Therefore, if the company has to add a PDU, they now have to p

Therefore, if the company has to add a PDU, they now have to
pay an additional $570
a month instead of just paying for the equipment once and the
total monthly power
usage for the rack. The company notes if they were a bigger
company, that amount of
money would be a drop in the bucket, but SMBs like themselves
will begin to ques-
tion these price hikes. SunGard claimed they expanded their
pricing practices from
circuit-based pricing to KW-based pricing in order to help
customers under specific
circumstances better manage their power costs. SunGard
claimed it makes it easier
for some customers to manage the number of circuits they
provision and better utilize
their KW power use (Pariseau, 2010).
DISASTER RECOVERY IN THE CLOUD
Cloud computing, along with mobile and tablet devices,
accounts for much of the
high-tech buzz these days. But when it comes to hype, the cloud
seems to absorb

more than its fair share, which has had the unintended
consequence of sometimes
overshadowing its real utility. The primary difference between
on-premise DR or
use of a co-location facility, and cloud DR, is that cloud DR
specifically implies that
the outsource provider owns the underlying compute and storage
hardware (and pos-
sibly software, as well) and that you access these resources via
the Internet using
secure, encrypted transmission protocols, or via a dedicated
connection you pay
for. This arrangement is known as Infrastructure-as-a-Service or
IaaS. In addition,
cloud providers may also own and lease you the required
software platform, such
as the operating system, Web server software, run-time
programming language soft-
ware, and the like. This is known as Platform-as-a-Service or
PaaS. Moreover, the
cloud provider may also own and provide you access to their
software application
over the Internet. This is known as Software-as-a-Service or
SaaS.

Although the concept—and some of the products and services—
of cloud-based
disaster recovery is still nascent, some companies, especially
SMBs, are discovering
and starting to leverage cloud services for DR. It can be an
attractive alternative for
companies that may be strapped for IT resources because the
usage-based cost of
cloud services is well suited for DR where the secondary
infrastructure is parked
and idling most of the time. Having DR sites in the cloud
reduces the need for data
center space, IT infrastructure, and IT resources, which leads to
significant cost
reductions, enabling smaller companies to deploy disaster
recovery options that were
previously only found in larger enterprises.
Some of the primary benefits of employing cloud DR in your
overall DR strategy
include the following:
• Pricing is transparent and subscription-based. Pricing includes
all the software,
infrastructure, and services to deliver the solution. You are
typically charged

per gigabyte of data, per server, or for a combination of the two.
The only cost not
included is the cost of network connectivity. You pay for only
the servers
you want to protect.
460 INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT #3—SMBs
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Disaster Recovery Planning for IT Professionals
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• Deployment is fast and easy. Most of the recovery
configuration can be done
online, because there’s no need to reserve identical hardware,
set up proprietary
links, or negotiate your specific SLA. Since the backup is to
virtual volumes and
servers, you simply have to ensure that the right virtualization
layers are in use.

However, services are typically limited to your x86 server
environments.
• Oversubscription risk is minimized. In traditional managed DR
services, the
provider subscribes several clients to the same IT resources,
closely manages the
oversubscription ratio, and avoids subscribing clients from the
same region to
the same equipment. But there’s a chance that multiple,
simultaneous disasters
will be declared, in which case you won’t get access to the IT
equipment you’ve
spent thousands of dollars a month holding in reserve. While the
same can
still be true with cloud DR services, the risk is minimized
because far more
customers can be packed onto the same physical IT
infrastructure.
• The penalty for rehearsing your DR plan is reduced. What
good is a DR plan if
you don’t rehearse it to make sure it works? Traditional DR
service providers
recognize this but have to schedule rehearsals, reserve
equipment, and often be on
call for you during the rehearsal. All this preparation costs

money and is typically
above and beyond the DR services contract. With cloud DR
services, there’s
usually minimal or no prep required, allowing you to rehearse
more easily and at
much lower cost.
Despite its benefits, disaster recovery in the cloud isn’t a
perfect solution, and its
shortcomings and challenges need to be clearly understood
before a firm adopts it as
a solution. Security usually tops the list of concerns:
• Are data securely transferred and stored in the cloud?
• How are users authenticated?
• Are passwords the only option or does the cloud provider offer
some type of two-
factor authentication?
• Does the cloud provider meet regulatory requirements?
Also, since clouds are typically accessed via the Internet,
bandwidth require-
ments also need to be clearly understood. There’s a risk of only
planning for band-
width requirements to move data into the cloud without

sufficient analysis of how to
make the data accessible when a disaster strikes:
• Do you have the bandwidth and network capacity to redirect
all users to the
cloud?
• If you plan to restore from the cloud to on-premises
infrastructure, how long will
that restore take?
Reliability of the cloud provider, its availability, and its ability
to serve your users
while a disaster is in progress are other key considerations. The
choice of a cloud
service provider or MSP that can deliver service within the
agreed terms is essential.
According to a 2012 survey on SMB cloud adoption, a
significant increase in
paid cloud services over the next 5 years among SMBs is
predicted. The research
461Disaster Recovery in the Cloud
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of-use

conducted by Edge Strategies includes survey responses from IT
decision-makers or
influencers at more than 3000 SMBs in 13 countries. According
to survey results,
paid cloud services are expected to double in 5 years, while the
number of the world’s
smallest companies using at least one paid cloud service will
triple in the next 3 years.
In addition:
• Cloud computing is able to deliver more of what SMBs need—
cheaper
operations and faster, better fusion of vital information to
virtually any device. In
fact, the research finds 59% of companies currently using cloud
services report
significant productivity benefits from information technology,
compared with
just 30% of SMBs not yet using the cloud.
• Despite a sluggish global economy, 63% of SMBs using cloud
services today
expect to grow in sales in the next 12-18 months, while 55%
believe technology
will power their growth. SMBs worldwide are embracing cloud

services to reap
those benefits and stay ahead of competitors —50% of SMBs say
cloud
computing is going to become more important for their
operations and 58%
believe working in the cloud can make companies more
competitive.
• Security is a priority but no longer a main concern. Only about
20% of SMBs
believe that data are less secure in the cloud than they are in
their on-premise
systems. Thirty-six percent overall and 49% of larger SMBs
actually think that
data are as secure in the cloud as in their own systems.
• Local is better when it comes to service providers. Most SMBs
feel it is important
to buy services from a provider with a local presence, and 31%
feel this is critical
(Edge Strategies, 2012).
Disaster recovery in the cloud options
When looking at cloud options for BC/DR, there are many
different ways to slice and
dice the use of cloud. As was stated earlier, SaaS is one of the
fastest growing seg-

ments of cloud IT. With SaaS, your third-party provider
typically has developed their
own software and is offering it to you on a subscription-based
pricing model, as
opposed to perpetual license model (where you install it at your
site and have rights
to use the software on your own hardware in perpetuity). With
SaaS, the dependent
IT hardware and underlying infrastructure which runs the
software is provided to
you, managed by an external third-party software provider and
typically accessed
securely over the Internet using a Web browser. In addition, the
provider manages
both the primary and backup (or DR) instances of both their
software and your data.
If you suffered a disaster, you would simply need to get back on
the Internet with a
common Web browser at any alternate location to access the
software and data again.
If your cloud provider’s primary location suffers a disaster, they
are responsible for
recovery of your data to one of their operational sites within
agreed upon service

levels. With your data hosted externally, there are legal and
privacy implications
to consider and it is critical you understand the terms of use or
contractual obligations
before you sign up. As with all cloud IT services, access to the
Internet or a private
of-use
network connecting you and the cloud provider is an essential
component of acces-
sibility. That said, SaaS certainly offers one of the best DR
solutions for SMBs with
limited resources, even if availability of your IT solution is
dependent on a third-
party Internet or network connection and a third-party MSP.
The second sphere of cloud IT services includes offerings such
as IaaS or PaaS. In
both cases, you own and manage the application software and/or
data, and the cloud
IT provider owns the resident hardware and underlying

infrastructure. These offer-
ings are essentially one step removed from SaaS and provide
things like backup stor-
age and/or alternate compute facilities for you to use in a DR
scenario. PaaS differs
slightly from SaaS in that PaaS implies you need a specific
compute environment to
run your software and data from their site in a DR scenario
(where they own and
provide the licensed operating system, storage, or Web platform
you need). To make
things more complicated, the industry has developed other
specialized terms for what
are, essentially, IaaS and PaaS offerings, such as DRaaS and
RaaS (Recovery as a
Service). IaaS and PaaS offerings are typically employed for DR
purposes when
you manage the production instances of the software and
underlying hardware at
your own primary site, but in lieu of an alternate DR site you
own or lease, you keep
backups of data and/or supporting virtualized operating systems
at the third-party
providers’ site in case of a disaster at your primary site. Table
SMB.1 compares

and contrasts different approaches for disaster recovery
strategies in the cloud.
Table SMB.1 Comparison of Cloud-Based DR Approaches
Managed Primary
and DR Instances
Cloud-Based
Backup and
Restore
Replication in the
Cloud
Instances • Salesforce.com
• E-mail in the
cloud
• Other SaaS
• On-premise in
the cloud
• Cloud to cloud
• IaaS
• On-premise in the
cloud
• Cloud to cloud
• PaaS
Benefits • Fully managed
DR

• 100% Usage
based
• Least complex
• Only requires
cloud storage
• Cloud virtual
machines are
optional
• Usually less
complex than
replication
• Best RTO and
RPO
• More suited to
support
application-
consistent
recovery
Considerations SLAs define access
to production and
DR instances
Less favorable
RTOs and RPOs
than replication
Higher degree of
complexity

Implementation N/A Backup
applications and
appliances
• Replication
software
• Cloud gateways
• Cloud storage
software
of-use
Managed applications and managed DR
As was stated earlier in the SaaS example, an increasingly
popular option is to put
both primary production and disaster recovery instances into the
cloud and have both
handled by an MSP. By doing this, you’re reaping all the
benefits of cloud comput-
ing, from usage-based cost to eliminating on-premises
infrastructure. Instead of
doing it yourself, you’re deferring DR to the cloud or MSP. The
choice of service

provider and the process of negotiating appropriate SLAs are of
utmost importance.
By handing over control to the service provider, you need to be
absolutely certain it’s
able to deliver uninterrupted service within the defined SLAs
for both primary and
DR instances. The relevance of SLAs with a cloud provider
cannot be overstated;
with SLAs, you’re negotiating access to your applications.
A pure cloud play is becoming increasingly popular for e-mail
and some other
business applications, such as customer relationship
management (CRM), where
Salesforce.com has been a pioneer and is now leading the cloud-
based CRM market.
Back up to and restore from the cloud
Applications and data remain on-premises in this approach, with
data being backed
up into the cloud and restored onto on-premise hardware when a
disaster occurs. In
other words, the backup in the cloud becomes a substitute for
tape-based off-site
backups.
When contemplating cloud backup and recovery, it’s crucial to

clearly under-
stand both the backup and the more problematic restore aspects.
Backing up into
the cloud is relatively straightforward, and backup application
vendors have been
extending their backup suites with options to directly back up to
popular cloud ser-
vice providers such as AT&T, Amazon, Microsoft Corp.,
Nirvanix Inc., and Rack-
space. Cloud gateways, such as F5 ARX Cloud Extender,
Nasuni Filer, Riverbed
Whitewater, and TwinStrata CloudArray, can move data
deduplicated (or deduped),
compressed, and encrypted into the cloud and allows setting
retention times of data in
the cloud. They straddle on-premises and cloud storage, and
they can keep both on-
premises data and data in the cloud in sync.
The challenging aspect of using cloud-based backups for
disaster recovery is the
recovery. With bandwidth limited and possibly terabytes of data
to be recovered, get-
ting data restored back on-premises within defined RTOs can be
challenging. Some

cloud backup service providers offer an option to restore data to
disks, which are then
sent to the customer for local on-premises recovery. Another
option is to additionally
maintain a large on-premises cache of recent backups that can
be used for local
restores.
Depending on the data to be restored, features like compression
and, more impor-
tantly, data dedupe can make restores from full systems in the
cloud to on-premises
infrastructure a viable option. A case in point is Michigan-based
Rockford Construc-
tion Co., which uses a StorSimple appliance for cloud-based
protection of its
Exchange and SharePoint infrastructures. In the event of a
disaster, they pull virtual
machines (VMs) from the cloud; with StorSimple’s
deduplication, they are able to
pull down one full VM copy and only the differences for others.

of-use
Back up to and restore to the cloud
In this approach, data aren’t restored back to on-premises
infrastructure; instead, they
are restored to VMs in the cloud. This requires both cloud
storage and cloud compute
resources, such as Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud. The
restore can be done when a
disaster is declared or on a continuous basis (prestaged).
Prestaging DR VMs and
keeping them relatively up to date through scheduled restores is
crucial in cases
where aggressive RTOs need to be met. Some cloud service
providers facilitate
bringing up cloud VMs as part of their DR offering.
Replication to VMs in the cloud
For applications that require aggressive recovery time and
recovery point objectives
(RPOs), as well as application awareness, replication is the data
movement option of
choice. Replication to cloud VMs can be used to protect both
cloud and on-premises
production instances. In other words, replication is suitable for

both cloud-VM-to-
cloud-VM and on-premises-to-cloud-VM data protection.
Replication products are
based on continuous data protection (CDP), such as CommVault
Continuous Data
Replicator, NetApp SnapMirror, or object-based cloud storage
such as EMC Atmos
or the Hitachi Content Platform (HCP).
The cloud greatly extends disaster recovery options, yields
significant cost sav-
ings, and enables DR methods in SMBs that were previously
only possible in larger
organizations. It does not, however, change the DR
fundamentals of having to devise
a solid disaster recovery plan, testing it periodically, and having
users trained and
prepared appropriately.
Protecting branch offices with cloud disaster recovery
Disaster recovery for remote and branch offices (ROBOs) has
always been a chal-
lenge for SMBs. Branch offices are often collections of point-
solution technologies
built up over time to include one-off hardware platforms and/or
aging user desktops.

Efforts to simplify branch offices involve reducing the number
of platforms or cen-
tralizing backend services, but they are often stymied by their
impact on user expe-
rience and productivity. The IT consolidation wave of the past
decade also shifted
focus to the data center and the server infrastructure, both of
which are more easily
tweaked and typically better managed than remote offices,
especially in smaller
enterprises.
As they look out to the remote office infrastructure today, IT
departments are
increasingly looking to emerging cloud computing solutions as a
way to provide bet-
ter availability in remote offices today. Cloud computing can
keep the need for addi-
tional manpower, servers, and data storage to a minimum. But
can the cloud offer a
viable solution for remote office disaster recovery? The best
answer is probably
“partially.” Disaster recovery goes beyond just data backup and
server protection

and encompasses a complex mix of technologies, processes, and
compliance issues,
such as connectivity, multisite data replication, and workload
redundancy, that must
of-use
be orchestrated at each remote office. Thus, the cloud may or
may not be suitable for
all DR issues at your remote site.
However, new cloud disaster recovery offerings are appearing at
a brisk pace
such as services offered by Simply Continuous. Simply
Continuous combines both
data protection and workload protection by replicating data and
VM images between
a branch Data Domain appliance and the Simply Continuous
data center. In event of
disaster, the replicated data are ready to go, and the most
current version of a cus-
tomer’s application servers can be quickly restored from virtual
hot standbys to bare

metal. Moreover, all replicated data are heavily deduplicated,
making efficient use of
limited WAN links.
As disaster recovery vendors continue to improve their cloud
disaster recovery
products, you should also prepare your branch office to be ready
for cloud disaster
recovery. The following sections summarize the critical steps
you need to take before
you take your ROBO to the cloud.
Virtualize and consolidate servers
The first step in readying the branch office for the cloud should
be to break as many
hard links between applications, data, servers, and networks as
possible. Virtualiza-
tion technologies exist across the IT stack and deliver two
critical elements: encap-
sulation and mobility. Any service that you would like to move
to or protect in the
cloud must be both platform and location independent.
Virtualizing branch office servers will allow you to take
advantage of advanced
workload protection features provided by hypervisor platforms.

In a VMware envi-
ronment, these include snapshots, high-availability (HA)
clustering, distributed
resource scheduling (to place workloads automatically on the
optimal server), site
recovery management, and even fault tolerant “lockstep”
execution, which protects
against any individual server failure with virtually no
downtime. Once virtualized,
server workloads can also be replicated in real time to a central
data center or to a
cloud service.
Such solutions for virtual workload CDP are available from
several vendors, such
as FalconStor Software and InMage Systems, and are offered
both as technologies
you deploy in your environment or via cloud service providers.
Although server con-
solidation increases the risk of a single hardware failure
affecting multiple applica-
tions, the broad range of workload protection technologies for
virtualized
environments, such as HA clustering, more than compensates
for this increased busi-

ness risk. Plus, the wealth of provider offerings available for
cloud protection of vir-
tual workloads ensures that prices will continue to come down,
as will the risk of
provider lock-in.
Virtualize and streamline data storage and backup
Similarly, storage virtualization in the remote office not only
delivers new capabil-
ities for data protection but allows IT departments to explore
cloud storage offerings
not available for branches that rely solely on local file servers
for data and/or tape
backups for disaster recovery.
of-use
First, if your data protection strategy in the branch is primarily
tape-based, you
should explore disk-based replication options. In the past, disk-
to-disk backups may
have been cost prohibitive, which kept many branch offices

dependent on tape for
DR. But the future of disaster recovery is disk-based
replication, and the falling cost
of higher density disk storage combined with the use of data
deduplication and com-
pression technologies can significa ntly reduce the upfront cost
of new storage infra-
structure by slashing capacity requirements.
To do this effectively, you should build a test environment in
which you migrate
some of your branch backups from tape to disk, then
deduplicate and replicate these
backups to a central facility. This will enable you to become
familiar with the tech-
nology and establish acceptable RTOs and RPOs. You’ll need to
have these require-
ments in place, well documented and well tested, before you can
compare the cost
benefits and availability trade-offs of any eventual move of
your replicated data to a
cloud provider.
Once more data are backed up to disk, you can explore
emerging cloud-based file

storage gateways, object storage services, and application-
specific data archiving
services, such as those from Asigra Inc., Iron Mountain Inc.,
LiveOffice, Nirvanix
Inc., Robobak, and Symantec Corp. The key is to create a
virtualized storage envi-
ronment in the branch that supports incremental, experimental
movement of differ-
ent data types and backup sets to the cloud. It might make sense
to archive e-mail in
the cloud first, for example, to prove the cost benefits and
validate recovery SLAs,
before moving on to other data types.
Virtualize applications and desktops
Applications and user desktops are also essential elements to
examine when readying
a remote office for cloud disaster recovery. Application delivery
is arguably the most
important function of remote office infrastructure and often the
most challenging
aspect of DR planning. Disaster recovery planning falls
generally into two major cat-
egories: where should applications reside for highest
availability, and how will users

access them in the event of disaster?
For maximum resiliency, hosted applications delivered in a
SaaS model can
insulate the remote office and remote user the most from
failure. The service
provider market for office productivity application hosting is
maturing rapidly,
and the days of local Exchange and SharePoint servers i n
remote offices are likely
numbered.
For those applications that cannot be outsourced, or that you are
not ready to
outsource, various flavors of application virtualization are
available from vendors
such as Citrix Systems Inc., Microsoft, and VMware. These
include application
streaming and hosted desktops, which can be deployed
standalone or as part of
a more comprehensive desktop virtualization strategy. However,
it’s important
to compare the costs of virtualizing applications yourself (and
putting in place
the required desktop virtualization infrastructure) to the cost of
outsourcing your

desktops completely.
of-use
Vendors such as Desktone offer desktop virtualization in the
cloud, which
removes the need for you to license the virtualization platform
or host and replicate
virtual desktops yourself. Again, it’s important to evaluate the
trade-offs and costs
for your particular branch requirements. It might make sense to
implement a limited
amount of your own internal desktop/application virtualization
technology to estab-
lish cost benefits, explore ROI, and validate user experience
under controlled con-
ditions and within your corporate firewall. After you have
implemented your
virtualization technology, you can then move your working
architecture to a service
provider when feasible. Or, if your performance requirements

and current cost struc-
ture are well understood, it might be more efficient to explore a
cloud offering
directly, without the experimental phase.
Deploy application acceleration and WAN optimization
Lastly, regardless of how much storage you move or what
percentage of your appli-
cations you outsource to the cloud, the viability of any cloud-
based solution for
remote office disaster recovery will depend on the performance
you can achieve over
the WAN. WAN performance will dictate how often and how
much data you can
replicate, and which applications you can serve up from a
disaster recovery site.
Keep in mind that network performance will make or break a
cloud-based DR
strategy, whether it’s on the enterprise WAN behind the firewall
or the public Inter-
net, and whether you’re replicating live data, recovering backup
sets, opening a
shared PowerPoint file, or running a remote display protocol to
a thin client.
Also, application acceleration technologies and WAN

optimization should be a
part of any cloud-based service. The leading vendors of WAN
optimization have his-
torically relied on purpose-built hardware appliances to deliver
both generalized
TCP acceleration and application-specific acceleration, but this
market segment is
also virtualizing. Virtual appliances from vendors such as Blue
Coat, Certeon
Inc., and Expand Networks allow customers to deploy WAN
optimization anywhere
they run a virtualized server, whether that is at a data center, a
remote office, or at
their cloud service provider.
Several vendors also offer mobile worker solutions that enable
WAN optimiza-
tion directly to a user laptop. So, whatever mix of on-premise
and cloud-based solu-
tions make the most sense for your remote office DR strategy,
your users can enjoy
optimized network access from wherever they are.
Overall, before exploring cloud-based disaster recovery for
remote or branch

offices, your IT infrastructure should be as virtualized as
possible, highly consoli-
dated, and streamlined. Storage virtualization will enable you to
explore cloud disas-
ter recovery services incrementally and at different levels of the
IT stack, while
keeping the rest of the infrastructure in place. Also, server
consolidation will simplify
the number of resources to plan for and manage in the cloud.
And, unless you’ve
optimized your storage and server utilization by eliminating as
much redundancy
as possible before moving resources to the cloud, you’re
unlikely to see a compelling
payback from the effort.
of-use
SMB case studies
There are many examples of SMBs using the cloud in order to
meet (and even
exceed) disaster recovery objectives at a lower cost than hosting

internally or using
a co-location facility. In these next seven brief examples, you’ll
see how SMBs have
weathered snowstorms and hurricanes with improved cloud DR
capabilities, as well
as how several SMBs are preparing for future disasters at a
lower cost with newer
cloud technologies.
Snowmaggedon and Snowpocalypse
Most SMBs that employ cloud IT use it as one of the tools in
their disaster recovery
plan. For some companies, the cloud itself has become the sole
DR strategy in their
disaster recovery plan. MacNair Travel Management, based in
Alexandria, Virginia,
arranges travel for corporate clients. In 2010, the company was
hit by two major
storms (which the COO called Snowmaggedon and
Snowpocalypse), dumping about
55 in. of snow in the Washington, DC area, that could have
crippled their business.
During both storms, not a single employee made it into the
office. MacNair uses all
cloud services for business operations, for all employees. The

company uses a ser-
vice called Cetrom IT, which houses all the company
applications in a network oper-
ations center. Cetrom handles the data backups and duplicates
data between two
facilities.
“We can access our applications, operating systems and data
anywhere at any
time with only an Internet connection and browser,” the COO
said. “Nothing short
of a nuclear holocaust can shut us down. Not being dependent
on a single location or
data/voice carrier, and having full, operational backup, is why
the cloud is perfect for
continuity of operations plans. Clearly the best disaster
recovery plan is one that all
but eliminates the operational impacts of a disaster before it
happens.”
While such a disaster recovery strategy depends entirely on the
cloud, MacNair
admits the cloud is not entirely foolproof. The company still
asserts that there needs
to be an overall disaster recovery plan for the business: Where
will the employees

work? How will the physical building be restored? Which IT
services can be sus-
pended while critical systems are restored? Yet, the overarching
theme from their
perspective was that the cloud is a critical component in
disaster planning, it relieves
most of the tension with IT services, and it provides a new level
of business conti-
nuity (Brandon, 2011).
Amazon Web Services to the rescue
The IT manager at New York City architectural firm Diller
Scofidio þ Renfro was in
the middle of a company-wide migration from Exchange 2003 to
Gmail when Hur-
ricane Sandy hit. Prior to knowing of Sandy’s arrival, they
began setting up the
accounts and migrating older messages in preparation. Sandy
interrupted their
migration. The building’s 31-foot, block-long basement was
filled with water, and
it actually made it up about 4 feet into the lobby above. The
damage to the building

of-use
was enough that they didn’t have any power at all until 5 days
later. As a result, both
UPSs in the server rack soon died and their servers went offline.
The partial migration to hosted Gmail turned out to be an
advantage. After the
hurricane, when the extent of damage all over the city was
clear, it was easy to make
the call to change the location of mail delivery and have people
operate from partially
migrated mailboxes instead of waiting for power to their
servers. IT staff had
migrated most of their documents already to Google Apps by
the time the storm
arrived, so that made it easier for them to continue the
migration from home where
they still had power.
Several cloud-based services also helped get the company
operational again.
Using Amazon Web Services, the company was able to get
employees access to

needed apps. They ended up setting up a server at AWS and
installing the license
manager for Autodesk products on it (AutoCAD, Revit, 3DS
Max). By opening
the right ports to the Internet, people who had laptops and
hadn’t checked out licenses
ahead of time could change their license manager settings to the
AWS server’s
IP address and get a license. IT staff also used AWS servers as
remote desktops
to work from.
A cloud storage gateway from Panzura also proved vital. The
gateway is typically
used to archive data to the cloud, but they were able to leverage
it to make an emer-
gency copy of recently used data as Sandy approached. Panzura
also was able to set
up a DR site for them to allow access to the firm’s files and
systems. It took about 2
days for Panzura to get everything up. This wasn’t a normal
service they offered at
the time, so there was a bit of pleading involved (Lynn, 2012).
LAUSD implements snapshot-based cloud backup
A 2012 Spiceworks survey of 1500 SMB professional found that

a quarter of survey
participants were using an MSP for online backup (YouSendIt,
2012). Despite the
tangible benefits of cloud DR, SMBs aren’t giving up all their
data. Many are still
backing up data locally and using cloud providers as a storage
vault. Some organi-
zations are using cloud storage as an alternative to tape for
protecting data in remote
sites and eliminate tape in branch offices, including the Los
Angeles Unified School
District (LAUSD) and Los Angeles-based engineering
consulting firm Psomas.
The LAUSD’s facilities division has placed TwinStrata
CloudArray Virtual
Appliances in 15 remote locations across the district to back up
80 TB of primary
storage to the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) cloud. The
public cloud backup
project was paid for as part of a 10-year, $20 million bond
project, and the LAUSD
estimates it will save $283,000 over 5 years. Most of the
savings come from elim-
inating tape and using lower cost commodity servers. The

district loaded TwinStrata
software on Dell PowerEdge R210 file servers running VMware
ESXi. Each device
presents itself on the network as an iSCSI host and is attached
to a Linux-based file
server running Samba to emulate a Windows environment. The
CloudArray virtual
appliances take snapshots from local hard drives on a daily
basis and send them to
Amazon S3 cloud storage. If they need to restore a document
that is corrupted, they
can restore from snapshots as simply as they would open a
folder. By moving
of-use
snapshot copies into public cloud storage, the facilities division
within LAUSD elim-
inated the use of Symantec Backup Exec software and tape at
each site.
“This is strictly mapping drives to a file share,” their IT
Director said. “As iSCSI

storage drivers, there is no heavy lifting. It’s a way to present
storage to a file server.
We can restore the data from the cloud to any location. We no
longer have
backup. We snapshot the data and we can roll back to any point
in time. We pay
for storage as we need it. If I need 10 terabytes, I pay for 10
terabytes.”
LAUSD says users access their files the same way as if they
were stored locally.
The District was attracted to TwinStata because it supports
iSCSI and it is a virtual
appliance so they could install it as software instead of buying
another physical box.
“This is our first move into the cloud,” their IT Director said.
“At the end of three
years, we will get new equipment and we will not have to deal
with any data migra-
tions” (Lelii, 2011).
Psomas moves DR to the cloud
The Los Angeles-based engineering consulting firm Psomas
turned to Riverbed
Whitewater backup gateways, which provides LAN-type access
to public cloud stor-

age for data protection. Psomas, which employs 500 people,
replaced tape at 11 sites
with one Whitewater cloud storage gateway and 10 virtual
appliances. The company
claimed they didn’t like tape because it costs too much and you
have to buy them in
bulk, manage secure physical storage of the tape, rotate the
tapes periodically, etc.
The company has reduced backup costs by about 40% since they
started rolling out
cloud devices in March. Before using the cloud, Psomas would
send a driver to each
location to swap out tapes.
Psomas still uses a dedicated backup server running Symantec
Backup Exec. The
company’s data are backed up to the Backup Exec server, which
mounts the backup
location to the Whitewater appliances. Whitewater dedupes and
encrypts the data
and stores them on to the Amazon S3 cloud. If an office stops
operations for any
reason, the firm could recreate a virtual Whitewater in a read-
only capacity at a sep-

arate office and then run restores from the cloud usi ng Backup
Exec. “We have a
much smoother disaster recovery process,” the CIO said. “We
can get to any data
from any office because the data is in the cloud. If we lose
office A, we can run
restores from office B” (Lelii, 2011).
Private cloud DR plans help BUMI
During Hurricane Sandy, the downtown Manhattan office of
BUMI (Back Up My
Info) had 35 feet of sea water in the building. Fortunately,
BUMI, a backup and
DR service provider, uses third-party data centers in Toronto
and Kelowna in Canada
to store and replicate customer data with NetApp storage and
Asigra backup soft-
ware. When the disaster hit their office, they invoked the BUMI
cloud recovery plan
that they had built the prior year. They took backups in their
Toronto data center and
started up a virtual environment to replicate their local
environment using Citrix cli-
ents that their team worked off of. Once their Citrix
environment was up in Toronto,

they were then able to work through restoring their servers.
of-use
BUMI employees worked from their homes to restore customer
data remotely for
clients in the New York metropolitan area. Many of their local
customers had sites
outside of New York that they used to recover to. Some of their
IT staff had no power
at home but could access BUMI remote servers through their
cell phones, for as long
as they lasted. The company sent Cisco IP phones to their
employees at home via
FedEx that they could charge if they had power. Since the Cisco
IP phones can
plug-and-play anywhere there is an Internet connection, they
were an invaluable
resource for communication during the recovery operations. The
small BUMI IT
staff of nine was not able to return to their office until
December. As a result of

the lessons learned during Sandy, many of them now work from
home which the
company calls the “new normal” (Raffo, 2012).
Sprott switches course to cloud DR service provider
The VP of IT at Canadian financial services firm, Sprott, was
charged with assuring
business continuity prior to 2010, partly in response to
regulatory pressure but
also because the business needed to operate reliably. They have
portfolio managers
and real-time traders, so the systems need to be up and running
when the markets
are open.
They started down the road of piecing together a disaster
recovery system that
would employ virtualized servers, running on racks in a remote
data center. But then
the VP got a call from a company called Geminare that had
created just the sort of
setup he had in mind, and they were offering it as a bundled
service. Geminare part-
ners with telecommunications and hosting companies that want
to offer DRaaS.

They provide the network and server infrastructure, and
Geminare provides the soft-
ware to manage the failover and recovery process. Geminare
invested in making sure
their service can meet the security and audit trail requirements
of regulated industries
like financial services, even while enjoying the economies
associated with cloud
computing.
Sprott pays about 800 Canadian dollars per server per month
(close to U.S. $800)
to replicate critical servers for e-mail, BlackBerry service, and
file storage to Bell
Canada’s version of the Geminare service. Sprott’s VP says the
firm’s trading plat-
form isn’t included because it’s currently outsourced, but he
plans to bring it back in-
house and add it to this backup plan. The data are transmi tted
over a virtual private
network (VPN), an encrypted connection over the public
Internet, where a pricier
disaster recovery service might use a private
telecommunications line. This is a con-
tinuous replication process, rather than a periodic backup, so

the off-site copy of the
data is never more than a fraction of a second behind.
In a live test for Sprott’s management, the VP was able to
unplug a file server,
then walk to his desk and manually trigger a failover to the
remote copy. The VP got
two calls after he turned it off within 60 seconds from users, but
then one of the users
told him it was back up while on the phone call—all within 30-
45 seconds. Users had
no idea they were now doing work in a data center 30 km away.
Similarly, if the
Sprott offices were to burn down, employees could access these
applications from
home (Carr, 2010).
of-use
University turns to cloud backup for data protection
Maryville University faced high costs and many troubles when
it first tried to imple-

ment data backup to a remote site. The university enrolls about
3800 students at its
130-acre campus in Town and Country, MO, about 20 miles
outside of St. Louis. Their
initial attempt at backing up nearly 4 TB of data off-site was
time consuming for the
three people in the school’s network services division staff,
whose responsibilities also
include managing the data centers, Internet access,
infrastructure, and other tasks.
The school initially spent about 2 years trying to operate a
remote backup location
at Columbia College, located more than 110 miles west, but the
4-hour round-trip
travel time for IT staff and the technology used going back and
forth made the effort
difficult. Initially, they had replaced their older IBM SAN with
a newer NetApp SAN,
and they took the old IBM equipment to the off-site location.
But making a heteroge-
neous SAN connection between those two and getting a good
backup was troublesome
at best, including keeping the VPN connections running and
getting the data trans-

ferred in a timely fashion. They tried to patch and bandage it all
together, but it never
worked the way they wanted, reliability was a problem and it
took a lot of staff time to
remediate ongoing issues. The school’s new NetApp Fabric
MetroCluster SAN spans
both the administration building and the library on campus. In
order to fix the issues
they experienced replicating to the older IBM SAN at Columbia
College, they would
have had to replace the IBM SAN with another NetApp SAN in
order to use the
NetApp data protection tools for data synchronization for a
remote solution. When
they realized the cost was going to be in the area of $125,000-
$175,000, in addition
to yearly maintenance around 20-25% of the purchase price, that
was the impetus
for looking at alternatives to purchasing and managing their
own hardware.
dinCloud came recommended to Maryville University from Los
Angeles-based
En Pointe Technologies, and Maryville ended up using
dinCloud’s “dinBackup”

solution, which is aimed at “price-sensitive” customers and is
meant to be used with
a customer’s existing on-site backup solution, plus includes
disaster recovery
and other services. dinCloud was very willing to sit down with
Maryville IT staff
and work out how data are going to be shared, how they would
be encrypted, and
who would be responsible for getting them from point A to
point B. The company
helped the school throughout the process. In order to perform
due diligence with ven-
dor selection, the University talked to a couple different
vendors. However, they
ended up choosing dinCloud because they said their people were
very knowledge-
able and very flexible in creating a solution that would work for
them.
Once they signed the contract, the school had a rather tough
time getting the VPN
connectionset uptodinCloud’s site. They had about 500
Mbpsofbandwidthspread out
among three ISPs (Internet Service Providers), which was
plenty for what they were

trying to accomplish considering they were only backing up
daily incremental changes
to data once the initial replication had completed. dinCloud
helped them work out a
couple of issues between their ISP subnets and dinCloud’s in
order to correct the prob-
lem they first experienced, and dinCloud also helped Maryville
IT staff configure their
primary NetApp storage so that data at the primary site could be
replicated to the din-
Cloud site using NetApp’s SnapMirror and SnapShot data
protection technologies.
of-use

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