As the IT industry grows, consumers increasingly demand access to apps and services from a wider variety of locations and entry points. Businesses must meet this demand by being flexible in deploying data and apps anywhere, but doing so exposes a network to unknown security risks and other potential disasters. Fortunately, in 2023, a number of capable backup and DR solutions exist to grant organizations peace of mind both during and after deployment.
Key Takeaways:
- Nutanix Disaster Recovery is an option that aims to provide simplicity and comprehensive recovery to consumers on a wide number of platforms.
- Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery are convenient proprietary solutions that work well with Microsoft’s widely-adopted cloud platform.
- VMware Site Recovery is a disaster recovery-as-a-service option with a focus on hypervisor-based replication.
While disaster recovery needs vary by organization, businesses can explore their options by becoming familiar with some of the best solutions on the market in 2023.
What Constitutes Reliable Backup and DR Solutions?
Disaster recovery refers to the strategies and methodologies that protect businesses and their data when a catastrophe strikes. Natural disasters, human error, and hardware failure can all result in the permanent loss of mission-critical functions if a proper disaster recovery plan is not in place.
Backup and DR solutions serve to quickly bring services and operations back online with as little downtime as possible. The risk of data loss is minimal through the process of regularly creating backups and storing them on separate hardware off-site. Effective DR is the result of thorough planning and testing, with the goal of allowing customers to continue their activities unhindered even when a catastrophic failure occurs.
There are several types of disaster recovery, such as virtualization as well as both cloud-based DR and on-premises DR. However, all reliable disaster recovery plans share a few common elements that make them effective as recovery solutions:
- Hardware inventory for the sake of monitoring all potential points of failure
- Regular risk assessment exercises
- Frequent testing
- Service-level agreements with technology providers that account for possible disasters
- Communication planning that involves informing employees, partners, and customers of the effects of a disaster
The 2022 MSP Threat Report by Connectwise indicates there will be successful ransomware attacks against two in three midsize organizations over an 18-month period. This illustrates the strong need for competent backup and DR solutions that can limit losses, ensure continued operations, and improve performance on a company-wide scale.
Nutanix Disaster Recovery
The core process behind recovery is replication, and businesses can freely choose to replicate to either an on-premises data center or to the cloud with Nutanix Disaster Recovery. The Nutanix methodology entails streamlined replication across multiple sites while facilitating easy management through a simple interface.
Adopting this solution is a seamless process for users already operating in the Nutanix NCI infrastructure. NCI exists on a foundation of hyperconvergence that removes points of resistance when upscaling, allowing for highly scalable disaster recovery processes as well.
Disaster recovery through Nutanix NCI is all about eliminating complexity while reducing costs without compromising on protection. Businesses need comprehensive backup and DR solutions, but they should also have the freedom to build DR sites and recovery plans their own way while still receiving support from vendors.
Nutanix Disaster Recovery is a product that strives to ensure peerless business continuity. App downtime and unplanned outages can result in the loss of thousands of dollars per minute, necessitating the adoption of a solution that can restore operations at breakneck speeds.
Azure Backup and Site Recovery
Microsoft’s Azure Backup is a proprietary option for the Azure cloud computing platform. While other solutions exist for operators who prefer to avoid propriety, Azure Backup provides a centralized and scalable recovery option for those already in the ecosystem.
A similar product comes in the form of Azure Site Recovery. This is a proprietary disaster recovery-as-a-service option for use in the Azure cloud environment. Azure Site Recovery may seem to be the natural choice for organizations running cloud applications on the Microsoft platform.
Disaster recovery-as-a-service can be preferable to traditional DR methods for companies that struggle with cost efficiency. DRaaS takes the load off the user to maintain the hardware necessary for replication while also allowing for greater flexibility and optimization.
Though proprietary backup and DR solutions tend to work seamlessly for adopters of the Azure platform, seeking solutions from other vendors can be a powerful method of ensuring business continuity through diversification when building out a hybrid cloud. For example, the synergy between Azure and Nutanix products facilitates a smooth hybrid migration.
VMware Site Recovery
VMware and Nutanix also share a degree of compatibility when it comes to cloud platforms and recovery options. There is great potential in a practical relationship between an existing environment, its disaster recovery functionalities, and a hyperconverged infrastructure that empowers organizations to get the most value out of it all. Not only that, but the VMware environment has its own proprietary backup and DR solution that remains viable in 2023.
VMware Site Recovery is a DRaaS solution with an emphasis on protecting data and applications in the cloud. As a VMware product, it comes equipped to competently recover virtual machines with native hypervisor-based replication.
This type of disaster recovery through virtualization offered by the likes of both Nutanix and VMware is particularly effective at enabling fast recovery from backup servers remotely over the internet. In this way, virtualization adds another layer of security and simplicity, even in situations when a third-party solution sees deployment in an environment that leans heavily toward proprietary software and platforms.
Choosing the Right Backup and DR Solutions
The IT industry is ever advancing toward a future in which both data and security risks will multiply exponentially. In 2023 and beyond, backup and DR solutions will become increasingly competent to match emerging needs, but choosing the right one requires some introspection.
Each company has its own unique service-level agreements, recovery time objectives, and recovery point objectives. The hardware or cloud platform to which data will replicate during backup procedures will also differ from case to case.
Open communication between consumer organizations and software providers is necessary for determining which service best serves the individual’s goal. In a time when businesses need to deploy their data and apps anywhere at any time, the method that allows them to do so with confidence and peace of mind is the ideal backup and DR solution.
Learn more about protecting data through proper risk management and enterprise-specific processes.
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