The document discusses various types of disasters both natural and man-made that businesses need to protect themselves from. It notes that while zombies have not been confirmed as threats yet, businesses should still have disaster recovery plans in place using cloud services to protect their data and applications. The cloud offers more affordable and flexible recovery options than traditional on-premise solutions. It then provides details on different disaster recovery solutions available through the cloud.

1. PROTECT YOUR DATA AND APPS FROM A
AND OTHER LESS LIKELY DISASTERS
Disasters happen, especially when it comes to technology. Hurricanes, floods and viruses are all
well known, but we took a look at a lesser-known phenomena: the zombie apocalypse and the
impact it could have on your business. Regardless of the type of threat your business is worried
about, the cloud offers newer, more affordable and more flexible recovery options through cloud
service providers than have previously been available. Even if no zombie attacks have ever been
confirmed (yet), the following data offers a compelling look at how you can protect your
business, and where your infrastructure may be vulnerable.
DISASTERS ARE ON THE RISE
NATURAL AND MAN-MADE DISASTERS
are on the rise,
according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.1
DOMESTIC INTEREST IN ZOMBIE ATTACKS
80
350
70
300
is also on
the rise, according to Wikipedia’s list of zombie films.2
60
AND
50
250
200
40
150
30
20
100
10
50
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
http://www.fema.gov/disasters/grid.year
2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Zombie_films
1
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
SOME BELIEVE THE CORRELATION COULD BE RELATED TO ZOMBIES
Disasters come in all varieties, and most businesses are under-protected. Disaster
recovery allows you to protect and recover your applications after a disaster.
TYPES OF DISASTERS
HUMAN ERROR
1950
SERVER FAILURE
47%
NATURAL
29%
BROWN OUT
CAUSES OF
IT DISASTERS
HURRICANE
OUTAGE
VIRUS
CORRUPT DATA
HACKING
BAD CODE
3
MAN-MADE
POWER/COMM
FAILURE
NATURAL
DISASTERS
15%
9%
3
TORNADO
UNDEAD
ZOMBIES
http://www.continuitycentral.com/news060321.html
WHY CLOUD FOR DISASTER RECOVERY?
Cloud-based recovery protection makes it much harder for
zombies to wreak havoc on your datacenter and applications.
RECOVERY TIME
2017
Lower application recovery time
FAILOVER FLEXIBILITY
will adopt cloud services
exclusively to support IT
operations recovery
by 2017.2
FREQUENT TESTING
Flexibility for frequent
recovery plan exercising
40%
OF RESPONDENTS
REDUCED COST
REDUCED RISK
OF MIDSIZE ENTERPRISES
2013
Support for selective application
failover and datacenter recovery
ADVANTAGES
OF CLOUD-BASED
1
DISASTER RECOVERY
35%
Potentially reduced
recovery exercising cost
Reduced recovery risk due to oversubscribed
resource limitations following the occurence
of a major disaster event
40%
worldwide reported using
cloud services and listed
reducing cost and improving
agility/flexibility as top
reasons to use cloud.3
Gartner, “Do Your Homework Before Committing
to Cloud-Based Recovery Services” 2013.
3
Gartner, ”Market Trends: Assessment of the Rapidly Growing
Market for Cloud-Based Recovery Services” 2013.
2
1
Gartner, “Market Trends: Assessment of the Rapidly
Growing Market for Cloud-based Recovery Services” 2013.
CONCERNS
WHAT IS YOUR PRIMARY CONCERN?
PROTECTING YOUR APPLICATIONS
PROTECTING YOUR DATA
You need your applications and the supporting
data that power your business and revenue stream
to be back up and running in hours not days.
You need to protect against data loss but your
data can withstand downtime of 24–48 hours.
WHERE ARE YOUR APPLICATIONS LOCATED?
PROTECTING APPS IN YOUR DATACENTER
PROTECTING APPS IN A CLOUD
Free your staff and resources up from having to
manage a second datacenter site and choose to
recover your in-house production applications to
the cloud using To-Cloud Recovery-as-a-Service.
TO-CLOUD RECOVERY-AS-A-SERVICE
Protect your applications that are hosted in a
public cloud environment by having a cloudbased recovery site in a different regional
location using In-Cloud Recovery-as-a-Service.
IN-CLOUD RECOVERY-AS-A-SERVICE
BACKUP-AS-A-SERVICE
RECOVERY SOLUTIONS
21%
RECOVERY-AS-A-SERVICE (RAAS)
2017
$1.2 B
EXPECTED GROWTH
Recovery-as-a-Service recovers not only your files and databases,
but also your applications. This means that after a disaster hits you
are essentially given a working system, as opposed to just the
working parts that still need to be reassembled. Achieve a recovery
point objective (RPO) of 30 minutes or less and recovery time
objective (RTO) of 4 hours.
in Recovery-as-aService spending
over the next
4 years.4
2012
$465.7 M
BACKUP-AS-A-SERVICE (BAAS)
4
Backup-as-a-Service recovers your files and data to a multi-tenant,
cloud-based environment. Rather than backing up data to physical
tapes, manage and schedule backups to the cloud. BaaS customers
can typically expect a 24-hour or less RPO and a 24–48 hour RTO.
Gartner, “Market Trends: Assessment of the
Rapidly Growing Market for Cloud-Based
Recovery Services” 2013.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO TEST?
80%
OFTEN MAKES UP 20%
OF TESTING
or less of the total
number of production
applications.
should be done on
applications that are
the most missioncritical.5
5
Testing is the most important thing to ensure you are prepared to respond
when a disaster occurs.
X
2
2 ANNUAL TESTS
is the suggested
minimum from many
service providers to
ensure your solution
is working properly.
Gartner, “Best Practices for Planning and Managing Disaster Recovery Testing” 2013.
EVALUATING PROVIDERS
Find a provider whose strengths align with your disaster recovery objectives.
6 STEPS TO WORKING EFFECTIVELY WITH
DISASTER RECOVERY SERVICE PROVIDERS
1
List your applications and perform a risk
and impact analysis for each.
2
Determine your DR and backup budgets
and prioritize your applications.
3
Determine each application’s ideal RTO
and RPO. Confirm your provider can
support these.
6 QUESTIONS TO ASK A CLOUD STORAGE PROVIDER
BEFORE PURSUING DISASTER RECOVERY IN THE CLOUD
1 How will my data be secured in the cloud?
Does the provider offer encryption services,
both for data in-transit and data at-rest?
2 Does the cloud provider satisfy regulatory
requirements for the regulations I care about?
How is compliance measured and certified?
3 What are the expected recovery times (RTOs)
for the data I’ll be storing in the cloud? Is the
topic of RTOs covered in the service-level
agreement (SLA)?
4
Determine where you want your DR site
to be located, keeping natural disaster
patterns and network latency in mind.
5
Outline your DR process (run-book) and
test it with your provider.
4 Does the cloud storage provider have a
6
Plan for the unexpected with seasonal
tests and use those to keep your
run-book up-to-date.
5 Can the provider effectively match the
demostrated track record in meeting data
availability and recovery requirements?
virtualization infrastructure I have in-house to
facilitate rapid recovery?
6 Will the provider allow me to test and exercise
6
TechTarget, “Why You Should Incorporate a Cloud
Disaster Recovery Plan” 2013.
DR processes on a regular basis to ensure my
organization is prepared in the event of an outage?
OTHER VENDOR CONSIDERATIONS
CAN THE VENDOR HANDLE HIGHLY SECURE DATA?
CAN THE VENDOR HANDLE REGIONAL DISASTERS?
Secure data can be encrypted when
you’re working with an experienced
provider. RaaS is an ideal solution for
applications that contain HIPAA data,
PCI-DSS compliant data and other
high-security information.
When determining where to replicate
your data to, evaluate the types of disasters you’re most vulnerable to. Choosing
how far away to replicate is a balance of
latency, cost and risk aversion.
GET PROTECTED FROM ZOMBIES AND OTHER DISASTERS
bluelock.com/cloud-services/raas
Sources:
http://www.fema.gov/disasters/grid/year
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_zombie_films
http://www.continuitycentral.com/news06032.html
http://searchcloudstorage.techtarget.com/tip/Why-you-should-incorporate-a-cloud-disaster-recovery-plan
Gartner “Market Trends: Assessment of the Rapidly Growing Market for Cloud-based Recovery Services” 2013.
Gartner “Do Your Homework Before Committing to Cloud-Based Recovery Services” 2013.
Gartner “Best Practices for Planning and Managing Disaster Recovery Testing” 2013.
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