Savvy Cloud Providers Adopt DRaaS as Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery Soars

Transcription

1 December 2014 Savvy Cloud Providers Adopt DRaaS as Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery Soars Frost & Sullivan Analysis by Karyn Price Cloud Computing (CC) Volume 4, Number 6

2 Savvy Cloud Providers Adopt DRaaS as Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery Soars Introduction 1 Business adoption of cloud for backup and recovery has continued to increase over the past year, with much movement among providers in terms of addition of cloud-based disaster recovery services, as well as acquisition of resources and companies to bolster disaster recovery services. In its annual 2014 Cloud User Survey, Frost & Sullivan found that nearly % of respondents are currently using cloud infrastructure whether public or private for backup and recovery; with another % planning to adopt either public or private cloud infrastructure for this purpose by Backup and recovery are an increasingly popular Software as a Service (SaaS) application as well, with % of respondents citing usage of backup and recovery SaaS applications. Another % are expecting to adopt it by % of respondents are currently using cloud infrastructure whether public or private for backup and recovery; with another % planning to adopt either public or private cloud infrastructure for this purpose by Backup and recovery are an increasingly popular Software as a Service (SaaS) application as well, with % of respondents citing usage of backup and recovery SaaS applications. Another % are expecting to adopt it by Recently, industry has responded to the demand, adding comprehensive Disaster Recovery as a Service or DRaaS solutions that use cloud automation to simplify and systematize backup and recovery. Providers offering DRaaS bring to market a complete solution: backing up not only data, but the applications that run them; as well as providing an environment in the cloud for the business to failover to when disaster strikes. Such solutions have not only made business continuity an easier reality for small and mid-sized businesses, 2 but have also paved the way for providers to add to their cloud infrastructure tenants. Cloud infrastructure leaders that have added DRaaS to their portfolios, and that can integrate a hybrid cloud environment, are able to attract new customers and upsell current clients by providing a secure, easy disaster recovery option that offers fast, flexible recovery options with minimal data loss. In this study, Frost & Sullivan examines current trends in cloud backup and recovery, including customer adoption trends. We also examine how the market is responding, and how insightful providers are leveraging the enterprise s need for on-demand disaster recovery, using the latest cloud technologies. 1 In preparing this report, Frost & Sullivan conducted interviews with representatives of the following companies: Logicalis Ed Konopasek, VP of Cloud and Data Centers Quorum Walter Angerer, CEO; and John Gallagher, VP Marketing VMware Angelos Kottas, Director of Product Marketing, Hybrid Cloud Services Windstream Kent Landry, Director, Strategic Programs; and Rob Carter, Director, Marketing Please note that the insights and opinions expressed in this assessment are those of Frost & Sullivan and have been developed through the Frost & Sullivan research and analysis process. These expressed insights and opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the company executives interviewed. 2 See Frost and Sullivan research report CC 3-6: Disaster Recovery as a Service: A Gateway for SMB Cloud Adoption, published September CC 4-6, December 2014 Frost & Sullivan, 2014 Page 2

3 Backup & Recovery Prevalent in the Cloud According to the Frost & Sullivan 2014 Cloud User Survey, backup and recovery continues to be the application most commonly pushed to a cloud, whether public or private. Currently, % of USbased IaaS users surveyed use hosted private cloud infrastructure for backup and recovery; and by 2016 that number in expected to increase to %. Similarly, % of users are moving backup and recovery to a public cloud infrastructure; with an additional % expected to adopt public cloud infrastructure by Figure 1: US Businesses Use or Plan to Use Their Public or Private Cloud Infrastructure Services for Backup & Recovery Workloads Private IaaS % % Currently Use Public IaaS % % Plan to Implement within the next two years 0% % % % % % Source: Frost & Sullivan While backup and recovery in the cloud will remain prevalent in the coming years, it is worth noting that % of public cloud users that move backup and recovery to the cloud, and % of private cloud users that move backup and recovery to the cloud, say they plan to stop doing so by At the same time, % of users plan to adopt Software as a Service (SaaS) a DRaaS service, in many cases for backup and recovery within the next two years. Evolving DRaaS Solutions Disaster recovery (DR) options in the cloud have continued to evolve in the last months, with more leading enterprise-class IaaS providers developing or procuring assets to bring cloud-based environment recovery to the market. Cloud-based disaster recovery enables customers to replicate on-premises or cloud-based workloads to a DR cloud environment, and to recover those workloads in public cloud infrastructure. DRaaS is comprised of a set of processes that automate the backup of data; and, in the event of an incident, it recovers the backed up data, typically to an Infrastructure as a Service environment. The service is comprised of both backup and recovery. CC 4-6, December 2014 Frost & Sullivan, 2014 Page 3

4 There are two common modes of configuring a DRaaS backup service either by using an appliance, or through software: Appliance-based backup is performed by a source appliance that sits on the customer premise. The appliance replicates information on-site, and uploads it to the DRaaS provider s cloud environment. Software-based data replication speeds the recovery process by enabling replication at the hypervisor level. This backup captures the entire environment applications as well as data without need for an install agent or to reboot an application in order to restore the environment. This type of replication can be done from a customer s physical data center environment or a virtual, cloud-based environment, to a recovery provider s own cloudbased environment. Both appliance- and software-based replication capture the entire environment, not just individual servers; recovery can be done at the application level. When backing up virtualized environments, Recovery of both data and applications is a critical benefit of any DRaaS solution. Because both aspects are replicated and recovered together, total recovery time is shorter than with solutions that require that applications be rebuilt or re-installed before data can be recovered into them. virtual machines (VMs) can be grouped based on the application and associated data; and the grouped VMs are recovered together. This enables the complete application and its associated data to be restored more quickly. Providers work with organizations to appropriately size the environment, creating virtual machines in the cloud to which data and applications are replicated on a set schedule. After deployment, the solution automatically replicates the primary environment into the cloud backup environment, on a schedule that is set during implementation. For smaller businesses, software-based DRaaS solutions may be a viable option for backup and recovery. These services such as those operated by Box or Carbonite operate on individual machines, protecting just the single machine on which it is installed. Bulk licenses may be purchased for corporate use, but the software resides on an individual machine, replicating the operating system, individual user settings, as well as all applications and data on the machine being protected. Recovery of both data and applications is a critical benefit of any DRaaS solution. Because both aspects are replicated and recovered together, total recovery time is shorter than with solutions that require that applications be rebuilt or re-installed before data can be recovered into them. With DRaaS, should a disaster occur, the organization need only notify the provider, using a set process to declare a disaster, and the provider handles the spin-up of the warm backup site. Depending on the service level agreement (SLA), either the provider or the organization will also need to re-route DNS configurations in order to ensure that users can access the back-up environment. When the situation impacting the primary facility is resolved, organizations can notify the provider to fail back to their primary environment. Automation in Disaster Recovery As providers further automate their cloud services, care must be given to disaster recovery solutions. While some automation can enhance overall solution delivery, creating a DRaaS solution that is CC 4-6, December 2014 Frost & Sullivan, 2014 Page 4

5 IBM IBM recently announced an extension of its disaster recovery services to customers using its SoftLayer cloud infrastructure. While the company doesn t market its cloud recovery service as DRaaS, its Virtual Server Recovery (VSR) is an automated service that can recover applications, servers, and cloud-based data to a SoftLayer environment. VSR allows customers to replicate their entire environment including system files, databases, applications, and user data without regard for the type of underlying hardware that originally housed the data being replicated. The VSR service is very flexible, allowing customers to choose from a range of options for backup and recovery. For backup, customers can choose from options ranging from tape backup to cloudbased replication and vaulting, which greatly reduces recovery time objectives (RTOs) in the event that a disaster is declared. For recovery, customers can select from a cloud-based virtual machine (VM), or a logical partition (LPAR) that runs on cloud infrastructure. Additionally, customers have the choice of always-available VMs, VMs for test and disaster only, or VMs for importing server images and backup data from whatever storage media is in use. Such flexibility enables customers to balance their RTO and recovery point objective (RPO) against their budget, for each workload or environment. Logicalis Logicalis is a UK-headquartered, global IT solutions and managed services provider that is focused heavily on the IT as a Service (ITaaS) model of service delivery. The company has extended this focus to cloud-based disaster recovery, offering DRaaS for Windows and Linux, as well as for virtualization customers using VMware. Logicalis also offers a DRaaS offering for Power Systems clients with IBM i clients leveraging software-based replication tools. The Logicalis DRaaS offering is unique in that it is a managed offering, so a customer s onboarding, data replication, testing, and actual emergency declaration is assisted by service delivery managers and professional services personnel who ensure that the process goes smoothly and according to the customer s contractual agreement. The Logicalis solution replicates customer environments to the Logicalis public cloud infrastructure with a service based on VMware s Site Recovery Manager and IBM i software-based replication. The customers replicated data is housed at one of Logicalis data centers in Phoenix, AZ; Dayton, OH; or West Chester, OH, which are compliant with many industry standard security regulations, such as HIPAA, PCI, and FISMA, among others. As with most other DRaaS services, recovery point and time objectives are variable, and able to be tailored per workload so that customers can decrease the RPO and RTO on more critical workloads, while increasing them for or even choosing not to protect data that the business can do without until primary production workloads are up and running. Unique to the Logicalis DRaaS solution is the inclusion of replication software licensing in the cost of the solution. Because their DRaaS service is part of its managed service portfolio, Logicalis also provides aroundthe-clock infrastructure management, service monitoring, testing and disaster declaration assistance, and failback support. Such assistance is helpful in the event of a major emergency event; customers need only obtain a cell signal and carry the phone number of their Logicalis service delivery representative. With a single phone call, the customer can declare a disaster, and Logicalis will initiate disaster recovery so that the customer s environments will begin to be restored. CC 4-6, December 2014 Frost & Sullivan, 2014 Page 7

6 Quorum Quorum is a smaller provider that is solely focused on business continuity and disaster recovery. Its onq suite of DRaaS solutions makes cloud-based disaster recovery accessible for small to midmarket customers. The solution is based on Quorum s proprietary onq high-availability appliance, which is placed within a customer s on-premises data center, and replicates environments to an offsite cloud or disaster recovery appliance of the customer s choosing. The appliance encrypts customer data, and replicates it to a cloud-based environment. Quorum encryption processes are PCI and HIPAA compliant, and therefore useable by businesses constrained by those requirements. Initial seeding time to create a complete back-up environment is dependent on the customer s widearea network (WAN), but can take nearly a full business week per terabyte transmitted, based on a 50 mbps WAN speed. Once initial seeding is complete, the onq appliance maintains a complete and up-to-date set of VM clones of the customer s protected systems, allowing Quorum s backup environments to seamlessly take over in the event of a primary site outage. To initiate the disaster recovery process, customers log in to the Quorum customer portal and initiate recovery with just a mouse click. The company provides flexible RPO and RTO, based on the customer s specific environments; but the company cites that in most cases, recovery of down systems takes only minutes after a disaster recovery process is started. One differentiator of the Quorum service is the strong focus on the importance of testing. Frequent testing of the onq recovery service is encouraged, free of charge. Testing schedules can be automated to be carried out on a set schedule, or engaged manually with a single mouse click. Quorum offers varying levels of service for its onq disaster recovery, with the prime service differentiator being cost and amount of data protected. VMware VMware also offers a disaster recovery as a service solution vcloud Air Disaster Recovery that can protect virtualized environments that run on a vsphere hypervisor. This asynchronous replication solution provides self-service protection for applications running in a vsphere environment. VMware Disaster Recovery supports RPO as low as 15 minutes, and allows customers to test their disaster recovery instance as often as needed. For larger environments, initial data seeding can be done using Offline Data Transfer, which allows large data sets to be transferred in a timely fashion, using an external storage device and uploaded directly to the vcloud Air infrastructure. Customers can customize RPOs on a per VM basis to accommodate differing business priorities for different applications. In the event of a disaster, customers can power on VMs in their failover environment, and consume the compute capacity they have available to them, as they have designated per their subscription. VMware s DRaaS service affords customers a high level of self-service, which is attractive to many customers. Customers have access to a self-service portal, where they can protect up to 500 VMs per subscription, on an as-needed basis. Testing and disaster declarations are also managed through the CC 4-6, December 2014 Frost & Sullivan, 2014 Page 8

7 customer portal, as VMware does not currently offer managed services with the vcloud Air Disaster Recovery offering. VMware vcloud Air Disaster Recovery provides a strong recovery option for the needs of midmarket customers, but it is just one part of a total disaster recovery solution. Since the service is completely self-managed and requires browser access, it could be an issue in the event of a major disaster in which Internet connectivity or power is compromised in all locations. Windstream Windstream s hosted cloud DRaaS offers managed replication and protection of host-based physical and virtual servers. For customers that are using Windstream s managed cloud environments, it offers cloud-to-cloud replication using Site Recovery Manager. Windstream also provides disaster recovery services through managed remote backup vaults, as well as SAN-based replication specific to NetApp and EMC storage. The host-based replication solution uses an on-site appliance to accelerate data replication, mirroring physical and virtual server images to the Windstream cloud, where these virtual copies of the customer s production environment can be activated in the event of a disaster. For customers with Windstream managed cloud environments, Windstream DRaaS can replicate data using Site Recovery Manager, backing up virtual environments and data to a geo-redundant Windstream cloud pod environment. The SAN-based replication solution provides replication from the customer s virtual environment to Windstream Cloud with the virtual machines and recovery pool matching the size of the customer s original production environment. Businesses can control backup data through a secure Web portal. Windstream s host-based and SAN-based recovery options provide RPOs as low as 15 minutes, and RTOs as low as four hours. The host-based replication service also provides application consistency for common business applications. Customers using cloud to cloud pod replication via Site Recovery Manager gain added recovery speeds, with RPOs of less than 15 minutes and RTOs of less than 1 hour. The base package includes a recovery source appliance on the customers premises, virtual firewalls and LANs, a virtual machine that manages the solution, annual solution tests, unlimited inbound bandwidth, and around-the-clock support. Variable items include the number of virtual machines needed, the number of machines protected, as well as storage needs. Customers can also add additional solution testing, disaster declaration, and failback support services. CC 4-6, December 2014 Frost & Sullivan, 2014 Page 9

8 Frost & Sullivan The Last Word Disaster recovery continues to be a key driver of cloud adoption among US-based companies, with greater than 90 percent of businesses stating that they anticipate using a cloud-based disaster recovery solution by the year In the near future, it is likely that all disaster recovery services will be cloud-based, and more traditional methods will be phased out as the low cost, secure nature, and easy access and restoration of cloud-based environments takes a rightful place as the preferred method of disaster recovery for IT. Savvy cloud providers of all sizes are adding disaster recovery to their cloud service portfolios. Doing so not only increases their cloud revenue, but also increases public IaaS adoption, as data is replicated to the cloud for backup and recovery purposes. To date, however, many large providers are focused on replication and recovery of only a select set of environment types, based on OS or hypervisor, for example. This makes protection of heterogeneous, hybrid environments which are increasingly being sought by businesses across all sizes more difficult. Providers that address hybrid cloud protection using an on-demand, cloud-based replication and recovery solution will be better poised then others to succeed in the DRaaS market. Automation is also changing the face of disaster recovery, with providers offering self-service portals and customer-driven management of the workloads being replicated and recovered to the cloud. While automation of these processes drives out human error, and ensures that workloads and data are protected at the levels and intervals that customers require, DRaaS solutions that are completely self-service and that require access of a browser-based portal for emergency declaration are not useful in widespread outages or emergencies. The best DRaaS solutions are able to protect a heterogeneous and hybrid environment, while blending the right levels of self-service and assistance to ensure that the service can be enacted in a true emergency, just when the business needs it the most. Opportunity to provide robust DRaaS solutions continues to increase as more businesses seek to move disaster recovery to the cloud. Shrewd providers are enhancing their portfolios in this area in anticipation of a continued rise in DRaaS adoption. Karyn Price Industry Analyst Cloud Computing Frost & Sullivan karyn.price@frost.com CC 4-6, December 2014 Frost & Sullivan, 2014 Page 10

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