7 Critical Questions to Demystify DRaaS

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1 WHITE PAPER 7 Critical Questions to Demystify DRaaS 1

2 WHITE PAPER Disaster Recovery for vsphere Environments This whitepaper is not a sermon on Disaster Recovery and why you need it. You don t need a lesson in the perils of disasters or a theoretical business case that proves unpredictable events can damage your data and cost you thousands of dolllars. In fact, if you were not already aware of the need for Disaster Recovery you probably would not be reading this document. Similarly, this is not a lesson on the technologies behind Disaster Recovery or Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service ( DRaaS ) since there are hundreds already available on the web. This abundance of techno-jargon often makes DRaaS seem esoteric, complex and confusing. So what is this whitepaper? It is a guide with a goal to make you a well-informed DRaaS customer by helping you pose insightful yet practical questions to DRaaS vendors. Quickly Clearing the Air on DRaaS You cannot afford to be an ostrich about catastrophic events and data- that would not support business continuity. For that reason you already know something about Disaster Recovery. You may have also learned about Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service and understand that it is based on virtualization and cloud technologies. This gives DRaaS advantages over dedicated DR solutions and is driving adoption. But the reality of DR in general is that you need it more than you want it. You don t want to become a DR expert or immerse yourself in the minutia of services designed for code writers. You have better things to do. Instead, let s address this by becoming appropriately informed on the key issues surrounding DRaaS and the questions you should be asking vendors. Your World: vsphere and Disaster Recovery You run VMware s vsphere and you do it for good reasons. It is enterprise strength and is suited to applications of all sizes. The vsphere community is large. You have confidence in vsphere s and it s been extended to the cloud with vcloud Air. Perhaps you think a cloud-based service is a good way to implement Disaster Recovery. Is it? Given the importance of business continuity, DRaaS should be simple and foolproof. Is it? Given your commitment to vsphere management tools, DRaaS should conform to them. Will it? These are some of the issues that warrant answers. You need to ask critical questions to be a more informed DRaaS decision maker. 2

3 Critical Question #1: Is DRaaS the Right DR Solution? Disaster Recovery can be accomplished several ways. The simplest approach is to back-up data to a secondary media such as tape and store it in a safe place, usually offsite. If a disaster occurs data is restored from the back-up media to your production data center. This lets you retain control over the DR processes and custody of data while avoiding the one big disaster possibility. Offsite mirroring does, however, also require you to procure, finance and maintain extra hardware. This is straightforward and relatively inexpensive, but it is laborious. The duration during which you are out-of-service might be long. If the disaster event puts your data center hardware out of commission all you have is aging data, not a restored operation. Backing up data is better than nothing but it is not robust Business Continuity. DRaaS makes Disaster Recovery a service with powerful economics: hardware is virtualized and shared in the cloud. You treat it as an operating expense so little or no capital expenditures are needed. Since DRaaS is cloud-based data storage is by definition safely offsite. Disaster Recovery can also be done by mirroring data on standby servers and storage located inside your data center. This provides much faster service restoral than data back-up, it gives you full control over the DR processes and you retain total custody of data. However, this method can be expensive as you must procure and maintain extra hardware for mirroring. Since the back-up hardware is in your primary data center it is possible that one catastrophic event takes out data the entire data center, including the DR solution. Implementation of DRaaS is rapid and the DR processes are in your control. DRaaS backs data up into cloud-based storage, however it is not in your direct custody. A better version of this method of Disaster Recovery is to mirror data on standby servers and storage in an offsite data center. Question: Do the economics, ease-of-use and data custody attributes of DRaaS suit your needs? Critical Question #2: How Do I Manage DRaaS? Managing DRaaS or any DR solution entails configuration, failover and failback procedures. A real-time disaster is not the ideal time to be learning these processes, or relearning them if they have been forgotten. DRaaS should be like the airbags in your car: when you need them they should be very easy to employ. DRaaS management should also be centralized. Swivel-chair management is inherently inefficient and adding inefficiency to the tumult of a disaster event will make a bad situation worse. Question: Can I configure and manage DRaaS easily and quickly? Can I do it using the vsphere management tools that I already use and know? 3

4 Critical Question #3: How Does Your DRaaS Solution Handle ? remains your most ubiquitous and important business application. Most organizations run using on-site servers, such as Microsoft Exchange. Backing up is essential both for business reasons and for legal reasons. One tried and true means to do this through block-level storage, a Storage Area Network ( SAN ) and storage-specific back-up software. While effective, a SAN-based solution involves another network, dedicated hardware and unique administrative tasks. It would be far better if DRaaS addressed and addressed it well. Question: Is DR as a standard component of your DRaaS offering? Or, is back-up an decoupled process layered on top of DRaaS? Critical Question #4: Are You, the Vendor, as Stable as My Data? The inner workings of a vendor might strike a sensitive nerve but the criticality of DRaaS gives you the right, if not the obligation, to be certain that a vendor will be there in a time of crisis. If they are not and you are asked Why? a response of I forgot to ask will not elicit much sympathy. Question: Unless a prospective DRaaS vendor is a respected industry giant be prepared to ask plenty of questions to build your foundation of confidence: How large is your company in employees and revenue? Are sales growing quarter-over-quarter? Year-over-year? Critical Question #5: Does Your DRaaS Offer Diversity Among its Back-Up Locations? When using DRaaS you should be able to select where data is stored. After all, some neighborhoods in the cloud are better than others. You may want your data stored in a location that is physically distant from your data center to minimize the impact of a large catastrophic event. On the other hand you may want data and applications backedup in a nearby location to reduce the impact of network latency or to easily relocate staff there and use that site as a failover data center. Local laws may factor into this question as in some countries private data cannot leave the local jurisdiction. A multinational deployment may need to consider this. Question: How many location options do you offer for hosting my data? Where are they? Can I easily switch my data and virtual machines between them if I want to? What network connectivity is available at each? 4

5 Critical Question #6: What Services Do You Offer to Complement DRaaS? Supporting services can add value, increase buying convenience, lower overall cost and accelerate implementation of DRaaS. You should look through a vendor s accessory bin for things you might like. Two examples are: Colocation Services In conjunction with DRaaS you may be interested in hybrid cloud services, such as a Virtual Private Cloud or a Dedicated Cloud to extend your on-premises data center. Network Connectivity DRaaS requires connectivity to the cloud. A simple Internet connection may suffice, but a dedicated connection from your data center to the DRaaS location will be more robust and make failover and failback times more deterministic. Leading telecommunications vendors can offer a choice of dedicated services that support different bandwidths and budgets. Question: What cloud and network-related services can you deliver to make the DRaaS implementation faster, better or both? Critical Question #7: Does your DRaaS Solution Fit an Organization My Size? In theory DRaaS fits an application of any capacity and its price scales up or down to suit you. You should be sure reality follows theory and avoid buying into an initial capacity that is too large or a maximum capacity that is too small. The granularity and scaling of DRaaS should not be so coarse that it is inappropriate for current or future needs. Question: Please show me total pricing today in detail. Can you run scenarios for tomorrow in smaller and larger configurations and show me specific prices? Summary Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service is not black magic if you ask questions and press for complete and accurate replies. CenturyLink Business can not only answer your questions, but it can provide a complete DRaaS solution using vcloud Air, hybrid cloud technology from VMware, the leading vendor of virtualization. About CenturyLink Business CenturyLink Business delivers innovative managed services for global businesses on virtual, dedicated and colocation platforms. It is a global leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprise customers. Parent company CenturyLink, Inc. is the third largest telecommunications company in the United States, and empowers CenturyLink Business with its high-quality advanced fiber optic network. Headquartered in Monroe, LA, CenturyLink is an S&P 500 company and is included among the Fortune 500 list of America s largest corporations. For more information visit Global Headquarters Monroe, LA (800) EMEA Headquarters United Kingdom +44 (0) Asia Pacific Headquarters Singapore CenturyLink. All Rights Reserved. The CenturyLink mark, pathways logo and certain CenturyLink product names are the property of CenturyLink. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. Services not available everywhere. Business customers only. CenturyLink may change or cancel services or substitute similar services at its sole discretion without notice