The document discusses business continuity strategies on AWS, including using AWS services like S3, EBS, and Direct Connect for backups and disaster recovery. It outlines common BC/DR architectures like backup/restore, pilot light, warm standby, and multi-site solutions. The architectures move along a spectrum from simple backup/restore to more complex multi-site implementations that can fail over an entire production workload to AWS.

1. Business Continuity in the
AWS Cloud
Gerard Ngo – Account Manager
AWS Worldwide Public Sector

2. What is AWS?
Basics of Business Continuity
Why AWS for Business Continuity?
AWS services that can be employed
Common BC/DR architectures
Agenda

3. What is AWS?

4. Application Services
Compute Storage Databases
Networking
AWS Global Infrastructure
Deployment & Administration
AWS Platform

5. AWS Global Infrastructure
11 Regions
consisting of
29 Availability Zones
and
53 Edge Locations (CDN)
Customer Decides Where Applications and Data Reside

6. AWS Region View
- Independent/Separate Geographic Areas
- Isolated from other Regions (security boundary)
- Comprised of multiple Availability Zones
- Availability Zone = 1 or more “data center”
- Availability Zones connected through redundant low-
latency links
- Customer chooses a Region and Data stays within Region.
- Enables High-Availability Architecture
Availability
Zone A
Availability
Zone B
Availability
Zone C
Sample US Region

7. AWS Availability Zone (AZ) View
- Multiple Isolated locations within a Region
- Availability Zone = 1 or more “data center”
- Independent Failure Zone
- Physically separated
- On separate Low Risk Flood Plains
- Discrete UPS
- Onsite backup generation facilities
- Fed from different segments of utility provider
- Redundantly connected to multiple tier-1 ISP’s
- No “Disaster Recovery Datacenter”
- Built for Continuous Availability
- Customer decides Availability Zone for Compute
Availability
Zone A
Availability
Zone B
Availability
Zone C
Sample US Region
~ Data Center

8. Trusted by Enterprises Around the World

9. Public Sector Customers Worldwide

10. Certifications
SOC 1, 2, and 3
ISO 27001
PCI DSS for EC2, S3, EBS,
VPC, RDS, ELB, IAM
FISMA Moderate Compliant
Controls
HIPAA & ITAR Compliant
Architecture
Physical Security
Datacenters in nondescript
facilities
Physical access strictly
controlled
Must pass two-factor
authentication at least twice
for floor access
Physical access logged and
audited
HW, SW, Network
Systematic change
management
Phased updates
deployment
Safe storage decommission
Automated monitoring and
self-audit
Advanced network
protection
Built to enterprise security standards
http://aws.amazon.com/security

11. Basics of Business
Continuity

12. DR is part of a wider set of policies and controls…
DR & business continuity
It’s not an all or nothing thing
Choose what needs to failover and what does not
Some things more important than others
Some things will still be working
High availability Backup Disaster recovery
Keep your applications
running 24x7
Make sure your data is protected
and can be recovered if it is lost
Get your applications and
data back after a major
disaster

13. Each set of IT assets will have different requirements…
DR & business continuity
Recovery Time Objective
(RTO)
How quickly you need this asset to be recovered?
e.g. 1min? 15min? 1hr? 4hrs? 1day?
Recovery Point Objective
(RPO)
How ‘fresh’ the recovery must be for the asset?
e.g. zero data loss, 15mins out of date?

14. Assets will sit on a spectrum of technical complexity…
DR & business continuity
Rebuild when
required from
offsite backup
Run hot-hot
configuration with
auto-failover

15. Why AWS for Business
Continuity?

16. The fundamental economic model…
Traditional, second datacenter
Primary Site
Routers
Firewalls
Network
Application Licenses
Operating Systems
Hypervisor
Servers
SAN fabric
Primary Storage
Backup
Archive
Secondary Site
Routers
Firewalls
Network
Application Licenses
Operating Systems
Hypervisor
Servers
SAN fabric
Primary Storage
Backup
Archive

17. The fundamental economic model…
Utility, on-demand datacenter
Primary Site
Routers
Firewalls
Network
Application Licenses
Operating Systems
Hypervisor
Servers
SAN fabric
Primary Storage
Backup
Archive
AWS
Routers
Firewalls
Network
Application Licenses
Operating Systems
Hypervisor
Servers
SAN fabric
Snapshot Storage
Backup
Archive
Secondary
site costs

18. With utility services you might be able to:
Business & technical drivers
Reduce costs
Slash DR budgets by up to 50%
Reduce on-premise
Eliminate 30%+ of on-premise
physical equipment
Consolidate sites
Eliminate the need to run a
secondary site
Remove aging
technologies
Eliminate tape for backup and
archive

19. Challenges around Cost
Conventional DR Sites
High Cost
Low ROI
Implemented only for
most critical systems
Usually scaled down to
50% of production
Systems in a remote
region challenging

20. Cost Effective – On Demand Infrastructure
Business Continuity on AWS
Unprecedented
capabilities to implement
DR sites
Easily set up DR sites on
different geographic
regions
Cut down DR site cost by
up to 70%
Substantial savings on
software licenses

21. AWS services that can be
employed

22. Amazon
Simple
Storage
Service (S3)
AWS Import/Export
AWS Storage
Gateway Service
AWS Direct
Connect
Amazon Virtual
Private Cloud
(VPC)
Amazon
Route 53
Amazon Elastic
Compute Cloud
(EC2)
Amazon Relational
Database Service (RDS)
Amazon
Elastic Block
Storage (EBS)
Object storage &
transfer services
Networking services Foundation services

23. S3 and Elastic Block Store
AWS storage is ideal for DR
Simple Storage Service
Highly scalable object storage
1 byte to 5TB in size
99.999999999% durability
Elastic Block Store
High performance block storage device
Volumes of 1GB to 16TB in size
Mount as drives to instances with
snapshot/cloning functionalities

24. Glacier
Durable
Designed for 99.999999999%
durability of archives
Cost effective
Write-once, read-never. Cost effective for long
term storage. Pay for accessing data
3 to 5 hour Retrieval time

25. Direct Connect
Dedicated connection between your IT
infrastructure and the AWS datacenters
Extend your network infrastructure and
VLANs into AWS
VPN Connection
A Hardware VPN connection connects
amazon environment to your datacenter
Internet Protocol security (IPsec) VPN
connection
Commonly used hardware supported
Virtual Private Cloud
Private, isolated section of the AWS Cloud
Launch resources in a virtual network that you
define
complete control over your virtual networking
environment
Internet
Internet
Connecting to AWS

26. Common BC/DR architectures

27. 4 main patterns
Common BC/DR architectures
Backup & Restore Pilot light
Warm standby in
AWS
Multi-site solution in
AWS & on-premise

28. Let’s start with Backup & Restore
Common BC/DR architectures
Backup & Restore Pilot light
Warm standby in
AWS
Multi-site solution in
AWS & on-premise

29. Advantages to starting a journey with this pattern
Backup & Restore pattern
Simple to get started
Easy starting point for exploring the AWS cloud
Low technical barrier to entry
Focus on incorporating cloud into your DR
strategy, not on complex technical issues
related to hot-hot systems
Cost effective
Very high levels of data durability at low price
Cost of storing snapshots in S3
Archiving possibilities beyond tape using Glacier

30. The preparation process…
Backup & Restore pattern
Take backups of
current systems
Store backups
in S3
Move to long term
archive in Glacier

31. The process…
Backup & Restore pattern
Take backups of
current systems
Store backups
in S3
Detail how you will restoring from backup or
recover from archive
Move to long term
archive in Glacier

32. Push backups to AWS

33. Recover servers during DR

34. Let’s look at the Pilot Light pattern…
Common BC/DR architectures
Backup & Restore Pilot light
Warm standby in
AWS
Multi-site solution in
AWS & on-premise

35. Moving along the DR spectrum…
Pilot light architecture
Build resources
around replicated
dataset
Keep ‘pilot light’ on by replicating core
databases
Build AWS resources around dataset
and leave in stopped state
Scale resources in AWS
in response to a DR
event
Start up pool of resources in AWS when
events dictate
Match current production capacity
through auto-scaling policies

36. Pilot light

37. Pilot light

38. Let’s look at the Warm standby pattern…
Common BC/DR architectures
Backup & Restore Pilot light
Warm standby in
AWS
Multi-site solution in
AWS & on-premise

39. Moving along the DR spectrum…
Warm standby architecture
Build resources
around replicated
environment
Operate a warm standby by replicating
app servers and core databases
Build AWS resources around dataset
and run in limited capacity

40. Moving along the DR spectrum…
Warm standby architecture
Build resources
around replicated
environment
Operate a warm standby by replicating
app servers and core databases
Build AWS resources around dataset
and run in limited capacity
Scale resources in AWS
in response to a DR
event
Scale up pool of resources in AWS when
events dictate
Match current production capacity
through auto-scaling policies

41. Warm standby - prep

42. Warm standby - recovery

43. Let’s look at the Multi-site pattern…
Common BC/DR architectures
Backup & Restore Pilot light
Warm standby in
AWS
Multi-site solution in
AWS & on-premise

44. Moving along the DR spectrum…
Multi-site architecture
Deploy resources
necessary to operate
full production
Operate a full stack by replicating app
servers and core databases
Fail over to AWS in
response to a DR event
Sufficient resources in AWS to handle full
peak load

45. Multi-site - prep

46. Multi-site - recovery

47. Where to learn more

48. Resources
Disaster Recovery on AWS: aws.amazon.com/disaster-recovery
Architecture Center: aws.amazon.com/architecture
Using AWS for Disaster Recovery
http://media.amazonwebservices.com/AWS_Disaster_Recovery.pdf
Backup and Recovery Approaches Using AWS
http://media.amazonwebservices.com/AWS_Backup_Recovery.pdf