Three Cloud Disaster Recovery Best Practices

Disaster recovery is hardly a new concept, but its role and functions within a business continuity plan have certainly evolved as data usage has multiplied and more organizations have migrated their operations to the cloud. Cloud disaster recovery is now the logical choice for businesses that host their data and workloads in the cloud.

Here are three best practices your organization should consider to design a robust disaster recovery plan that takes full advantage of what the cloud enables.

1. Clearly Define RPO and RTO for your disaster recovery plan

Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) are essential metrics to be defined when developing a disaster recovery plan.

• RPO is the allowable period of time that can pass during a disaster event until the amount of data lost exceeds the maximum threshold that has been set in an organization’s business continuity plan.
• RTO encompasses the entirety of an organization’s business operations and applications. It is defined as the maximum period of time an organization can remain functional during downtime caused by a disaster event before operations are either substantially restricted or taken offline altogether.

Defining RTO and RPO helps organizations decide on a clear and explicit disaster recovery plan framework to ensure their recovery goals are met during a disaster event. Update them periodically, especially if your organization has migrated to the cloud in place of legacy on-prem backup solutions.

(You can read more about RTO and RPO here)

2. Routinely test your cloud disaster recovery plan — and update it accordingly

An unproven disaster recovery plan is one prone for potential failure.

It’s best to identify potential issues in your recovery plan on your own terms instead of finding out the hard way during a disaster event. Routinely test your disaster recovery plan to expose any shortcomings and see if any updates are required to reflect any changes and evolution in your organization’s IT needs.

3. Leverage cloud-native backup for cloud disaster recovery

The sheer amount of data being used on a daily basis has grown exponentially just within the last few years alone — a major reason why the majority of businesses have migrated to the cloud to leverage its scale and elasticity.

If your organization has moved its data and workloads to the cloud, it only makes sense to use a cloud-native backup solution that has been created specifically for the cloud. Once the cloud backup solution has been deployed, data can be automatically backed up and stored in the cloud. That way, if the data is lost or compromised due to an incident (such as a physical disaster or a ransomware attack), the most recent backup copy can be recovered and restored from any location.

However, in order for cloud backup to provide the necessary aspects needed to facilitate disaster recovery, it must provide two key capabilities:

• Ensure the data backups are stored securely

Malicious threats like ransomware don’t just target an organization’s current data — they typically go after the backups as well. If they can steal both the primary and backup data, you are essentially at the mercy of criminals while facing potentially devastating data loss and downtime. This is precisely why backup copies should be securely stored in an air-gap manner isolated from primary accounts.

• Rapidly restore the specific mission-critical data and workloads required to maintain business continuity

Some data is more important than other data, especially in terms of keeping operations afloat. If a disaster event threatens your data and processes, you likely don’t have time to wait for every last bit of data to be restored during recovery. You need a way to quickly prioritize and restore the mission-critical data required to keep your processes and end users online.

Secure Cloud Backup and Rapid Data Recovery with Clumio

Built natively in the cloud, Clumio provides faster disaster recovery while ensuring backup copies are kept safe by storing them in an encrypted, air-gapped environment outside of an organization’s primary account.

When data restoration is needed, Clumio’s granular and flexible recovery capabilities can identify, recover, and rapidly restore the specific mission-critical data and applications needed to maintain business continuity while a full recovery completes.

And it’s all done within an intuitive interface packed with features that provides everything from global search, browse capabilities, and ransomware risk analysis to enhanced compliance visibility.

Even the most fortified disaster recovery plans are only as good as the tools they use. Learn why Clumio is the industry’s leading innovator for cloud backup and rapid disaster recovery by scheduling a demo today. We’ll show you how your business can be up and running with Clumio in under 15 minutes, without the need to install any new infrastructure, software, or conduct any pre-planning beforehand.