Disaster recovery is essential for any business, but there are two main options to choose from: DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service) and on-prem DR appliances. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages, so it's important to choose the right one for your needs. For more information visit https://stonefly.com/blog/network-attached-storage-appliance-practicality-and-usage

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Disaster Recovery as a
Service (DRaaS) or On-
Site DR Appliance?
Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) delivers serverless recovery
capabilities while disaster recovery (DR) appliances provide the on-prem
secondary site that facilitates quick recovery. Which of the two is the best fit
for you?
Both deployment options have their pros and cons. DRaaS offloads backup
and DR management to the service provider’s team of experts while a DR
appliance gives you the control that several regulatory requirements need.
In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at DRaaS vs on-site DR appliances
to help you find the right fit for your projects and budget.
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2. DRaaS: Business Continuity Without Local/Onsite
Appliance
Disaster recovery solutions enable organizations to quickly recover from
disasters such as hardware failure, ransomware attack, human error,
accidental/malicious deletion, etc.
To deliver shorter recovery time and point objectives (RTPOs), DR
appliance(s) require high performance processor(s), memory, high speed
storage drives, and network. The hardware specifications increase the
upfront costs (CapEx) and the maintenance costs (OpEx) for onsite disaster
recovery systems. Not to mention, they require expertise, have a steep
learning curve, and it takes time to manage the environment.
Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solutions deliver the quick recovery
capabilities of an onsite DR appliance but without the hardware, time, and
resource commitments.
While susceptible to network, bandwidth limitations, and latency, DRaaS
provide an offsite infrastructure that enables backup administrators to
recover critical systems with a few clicks. The ability to do is especially useful
in the event the primary production environment is unavailable.
Depending on the vendor and the solution, DRaaS are hosted and often fully
managed by the service provider. As the service provider takes care of
hardware management, software updates, backup and DR orchestration
and testing, this frees up resources and allows organizations to focus on
core project(s).
When is Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) the Best
Option?
Here’s a brief list of situations when Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) is
the best option:
When organizations don’t have the resources for a secondary DR site
owing to costs or distributed IT.
When organizations want to store data in multiple onsite and/or offsite
locations for redundancy, high availability, and data protection.
When organizations want to minimize complexity by reducing physical IT
systems and cutting down costs on acquisition, management,
maintenance, and upgrade.
To set up 3-2-1 backup strategy with a copy of the critical backups on a
separate offsite DR appliance.
When virtual machines need to be protected in the cloud or when local
backups are not desired and need to be kept separate from the
production environment.
When businesses have limited IT resources and budget and purchasing an
onsite DR appliance takes resources away from core business activities.
Some Considerations Before Deploying DRaaS

3. Choosing the right DRaaS is important but it’s not easy considering the
saturated market with the high number of service providers. Navigating the
complex buzz-word rich marketing of DRaaS service providers is a time-
consuming task. To make the journey easier, here’s a brief list of DRaaS
considerations that can help you find the right fit for your business.
Data Security for Your Critical Data – Are Your Snapshots/Replicas
Protected from Ransomware?
Ransomware attacks target production and backup servers. This is
especially true for service providers because a successful ransomware
attack leads to a supply chain attack. Without automated ransomware
protection measures, such as air-gapping and immutability, the offsite
repositories used for DRaaS are vulnerable to ransomware.
This is why it’s important to first focus on how secure the snapshots/replicas
will be. If the DRaaS service provider does not offer automated air-gapping,
immutability, and snapshots it’s advised to look for one that does because
even if your production is protected, and your IT personnel make no
mistakes, the recovery data stored offsite can end up encrypted, deleted,
and/or stolen.
Initial Data Migration – How will it be done and how long will it take?
Moving terabytes of data to an offsite service provider is costly, time
consuming, and complex if not done right. Most organizations cannot spare
the bandwidth needed for the initial data migration. This poses a challenge
for backup administrators.
One of the best ways to migrate this initial big data is to use a rental
appliance, move your snapshots/replicas to the hardware locally, and then
ship the hardware to the DRaaS service provider’s data center.
Typically, this is a disruptive process especially for critical virtual machines
(VMs). However, with StoneFly’s Live VM migration data transfer devices
(DTDs), you can migrate your critical VMs without having to turn them off.
Depending on the vendor, the volume of data, the location of the DRaaS
service provider data center, and production compute capabilities, the initial
migration can take from a few days to a week.
Critical Workloads – Identify the Applications, Databases, and Workloads
You Need to Continue Operations
Take stock of mission-critical workloads, which storage protocols they use,
and the storage capacity they need. This information will determine the
specifics for the DRaaS solution and it will also help forecast the total cost of
ownership (TCO).
Moreover, it will also guide the service provider to decide which data goes on
hot-tier SSD-based storage media versus which goes on cold capacity-tiers
using disk-based SAS or SATA or tape arrays. With hot/cold storage tiering,
the DRaaS will focus performance capabilities on critical workloads. This will
improve recovery speeds and will reduce RTPOs.

4. It’s important to note that hot/cold storage tiering is most effective when
automated. Without automation, the process is time consuming, and prone
to errors.
Data Retention Policies – How long should snapshots/replicas be retained
before they’re overwritten/deleted?
Longer data retention spans facilitate compliance allowing backup
administrators to archive large volumes of data, in less storage space, for
years. While longer retention spans are useful for backups, the purpose of
disaster recovery is quick recovery of critical operations with minimum data
loss (short RTPOs).
For DRaaS, it’s important to know the number of copies that should be
retained, and how far back they need to be: five minutes, an hour, several
hours, or a day. The more frequent the snapshot/replication, the more
compute, networking, and bandwidth resources it’ll consume, the costlier it’ll
get.
The more copies there are, the more opportunities for the backup
administrator to recover data. This is especially useful if one, or more,
snapshots/replicas are corrupted, encrypted by ransomware, or
accidentally/maliciously deleted.
A clear idea of data retention policies simplifies the process of finding the
right DRaaS solution.
Secondary On-Prem Site with Disaster Recovery
Appliance(s)
On-premises disaster recovery appliances provide a secondary site to
restore and run critical operations in the event the production hardware is
unavailable. This makes physical DR appliances a good fit for organizations
that need to maintain control of confidential customer and employee
information as per regulatory requirements.
To deliver shorter the recovery time and point objectives required, the DR
appliance requires high compute capabilities in addition to high-speed
networking. This increases the per TB cost of the DR appliance especially
when compared to backup appliances or tape archives. But there are
advantages to having a secondary DR site on-premises.
In the event the production hardware is unavailable, whether for scheduled
maintenance or a ransomware attack, business operations can continue
without disruption. Secondly, there are no latency issues or egress costs
involved.
Moreover, as compared to DRaaS, on-prem DR appliances generally offer
faster recovery times and shorter RTPOs as long as the local network speed
can handle the I/O traffic when needed.
When is a Disaster Recovery Appliance the Best Option?
Here’s a brief list of use-cases where disaster recovery appliances are the
best fit:

5. When the business needs to set up shorter recovery time and point
objectives (less than 15 minutes) for terabytes of data by configuring real-
time synchronous replication.
For organizations that must comply with strict regulations that require
storing data on-site and physically securing the hardware with the DR
repositories.
To meet cyber-insurance requirements that require organizations to have
a secondary air-gapped and immutable appliance for critical backups,
snapshots, and replicas.
What to Consider Before Setting Up a Disaster Recovery
Appliance
The decision to buy and set up a disaster recovery appliance can be difficult
considering the number of vendors in the billion-dollar market. To help you
find the right DR appliance, here’s what you need to keep in mind when
choosing your vendor:
Data Security of Critical Data Stored on the DR Appliance
Whether it’s DRaaS or an on-prem DR appliance, it’s equally important to
make sure that the recovery data is protected from ransomware attacks. If
you’re looking into a DR appliance, the first thing to keep in mind is
ransomware protection.
Helpful questions to ask:
Does the appliance have built-in automated air-gapping?
Can backup administrators make critical snapshots/replicas immutable
for a certain period of time? (for both file and object data)
Is the data encrypted at rest and during transit? (end-to-end encryption)
Are snapshots immutable?
Is there an anti-ransomware feature that automatically detects and
removes malware?
Can backup administrators schedule automated threat scans that detect
and remove dormant malware (sleeper ransomware)?
Note: StoneFly backup and DR appliances, such as DR365V, DR365, and
DR365VIVA, offer all of the above features, and more.
Data Recovery Options – What Options are There and How Long will
Recovery Take?
Just because it’s an on-premise DR appliance doesn’t mean it will offer
faster data recovery. The speed of data recovery depends on the compute
capabilities and read/write speeds in addition to the recovery features of
the backup and DR software.
Features such as direct VM spin up, granular file-level restore, instant multi-
VM recovery, instant disk recovery, instant database recovery, and instant
NAS recovery are necessary for a reliable disaster recovery appliance.
To make sure that these recovery features can deliver the desired recovery
time and point objectives, it’s important that the DR appliance supports high

6. performance processors and high speed flash/SSD storage.
Note: The abovementioned recovery features are offered as built-in
capabilities of StoneFly’s Veeam-ready backup and DR appliance (DR365V).
Higher Upfront Costs – Are the ROIs Worth it?
As a general rule of thumb, the cost of acquiring, managing, and
maintaining an on-premise DR appliance is considerably higher than that of
a disaster recovery-as-a-service solution.
The on-premise disaster recovery setup requires a server, software
license(s), incurs maintenance costs, generates heat and consumes power.
Additionally, expert IT team needs to regularly invest time to monitor and
manage the DR appliance to ensure smooth and quick recovery in the event
of a disaster.
Not only is a DR appliance expensive from an upfront cost (CapEx)
standpoint but the operational expenses (OpEx) can also be considerably
high. This makes it all the more important that the DR appliance has the
necessary features which deliver the ROIs as required by the DR plan.
The data security, ransomware protection, and data recovery features
mentioned above can set you on the right path to making sure that the ROIs
are worth it and the solution is within your required budget.
StoneFly Disaster Recovery Solutions: Custom-
Build Your DR Appliance or Get Fully Managed
DRaaS
StoneFly offers both on-premise backup and disaster recovery appliances
and fully managed DRaaS. Our customers can custom-build the DR
appliance to fit their budget or offload the time-consuming DR
management to our team of experts.
On-Prem StoneFly Backup and Disaster Recovery
Appliance(s)
StoneFly DR365V: 8, 12, 16, 24, 36-bay Veeam-ready fully air-gapped and
immutable backup and DR appliances with multi-VM recovery, SnapLock,
file lockdown, object lockdown, and optional SAN, NAS, and S3 support.
Learn more
StoneFly DR365VIVA: 8, 12, 16, 24, 36-bay automated fully air-gapped and
immutable nodes compatible with Veeam, Commvault, Veritas, Rubrik and
Zerto, with built-in network and power management controller(s). Learn
more
StoneFly DR365: 8, 12, 16, 24, 36-bay DR site in a box with built-in
ransomware detection and removal, air-gapped and immutable storage,
and optional SAN, NAS, and S3 support. Learn more
StoneFly Backup and Disaster Recovery as a Service
(BDRaaS)

7. Centralized remote backup and disaster recovery (DR) solution with
automated air-gapping, immutable storage, and 1-click direct restore for
your mobile workforce, ROBO environments, and employees working from
home.
Available with three remote backup and DR management options that
include Smart Protect Silver, Gold, and Platinum.
Conclusion
Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) provides serverless recovery
capabilities while an on-prem disaster recovery appliance provides the
secondary site you can use to restore critical operations quickly in the event
of a disaster. Both DRaaS and an on-site DR appliance have their pros and
cons and are fit for a wide range of use-cases and budget.
If you need help finding the right disaster recovery solution, StoneFly offers
both turnkey disaster recovery appliances and fully managed DRaaS. Talk
to our experts to discuss your projects today.

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Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Castro Valley – StoneFly, Inc. was established with the vision to
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