another important consideration. Moreover, any solution has to be compliant with HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and International Traffic in Arms Regulations.
Make a right beginning by using these tips to decide on moving to a cloud platform for data recovery.
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