Guide to a successful AWS Disaster Recovery planning

Continuity of business is every business owner’s first priority and to fulfill that need, there are ways to ensure the safety and continuity of the business. In Cloud-based computing platform, Amazon Web Services is the preferred Cloud computing provider that offers the best service to enable faster disaster recovery solution.

Even though after having resourceful and decentralized attributes of the cloud if there is no proper utilization and not much flexibility then such capable cloud platform will be wasted.

Difference between Backups and Disaster Recovery:-

At the time of any unforeseen instances, it is always essential to have a recent back up of the company. Now regular backups are not always the right strategic planning when it comes to disaster recovery. Scheduling regular backups in the Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute and the attached Elastic Block storage will be not enough for a stronger disaster recovery plan. Back up is just a small component of one large process. If you are not able to access anything then what good will be the data then.

To have the best disaster recovery plan, you need to test your disaster recovery plan beforehand so that at the time of the disaster you are at confidence. A well-tested disaster recovery plan will provide access and restore the company’s data from the AWS Cloud environment quickly.

Cross Region Back-ups and analyzing critical data:-

As you know the importance of performing regular backups of the company data, it is thus essential to do a regular back of the Amazon EC2 resources which is a vital component of the disaster recovery planning. When you are creating a backup strategy it is important that you set a collection of mission-critical data and application and specify as to how you want the data to be stored as in AMIs, snapshots, etc.

You will need to prioritize what data and applications are most critical so that you only back up what is important. Now when you will be choosing a backup strategy the time and money also play a huge role so choose only those data that is most important so that you save time in storing only critical data and save money on the storage. Keeping backups in multiple locations will offer higher resilience because storing data in close geographic proximity will hamper the Disaster Recovery Plan when there is a large scale disaster that will leave zero options. Therefore adopting AWS leverages businesses because it has various AWS regions all over the world will give you the power in avoiding zero impact to your business.

Recovery Time Objective and Recovery Point Objective:-

Setting the company’s Recovery time objective and Recovery point objective is crucial. Recovery Time objective determines the length of the disaster recovery process without imposing any monetary loss. Recovery Point Objective is the amount of the data loss that is acceptable under some circumstances. You have to run the numbers to see what best suits for your organization so that you can set your time according to that.

Disaster Recovery Planning method:-

There are many methods for DR recovery method but the below method is the most common. You can choose your own Disaster Recovery method that will save your time and money according to your preference.

Backup and Restore:

Backup and Restore data is the most cost-effective method but if the data is not on the standby then this method can be time-consuming.

Pilot Light:

The critical data and applications are kept ready when there is any disaster so that it can be retrieved as soon as possible.

Warm Standby:

The company’s critical applications and data will be kept in a duplicated version in a warm standby with a little downtime and smooth migration.

Hot Standby:

Hot Standby copies the company’s critical applications and data between two or more active locations and distributes the traffic or the usage. So even though if disaster strikes then it will reroute to the safe area so you don’t have to suffer any downtime. But this method is indeed expensive because of running two separate environments at the same time incurs additional cost.

Once you have made a Disaster Recovery Plan it is better to test it so that you know its strength and weaknesses. You can create a duplicate production environment so that you can test your disaster recovery plan.

About Cloud.in:

Cloud.in is an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner that delivers AWS managed services that cater every business need and aims in simplifying the AWS Cloud Journey. Our Team is the driving force behind Cloud.in with the experience, knowledge, and the skills that they behold in making cloud computing and AWS Cloud a pleasant experience.