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Disaster recovery solutions have come in many forms over the years, but there’s been a major shift recently. Whereas older systems relied on physical backups and archived media drives, today’s cloud-based systems offer much more robust options for disaster recovery, as well as everyday data mishaps such as accidental file deletion.

Currently, the majority of cloud-based disaster recovery setups fall into two broad categories: Private Cloud, and Hybrid Cloud.

Private vs Hybrid Cloud Disaster Recovery

I. Private Cloud Systems

Private cloud systems use dedicated equipment, almost always leased from an offsite host, to store a company’s files and applications. These are in large data centers, who may be providing the same services to many businesses at once. These private cloud hosts are providing Infrastructure-as-a-Service, IaaS, which means the interface and operating system powering the cloud is provided by them as well.

The benefits of using data centers revolve around their ability to have robust backup power supplies, or their own redundant backup systems, making them relatively safe and secure even in the most extreme scenarios.

When moving clients onto private clouds, Bi101 partners with Amazon for their track record of stability and absolutely huge data centers.

II. Hybrid Cloud Systems

“Hybrid” cloud is something of a catch-all term, covering a cloud deployment that isn’t centralized in data centers, but not using exclusively using public cloud systems either. A hybrid cloud intelligently combines hardware from a variety of sources, to create a flexible and highly virtualized system.

Bi101 works with Zetta, who are masters of crafting hybrid clouds, combining distribution levels of hardware into single logical servers and operating systems. With redundant systems spread over many locations, the chances a disaster taking out your data center are limited.

This is one of the fastest-growing areas of cloud recovery today, and it’s likely to become more popular -and more scalable- in future years.

RAAS and DRAAS and You

Whichever option a company chooses the key to a successful cloud-based disaster recovery plan is redundancy. The key fault in old tape- and hard-drive based backups is that if the archive catches fire, the data was lost. Today’s cloud systems  allow for extremely high reliability, resilience against all but the worst disasters, and virtually certain data continuance.

Recovery-as-a-Service (RAAS) and Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRAAS) are generally equivalent, utilizing a blend of SaaS options to provide high-quality disaster recovery options, like discussed above, at significant discounts.

In a DRAAS scenario, a single vendor uses a blend of partner companies to provide a mix of software and hardware solutions that are then integrated into a seamless user experience  They can create highly robust hybrid clouds along with the systems to integrate them into your network.cloud computing

Beyond that, DRAAS systems can also allow for remote operation. In the case a primary server went down, for example, your DRAAS vendor can run a backup system off another server. There would be little or (ideally) no downtime, and then operations would continue as normal until the primary unit is back in service. As such, uptime rates of 99.999% are now achievable. That’s about five minutes downtime per year.

DRAAS becomes highly cost-effective because the provider needs to have very little infrastructure in place, and their existing network of high-quality vendor contacts brings a discount on the services.

Top Dog SaaS Options On The Market Today

Bi101 is proud to partner with the best in the industry. If you’re looking to migrate your server or application, here are a few options you might want to be aware of. These are the areas we most often advise our clients to focus on first.

Anti-Virus/Spam/Malware: McAfee, ProofPoint, Mimecast

Email Storage: Google Apps, Office 356

Local File Servers: Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, Egnyte

Customer Relationship Management: NetSuite, Apptivo

Financial Management: NetSuite

However, if you want help navigating the increasingly-crowded airspace around the cloud, Business Intelligence 101 is the partner you need. Our extensive contacts and decades of combined experience in budget-conscious network architecture and applications design can bring you a hand-crafted solution optimized to fit your business’s needs.

Contact Business Intelligence 101 today for a consultation.

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