Busting 3 Myths Of Disaster Recovery And Cloud Computing

Disaster recovery comes up in discussions every time a new application or data set is entering its production phase. The same applies to the deployment of applications to the public cloud. In this article, we are discussing three cloud-based disaster recovery myths that cause enterprises to divert from their intended course.

Myth 1: DR Already Comes Built In To Public Clouds And Therefore It Is Not Needed

The source of confusion is the fact that public cloud providers maintain some basic DR features like backup systems that are much needed in case of a hardware failure or a disaster. However, the public cloud systems do not address the specific DR needs of tenant-owned workloads.

This becomes evident only when executables become corrupt or data is accidentally deleted. Public cloud providers have much-needed systems to take care of big issues like hardware getting destroyed due to power surge but they do not deal with smaller issues like losing files or database.

Public cloud service providers usually make use of a shared responsibility model. This is maintained by offering DR for their cloud services to make sure that the services keep running through disasters and outages. However, it is the responsibility of the user to back up important applications and data.

Myth 2: Each Cloud Service Requires Separate DR Planning And Processes

You have the provision to backup cloud-based databases using the respective export and import tools of that database. However, after you multiply the services and add various DR requirements for analytics services, IoT services, or AI services things begin to get complicated.

Most of the public cloud services offer recovery managers and backup options that are built into public clouds. Making use of these tools, you can select those resources that you wish to back up, automate it and fulfill any of its logging or security requirements. With these tools, you are brought into a single place where you have full freedom to manage most of the backup and recovery operations. Placing volatility into a configurable domain makes it easy for you to remove the complexity associated with backup and recovery.

Myth 3: Compliance Processes Associated With Data Protection And Security Covers The Data Backed Up For DR

 Whether it is on a backup server, production server, or even a magnetic tape, some data like financial or personally identifiable information that is backed up is always regulated.  This is especially relevant in the case of cloud computing, as virtual backups that transfer data from primary to secondary devices as part of the DR operation might neglect the policies and security much like the data residing on various primary cloud-based storage devices.

In some cases, operations like copying data to servers outside the country are considered illegal. DR should undergo necessary changes when moving to public cloud platforms.