E-Book

August 2014

Overcome todays disaster recovery challenges

How disaster recovery in the

cloud impacts it modernization
The cloud has a complicated relationship to DR and data protection. Some IT admins replace
their backup product with a backup service. Others supplement their backup product with
cloud storage. Still others add cloud-based DR to on-premise backups. By Jason Buffington

D Plan on a Hybrid or

D2D2C Architecture


ackup as a Service
DB
Considerations

D Backing up SaaS

Taking Backup
D

Products to the Cloud

Overcome todays disaster recovery challenges

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Considerations

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Plan on a Hybrid
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to have an IT modernization discussion that doesnt include

the cloud, but the details beyond that
will vary greatly:
t is impossible

n Some will replace their legacy backup product with a

backup service

n Some should supplement their current backup product

with cloud storage

n Some ought to add a cloud-based DR capability to their
on-premises backup product
n Some are wrestling with how to protect the
primary production workloads that have moved
to the cloud

2 How

d i s a s t e r r e c ov e ry i n t h e c l o u d i m pa ct s i t m o d e r n i z at i o n

Heres a detailed look at each of these four issues that

affect data protection and disaster recovery in the cloud,
starting with replacing legacy backups with a backup service. Then, Ill take a closer look at augmenting your existing backup product with cloud storage. Because some of you
will choose to add a cloud-based disaster recovery capability to your on-premises backup product, Ill look at some
ideas that merit consideration. Finally, Ill investigate how
you can protect your chief production workloads that have
moved to the cloud.

Considerations for BaaS

For organizations who are struggling with their legacy

Overcome todays disaster recovery challenges

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Backup as a
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Considerations

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Plan on a Hybrid
or D2D2C
Architecture

Backing up SaaS

backup product, where any kind of upgrade is likely to be

a significant replacement, backup as a service (BaaS) may
be a good option. These products enable a fresh start for
data backup that changes the architecture of the backup
product, the agent technologies, and the economic model
through with backups are achieved. BaaS products can also
provide a different kind of agility, because the data is natively accessible or restorable from the cloud provider.
To be clear, BaaS is just like many other as-a-service
offerings, in that they are a cloudbased delivery of an IT
function. The economics are different, the management
experience is different, and the underlying infrastructure is
designed to be delivered at enterprise-class scale by service
providers, instead of a centralized IT department. But at
its core, it is still just another backup product, with agent
technologies on production platforms, backup schedules,
and restore jobs. As such, BaaS wont fix infrastructure issues, unwieldy production servers that are hard to back
up, or drastically change the administration time devoted
to backup jobs or restore requests. This can be challenging
when it comes to DR in the cloud.

Taking your current backup and

recovery product to the cloud
For organizations whose current backup and recovery
product has the modern platform capabilities that the organization needs and is performing at least adequately, BaaS
may not be the best answer. Instead, most contemporary
backup products have the ability to leverage cloud-based
storage as a supplement to the on-premises deployment. In
these cases:
n The existing backup agents on the production servers

remain unchanged
n The existing backup jobs and schedules continue to

operate unaffected
n The existing ability to recover quickly from local storage
doesnt diminish
n A tertiary copy of the backup data now resides in a
cloud repository for compliance or DR purposes
While all of that sounds good and easy, it can come with
trade-offs because the data is replicated from the backup

BaaS wont fix infrastructure issues, unwieldy production servers that are hard to
back up, or drastically change the time devoted to backup jobs or restore requests.

3 How

d i s a s t e r r e c ov e ry i n t h e c l o u d i m pa ct s i t m o d e r n i z at i o n

Overcome todays disaster recovery challenges

Home

Backup as a
Service
Considerations

Taking Backup
Products to the
Cloud

Plan on a Hybrid
or D2D2C
Architecture

Backing up SaaS

server to the cloud repository can vary greatly and will dramatically affect the agility and recovery options from the
cloud copy. And, again, when it comes to cloud-based disaster recovery, youll want to consider both the pluses and
minuses.

Most organizations should plan on

a hybrid or D2D2C architecture
It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for organizations
of most sizes to maintain the service-level agreements
(SLAs) that users and business owners have come to expect
from recovery times and backup performance. Because of
this, it is strongly recommended that most cloud-enabled
backup and recovery products should be D2D2C configurationsfrom production disk to local backup disks (D2D)
before going to the cloud (2C). That said, D2D2C can take
several permutations:

The method of replication and the type of cloud repository directly affects the immediate usability of the cloud
copy of the data, but some enable easier extensibility of existing backup software and hardware.

It is strongly recommended that

most cloud-enabled backup
and recovery products should be
D2D2C configurations.
Cloud is not likely a tape killer. While other innovative IT
technologies are usurping some use of tape, one should not
necessarily assume that D2D2C is an adequate replacement
for D2D2T (tape), primarily due to most cloud providers
inability or unwillingness to retain data for five, 10 or 15
years. Most cloud-providers use disk as their repository and
therefore dont have a cost-effective way to store data for
that length of time.

n BaaS products with an intermediate caching product on-

site before going to the BaaS repositories

n On-premises backup hardware replicating to a similar

storage array at a service provider

n On-premises backup software replicating to another software instance at a service provider
n On-premises backup software writing to a cloud-storage
repository as a tertiary tier

4 How

d i s a s t e r r e c ov e ry i n t h e c l o u d i m pa ct s i t m o d e r n i z at i o n

Cloud + virtualization = disaster recovery. While not

entirely accurate, the key idea that virtualization (which
makes production servers more portable) and cloud infrastructure (which provides an economical secondary
location) can enable enterprises of all sizes to achieve
rudimentary disaster recovery. This is especially true for
medium-sized organizations that previously didnt have a

Overcome todays disaster recovery challenges

Home

Backup as a
Service
Considerations

Taking Backup
Products to the
Cloud

Plan on a Hybrid
or D2D2C
Architecture

Backing up SaaS

secondary venue to use for BC/DR, while enterprises often

have other options.

Backing up SaaS
While most of this material presumed that the production
servers were traditional on-premises resources, many of
those workloads are starting to move to the cloud, including email platforms, CRM systems like SalesForce, and
file sharing. Unfortunately, many software as a service
(SaaS) products have not yet developed the APIs to enable
traditional third-party backup developers to extend their
enterprise backup coverage for the SaaS platforms. Historically, these APIs come as the platforms grow in mainstream
usebut seldom soon enough. Without those APIs, traditional backup developers have typically been slow to add

5 How

d i s a s t e r r e c ov e ry i n t h e c l o u d i m pa ct s i t m o d e r n i z at i o n

those SaaS offerings to their coverage areas. Because of that,

it is not uncommon for new backup products to come from
startup companies. For example, when VMware hypervisors were gaining initial popularity, it wasnt the traditional
physical server vendors that first mastered VM backups
instead, Veeam, PHD and Quest brought the first products
to market. Later, when VMware released the APIs, the legacy products raced to embrace the capability and catch up to
the early disruptors. It is likely that that pattern will repeat
itself as early innovators are delivering new approaches for
protecting SaaS products like SalesForce, Office365/Google
Docs and email services.
Any way that you look at it, the cloud will likely be part
of every data protection and disaster recovery strategy, but
whether backing up to the cloud or from the cloud, the approaches will vary dramatically. n

Overcome todays disaster recovery challenges

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Considerations

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Cloud

jason buffington is a senior analyst at Enterprise

Strategy Group. He focuses primarily on data protection,

as well as Windows Server infrastructure, management
and virtualization. He blogs atCentralizedBackup.com
and tweets as@Jbuff.

Plan on a Hybrid
or D2D2C
Architecture

How Disaster Recovery in the Cloud

Impacts IT Modernization
is a SearchDisasterRecovery.com e-publication.
Rich Castagna | VP of Editorial/Storage Media Group
Ed Hannan | Managing Editor
Dave Raffo | Senior News Director

Backing up SaaS

Andrew Burton | Senior Site Editor

Linda Koury | Director of Online Design
Neva Maniscalco | Graphic Designer
Jillian Coffin | Publisher

jcoffin@techtarget.com

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d i s a s t e r r e c ov e ry i n t h e c l o u d i m pa ct s i t m o d e r n i z at i o n