We want to take this time to talk about Cloud based Disaster Recovery Solutions. Getting it out of the way, Solar VPS offers our clients with Cloud based disaster recovery services which provide:

20GB to 200GB Backup Capacity Full Server Backups New Data Backed Up Incrementally Backups Stored for Three Days Newest Backup Replaces Oldest Multiple Points of Restore Backups Kept in a Redundant Offsite Data Center Facility

To learn more about Solar VPS SolarSystem Disaster Recovery options, follow this link, SolarSystem DR. That said, we want to use this space to talk about Cloud Disaster Recovery Solutions and why they are so important.

Geo-Redundant Offsite Data Center Facility

We bolded, Backups Kept in a Redundant Offsite Data Center Facility, for a reason. Without question, the most important and vital aspect of a great Cloud based disaster recovery plan is the providers ability to supply Geo-Diverse Redundant Data Center Facilities for backing up a clients vital data. But what is a Geo-Diverse Redundant Data Center Facility?

A Geo-Diverse Redundant Data Center Facility refers to a provider who operates at least two data centers. The first data center is their main web hosting, colocation, Cloud hosting facility which houses and stores your critical business/personal data. The second data center facility is the data center which your colocation or Cloud hosting provider uses to backup all of your existing services. While this sounds easy enough to understand and accomplish, it’s a bit more complicated than operating two data centers around the corner from one another.

Geo-Diverse Redundant Data Center Facility Requirements

Geographical Separation – The major need of all Geo-Diverse Redundant Data Center Facilities comes in the form of operating two differing data centers located hundreds, if not thousands of miles, apart. The reason for this is simple. Natural disasters, power outages and generally bad things happen all the time. When Hurricane Sandy made landfall on the North Eastern Shore of the United States, multiple data centers located in lower Manhattan flooded with the Hudson River. This flooding caused those data centers to experience massive amount of downtime and thus cost their clients nearly $8 billion in lost revenues. This is the reason for Geo-Diverse Redundant Data Center Facilities located miles and miles apart. Natural disasters do happen but they rarely, if ever, happen spanning from New York City to Austin, Texas. Point in case, always having a backup data center up and running is a must for Cloud disaster recovery.

Data Center Tier – Let’s say your provider either owns or operates their Cloud hosting firm out of a Tier 3 data center. As that facility supplies your critical solutions with highly redundant power and cooling along with top of the line security and IT management systems, their backup facility should supply your critical solutions with the same level of service. The truth is, we have no idea when the next strong storm is going to hit and we have no idea how long the next downtime of services will be. That in mind, it’s important for your Cloud hosting provider to supply your business with a backup data center which is just as strong and capable as their main base of operations.

Instant Uptime & Provisioning – The last major need of a Geo-Diverse Redundant Data Center Facility is found in instant service uptime matched with the ability to provision new servers utilizing auxiliary servers. Concerning instant service uptime, if your providers home base data center goes down, their fall back data center must have the ability to instantly change over, come up and continuously provide your company with your paid for Cloud services. As downtime is a large consideration behind choosing a Cloud hosting solution or a colocation web hosting company, continued uptime, even in the face of data center downtime, is paramount. The other major concern is the ability of your provider to allow you to provision a new server from a backed up server. This is a must just in case your main servers fail or you want to throw up new Cloud servers to conduct new projects/testing.

All in all, Cloud disaster recovery is dependent on Geo-Diverse Redundant Data Centers. Without your providers ability to keep your solutions up and running in the face of local downtime caused by storms or blackouts, your provider really can’t sell you on %99 or 100% uptime. It’s great to offer clients the ability to backup their Cloud servers from 20GB to 200GB and the ability to restore from three different data points, however without secure servers held in an auxiliary data center, your provider is only as good as the unpredictable weather.