As digital infrastructure becomes more complex, it can be difficult to decide whether traditional disaster recovery methods are still the best fit for your business. Factors like cost, complexity, and agility must be considered, and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) may be a better option.

So, which is better – DRaaS or Traditional Disaster Recovery?

To answer the question, there is a need to explore the differences between the two methods and provide insight into which option will cater to your business needs.

Traditional disaster recovery solutions require you to build, staff, and operate a separate data center near your existing facilities. This can be costly, as you will need to pay for the building, equipment, staff salaries, software maintenance, connectivity, power, cooling, and other infrastructure.

Also, in order for that dedicated facility to remain useful, it needs to be upgraded in tandem with the rest of your IT infrastructure, adding a sizable capital and operational expense to your annual IT budget.

Traditional disaster recovery (DR) solutions are becoming increasingly inadequate as enterprises migrate to public and hybrid cloud solutions. The added complexity and scale of these cloud environments make it difficult for traditional DR solutions to keep up.

DRaaS

DRaaS, on the other hand, uses a third-party vendor's facilities to replicate and host servers. This means that the disaster recovery plan is executed on the vendor's facilities in the event of a disaster that shuts down the customer's site. Organizations can purchase DRaaS plans through a traditional subscription model or a pay-per-use model. As-a-service solutions vary in scope and cost, so organizations should evaluate potential DRaaS providers according to their unique needs and budget.

 

Benefits of DRaaS

Many businesses with lean IT teams simply can’t afford to take the time needed to research, implement and fully test disaster recovery plans. DRaaS takes the burden of planning for a disaster off of the organization and puts it into the hands of experts in disaster recovery. It can also be much more affordable than hosting your own disaster recovery infrastructure in a remote location with an IT staff standing by if disaster strikes. If a disaster doesn’t happen, that expensive second infrastructure and staff never get used. Many DRaaS providers charge you only if you need their services. For many organizations, DRaaS is a helpful solution to a nagging problem.

DRaaS can save organizations money by eliminating the need for providing and maintaining an organization’s own off-site disaster recovery environment.

As an organization, you can choose to have a Disaster Recovery as a Service provider to handle your Disaster Recovery needs fully or partially with the different models available, which include, Managed DRaaS, Assisted DRaas and Self-Service DRaas to suit your business needs.

In conclusion, a disaster recovery plan is essential for business continuity and growth, regardless of the DRaaS provider you choose. Layer3Cloud's disaster recovery solution is a flexible, off-premises, cloud-based solution that provides easy and safe replication of your virtual machines between availability zones. This ensures that your business can continue operating even in the event of a disaster.

Our Disaster Recovery services offer simple, secure, cost-effective onboarding, and migration with industry-standard RPOs and RTOs.