The 6 Types of Disaster Recovery Plan Solutions

Data security is the number one priority for businesses, especially against unpredictable disasters. Disaster recovery plans (DRP) help keep data safe, mitigate costs and maintain business operations in the event of a disaster, whether a natural disaster, a cyber attack, human error or equipment failure.

A key component of a DRP is having a secondary site for data storage – the site replicates data between the original site and the recovery site. Then that data is extracted to help rapidly restore business-critical operations in the event of a disaster.

There are several different DRP solutions that a business can implement. For example, some companies can afford to be down for a few hours while others need to restore operations immediately. Since each business is different, no plan is a one-size-fits-all – all solutions have benefits and disadvantages, so your business must evaluate how they can comply with your company’s needs and priorities.

1. Data Center Disaster Recovery

The first DRP solution is a data center, a physical building meant to protect data, ensure business operations continuity and provide a fast recovery time. When it comes to data centers, the entire building plays a role – physical security support personnel, backup power, HVAC, utilities server security are all involved. All elements must be in working order to overcome a disaster, so some natural disasters might be an issue.

Some data centers can house multiple businesses into one, so check that it can maintain the businesses if a disaster occurs. The other downside to data centers is that they are costly to build and upkeep.

2. Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery

Storing data in the cloud is becoming more popular, as it cuts costs and provides rapid recovery. It also offers scalability, flexibility and reduced capital expenditure.

This solution involves using a cloud provider’s data center as a recovery site instead of a physical building with personnel and systems. The company leverages the infrastructure and services provided by the cloud-service provider to replicate its systems and data to the cloud. An IT team then implements an automatic workload failure to a public cloud for immediate recovery.

3. Virtualization Disaster Recovery

Much like the cloud, virtualization disaster recovery negates the need for a physical location. However, instead of only backing up data, the entire IT infrastructure is backed up, and off-site virtual machines on reserve or in the cloud can run the infrastructure from anywhere. This means you can quickly pivot your business operations, as you can run the virtual environment to any device at any location.

The smaller IT footprint results in frequent replication and quick failover, which helps bring operations online faster – recovery can take as little as a few minutes. However, it does require routine data, workload and infrastructure transfers.

4. Disaster Recovery as a Service

Disaster recovery as a service, or DRaaS, is a cloud-based commercial service where a third-party provider leverages the cloud to host and run a company’s replicated secondary site or server. It’s somewhat like a virtualization plan except the provider handles everything for you - this allows the company to focus on itself and recover quickly without maintaining a data center and resources.

This is another popular and fast-growing service, but you need to ensure the same disaster that affected your business won't impact the DRaaS provider and that it can handle your company’s infrastructure, as many DRaaS providers service multiple businesses at the same time.

5. Cold vs. Warm vs. Hot Sites

Regarding physical locations, businesses have three options: cold sites, warm sites or hot sites.

Cold sites are the simplest type and the most cost-effective of the three, but they take the longest to get operational systems up and running. Cold sites are predetermined off-site locations equipped with the basic infrastructure, idle services and utilities (power, cooling, AC), but they lack the necessary equipment and hardware to operate immediately – businesses must manually send the data and set up the hardware to resume operations.

Warm sites are the middle ground between cold and hot sites. These have all the elements of a cold site, along with partial equipment and hardware in place. However, they’re still missing the necessary data and system configuration to resume business operations – this means warm sites have faster recovery times than cold ones. Still, neither are as quick and efficient as hot sites.

Hot sites are fully functional backup sites with operational replicas of the entire work environment – data, hardware, software, IT infrastructure, systems, applications, personnel and more. These are the most expensive of the three, as you must have duplicates of everything on top of the maintenance requests, but they’re also the most optimal – the business does not have to do anything but turn on a switch. Downtime is eliminated and business operations can rapidly recover, as everything is on standby and ready for use.

6. Data Backup and Recovery Plan

This is the most basic type of Disaster Recovery Plan – the business regularly creates data backups and stores them in a secure off-site location. The backups are then retrieved and used to restore systems in the event of a disaster.

Data backups and recovery often include the 3-2-1 rule: having three copies of data on two different media types and another copy off-site, like on cloud storage or an encrypted storage device. Businesses should regularly monitor the data restoration process to ensure the data is being properly backed up.

• What to Consider When Choosing a DRP Solution?

  Location: You need to ensure that the solution is far away enough from your main center so it won’t be affected by the same disaster. However, if the site is too far away, there might be a time delay in data synchronization, which might become costly.

• Cost of solution: If you’re a small to medium-sized business, you might not be able to afford some of the more expensive plans. Look at the required equipment, personnel and maintenance costs to understand what you can afford.
• Downtime: As mentioned earlier, some businesses can be offline for a few hours while others need to be up and running within a few minutes. Choose a plan that meets your downtime preferences, including recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO).
• Scalability: You must also assess whether the solution can scale along with your business. You might want to consider a better plan if it can’t handle increasing data volumes, additional users or an evolving IT infrastructure.
• Cyber security compliance: Ensure that your DRP and site comply with relevant industry regulations, data protection standards and cybersecurity compliance regulations. You should also follow these best practices to safeguard your sensitive data and information.

How Thriveon Can Help

Don’t wait until it’s too late and your company is in the dark.

Thriveoncan review your risks and help you choose the most cost-effective plan that keeps your business properly protected.

Schedule a meeting with us today.