With this white paper, we’ll review the five indispensable attributes to look for when assessing disaster recovery as a service solutions (DRaaS).

1. Super Powers To Look for When
Evaluating DRaaS Providers

2. If you’re part of your company’s disaster recovery and business continuity
operation, you’re probably already familiar with disaster recovery as a
service (DRaaS), a cloud-based way to replicate and host servers and virtual
instances to provide fail over in the event of a disaster.
DRaaS has been gaining favor with IT Directors and C-level executives alike
for its ability to significantly reduce costs and to quickly and easily establish
a fully replicated environment in a separate geography. Not to mention its
ability to greatly simplify DR testing, enabling more frequent failover testing
that can thwart unpredictable “Black Swan” events that wreak havoc and
put an end to businesses and careers.
But DRaaS comes in many forms. One size definitely does not fit all.
Understanding the differences is fundamental to selecting the right solution
but often those differences aren’t easy to distinguish on the surface and
can blur into one another.
What makes one more desirable than another? What suite of services is
best suited to your needs? It’s not always obvious. With this white paper,
we’ll review the five most indispensable attributes to look for when
assessing disaster recovery as a service solutions.
Introduction
DRaaS comes in many forms. One size definitely does not fit all.
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3. 3
PERFORMANCE
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A low RTO — ideally less than 5 minutes — for your critical applications
and systems. A low RPO, usually indicated in seconds for important data.

4. Performance
The two most important performance metrics when it comes to disaster
recovery are the recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective
(RPO). Each can vary from one DRaaS provider to the next and even seemingly
modest differences can deliver significant results.
The recovery time objective is the maximum length of time that an IT system
can be down after a disaster strikes. So when it comes to the RTO, the
lower the number the better. For instance, if a company has an RTO of 3
to 5 minutes, then that is the maximum allowable downtime before the
system is operational.
For critical applications and systems, you will ideally want to limit the recovery
time objective to a few minutes or less. The difference between 3
minutes of downtime and 30 minutes (or 3 hours!) of downtime
can be enormous to your bottom line and corporate reputation.
Just ask United Airlines, which recently suffered a large-scale
system failure that resulted in prolonged downtime, revenue
losses and extremely unhappy customers.
Or ask the New York Stock Exchange and The Wall Street Journal which
both suffered IT system failures on the same day as United.
The recovery point objective refers to a point in time that data can be
recovered; essentially the date and time that the last backup was made and
the amount of data that you can you tolerate losing. You will also want
this to be a small duration, often defined in seconds or minutes so that
you can recover as much data as possible.
For instance, perhaps you are experiencing a system failure and need to
initiate recovery from a time prior to the failover event when you had a
more stable infrastructure. Selecting an aggressive RPO will enable you
to choose a time that may precede the bad patch, bug or natural disaster
that has brought your system down but still retain most of your data.
Here too the differences between DRaaS providers can be significant.
Some more basic services may only provide RPOs of 15 minutes or more.
More premium services will be able to provide recovery point objectives
close to zero. To give you maximum flexibility, you will likely want to consider
an RPO in the range of 6 to 60 seconds. Your disaster recovery plan will
inform the number that is right for you.
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3m 30m
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5. 5
BACKUP / DATA RETENTION
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A DRaaS solution that can provide instant recovery and archival backup in a single solution.

6. Backup / Retention
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Many are unaware that more advanced DRaaS providers can provide deep
storage and data retention in addition to instant recovery. Although
required from a regulatory compliance perspective, the real impact for the
IT director is in reducing the day to day hassle of backing up, whether to
tape, SAN or other method. In fact some IT departments are leveraging
DRaaS to completely free up their SAN storage for production use and
saving money in the process.
These select DRaaS providers can provide easier-to-use, more reliable
backup and recovery services that are integrated right into your disaster
recovery process, combining instant recovery and archival backup in a
single solution. Look for those that provide real-time replication of all of
your systems; since they can mirror your production environment they
are able to securely backup data from their cloud and place it in multiple
geo-redundant locations and / or data center of your choice.
Ideally, you’ll want to archive your backups going back several years
as a way to defend against future regulatory or litigation matters as well
as providing historical data for analysis. This will be doubly important if
your company is in a regulated industry with strict compliance requirements.
If that’s the case, you will need to make sure that your provider can meet
compliance mandates, particularly for the most demanding regulatory
acts like HIPAA, MPAA, Sarbanes-Ocley and SSAE 16.
Look for DRaaS solutions that support point-in-time journaling too. That
way, if a database throws a table or if a security breach is discovered, recovery
can be initiated at a point-in-time prior to the incident — up to a 4 weeks —
and then failback to production when the issue is resolved on the production
infrastructure.

7. 7
A provider that is committed to a failover testing regimen that helps you detect and
prevent IT failures before they happen and who can integrate backup and deep storage
retention into their offering.
DISASTER AVOIDANCE
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8. Enabling you to quickly and completely recover from an IT failure is the bread
and butter of DRaaS offerings but the best disaster recovery as a service
providers will also help keep you out of harm’s way in the first place. The
most powerful preventive measures include the ability to test applications
and upgrades in a mirrored sandbox environment, coupled with regular
failover testing by the service provider and the generation of regular reports
for management.
DRaaS solutions will be more effective and far less costly and disruptive than
traditional DR services at performing testing because they allow you to create
a mirrored sandbox to test upgrades, patches and new applications well in
advance of pushing to a production environment.
But there are differences between DRaaS solutions when it comes to testing
that you’ll want to inquire about. Is DR testing provided as an inclusive
service or does it require a surcharge? If so, how much is each test? Will the
provider collaborate with you on a test schedule and help you see it through?
Do they incorporate incremental learning systems?
If you are committed to preempting disasters and have specified
aggressive RTOs and RPOs, you’ll want to strongly consider a
disasterrecoveryasaservicethatisequallycommittedtoathorough,
ongoing failover testing process.
Disaster Avoidance
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9. 9
FOCUS
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A purpose-built DRaaS solution designed specifically for
higher performance, higher redundancy and higher resiliency.
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10. When it comes to selecting a disaster recovery as a service provider, it’s important
to know where DRaaS fits within their company, not just as a product but as a
priority. Is it merely a menu item on a long list of other services, cobbled together
using existing assets or is it the sole vocation of the provider?
When choosing a cloud infrastructure to point your replication to, there are
great differences in the options. Large public clouds may seem attractive but
it’s important to note the specific limitations such as format, failback restrictions
and control of resources.
Ideally, you will want to select a provider that offers a purpose-built
infrastructure architected specifically for disaster recovery. A purpose-
built DR Cloud is essentially a semi-private cloud designed specifically
for higher performance, higher redundancy and higher resiliency than
a standard production hosting cloud environment, which often runs on
commodity hardware and is overseen by a team that is not specialized in DR
management. The purpose-built DR solution will provide the fastest possible
failover recovery and an extra layer of protection from spikes that can occur
from adjacent virtual machines.
It’s not enough to simply co-locate your DR infrastructure offsite either. You
will want to make sure that the DR data centers are in areas where natural
disasters rarely occur and are located far away from your host site.
Focus also applies to a provider’s impartiality in helping you. Are they focused
on what’s best for you or in pushing their proprietary solution? With the swift
pace of advancements around DRaaS, it’s wise to partner with a provider that
can provide unbiased consultation and best-of-breed supporting technology.
That way you won’t find yourself a victim of vendor lock-in.
Focus
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11. A customer support team staffed by engineers.
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SERVICE
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12. Just about every DRaaS provider will promise 24 x 7 x 365 customer service
but it’s important to know who is performing that service and at what skill level.
Being in the throes of a system failure is no time to discover that you’re
speaking with a novice with little or no technical experience, and
whose main role is to simply categorize your problem, create a ticket and
push you up the rung.
Given the high stakes, you’ll want to vet DRaaS providers to make sure that
the support people at the front lines are empowered and capable of answering
all your questions and actually solving your problem.
Inquire into the type of training that different cloud DR providers put their
support personnel through. What percentage of the support team that will
touch your business are skilled engineers versus merely low cost labor sitting
at a phone bank? Are they located in your region or halfway around the
world? Are they native speakers or is something prone to be lost in translation?
How quickly do problems get resolved?
Importantly, what is the commitment of the support organization to your
success? The more forward-thinking DRaaS providers will have their engineers
go so far as to consult with you to perform failover tests and provide reporting
on a scheduled basis that aligns with your DR plan. This kind of advanced
system performance monitoring ensures that your production environment
is fully prepared for failover.
Service
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13. Disaster recovery as a service is becoming an increasingly popular alternative
to traditional DR because of its ability to reduce costs, significantly simplify
testing and easily create a fully replicated IT environment in a separate
location. When evaluating prospective DRaaS solutions, it’s essential to focus
on five key areas.
Performance:
Really scrutinize the RTO and RPO capabilities of DRaaS providers. Understand
whether they can deliver on the metrics that your DR plan specifies and at
what cost. For more critical applications and systems you will want to keep
recovery time objectives to a few minutes and recovery point objectives to
a few seconds if budget allows.
Backup and Retention:
Compare your existing backup and retention methods with some of the
select DRaaS providers that combine instant recovery and archival backup
in one integrated solution. You’ll likely find that the latter saves you money,
eliminates a lot of the hassles associated with backups and improves the
security of your backups.
Disaster Avoidance:
Look for DRaaS providers who are just as committed to disaster avoidance
as they are to disaster recovery, particularly in the area of failover testing. The
most committed partners will even encourage their engineers collaborate
directly with you to create and oversee a testing schedule that aligns with
your disaster recovery plan.
Focus:
Strongly consider a DRaaS provider with a purpose-built infrastructure
architected specifically for disaster recovery and with a singular focus on
disaster recovery. Putting yourself in the hands of partners who live and
breathe cloud DR will generally yield better results and accountability.
Service:
Dig beneath the 24 x 7 customer support claims by competing cloud DR
providers. Look for those who staff their support teams with engineers that
are well versed in the technical underpinnings of the product and capable
of quickly solving complex problems.
Summary
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About Assuritive:
Assuritive, a specialized Disaster Recovery as a Service company, provides
real-time infrastructure replication and disaster recovery for virtualized IT
environments. Assuritive enables customers to easily replicate their
servers, applications and infrastructure to the Assuritive Cloud, and in the
event of a system failure or disaster, to fully recover IT systems in
minutes with no data loss. Leveraging instant cloud recovery, point-in-
time recovery, application testing prior to deployment and the reduced
damage to brand and competitive resources, customers can transform
Disaster Recovery from a cost to an investment in strategic advantage.
www.assuritive.com
Related Links
With this whitepaper, we review 5 reasons why disaster recovery
as a service may be right for your business. Click to read. Assuritive Data Sheet