Buyer's Guide: DRaaS Features And Functionality

When a server stops responding, for whatever reason, the fastest way to resume service is to have a secondary environment ready to go. But traditionally, the redundant hardware, server space and additional human resources required have made this a prohibitive option. Most organizations simply cannot afford the costs and resources required to maintain secondary, off-site infrastructure. In the end, many IT departments simply live with the risk of potential business-ending outages. Today, disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) has evolved so that even small and midsize businesses can leverage the rapid recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) performance that DRaaS affords.

When an outage occurs, a DRaaS solution should allow you to fail over to a secondary copy with just a few clicks. Within minutes, cloud-based replicas can spin up and be available for use. Once you’re ready to fail back to your primary systems, the process should be easily reversed.

This guide offers tips on key features and functionality that, when provided in a DRaaS solution, can give you the benefits of having a secondary site — without many the infrastructure or administrative costs.