Disaster Recovery Solutions for Managed Service Providers
Datto offers reliable disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) solutions designed for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) at a flat fee. With its easy fleet management, granular and rapid recovery options you’ll be confident that you can recover in a disaster.
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What is DRaaS & Why It’s Important for Your Business
Datto provides secure data protection products for rapid recovery. We help you implement and sell solutions so you can provide next-level business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) services. 24x7x365 support means we are always here if you need us.
What is Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)?
Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) is a cloud-based service model. It enables businesses to back up data and applications offsite for the fast recovery of business operations in the event of a local technology failure. DRaaS may be provided by a technology vendor, an IT managed service provider (MSP), or a combination of the two.
DRaaS offers advantages over traditional on-premises disaster solutions, such as the ability for companies to access data from anywhere, at any time. However, in order for disaster recovery in the cloud to be complete, DRaaS needs to be integrated with other components of the business continuity strategy.
Business continuity is impossible without disaster recovery planning. Recent years have seen an increase in the number of disasters that can devastate an IT system, including:
- Natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods, wildfires and earthquakes
- Equipment failures and power outages
- Cyberattacks
Business continuity and DRaaS are essential processes to ensure your business can keep running in the face of such disasters.
What is a disaster recovery plan (DR Plan)?
An organization can be seriously harmed by disasters like natural disasters, cyberattack, or hardware failure. A disaster recovery plan helps to minimize the damage from such incidents.
A disaster recovery plan is a set of guidelines for an organization to recover from any unforeseen event. Such a plan should include:
- risk analysis
- risk mitigation and preparation
- business continuity plans
- data backup
- data recovery
It should also include contingency plans for all possible scenarios that might happen. These include a "business as usual" scenario, an emergency response scenario, and a post-disaster response scenario.
Plus, in today’s ransomware world, businesses need assurance that the backup solution itself is not vulnerable to corruption or attack.
What is the difference: DRaaS vs. backup as a service
Both Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) and Backup as a Service (BaaS) are processes which involve protecting data and taking a backup of data.
Backup as a service is the process of backing up your data in the cloud, so it can be accessed anytime in case of data loss. This type of technology is also known as "cloud-based backup."
However as the names suggest DRaaS goes a step further and focuses on the recovery side of data loss. DRaaS is vital to ensuring that your business can continue to operate in a disaster, backup alone is no longer enough.
What is the cost of DRaaS?
When it comes to pricing, DRaaS varies across each solution and what services are included. It's important to review the specific costs involved in your disaster recovery management, in terms of both time and money.
Datto provides an all-inclusive flat fee DRaaS offering, meaning “everything is included”.
Alternatives that use the public cloud can prove costly, if not cost prohibitive. First and foremost is the cloud itself. The cost of using a public cloud for DRaaS can be daunting: Aside from the administrative and management overhead of setting up a cloud for recovery, the compute costs alone can make the solution out of reach for most organizations.
For example, there are storage costs just to keep backups in the cloud, and while there are many tiered storage offerings that look inexpensive, for DRaaS you need production caliber storage that will provide the performance to run recovered workloads. Secondly, there are all the other costs associated with recovering applications or entire systems in the cloud, namely compute costs for CPU/Memory, Networking, Egress, and additional software licensing.
Lastly, there is the administration overhead to set up and maintain a secure, always-on environment in which to recover. And speaking of security, with public clouds the MSP is responsible for data security.
Do you need cloud based disaster recovery?
It all depends on your business’ needs. Most businesses today are heavily dependent on technology and their data. Having a cloud-based DRaaS solution enables responding in a disaster from any location. In addition, cloud-based DR provides confidence that the recovery facility is geographically dispersed from the primary location, which is crucial to recovering from disasters that involve the power grid or mother nature.
Since cloud-based DRaaS has offsite copies of your data, you can recover your data in the cloud or to a new location if your primary location is unusable in a disaster. And of course, any DRaaS solution must facilitate the “failback” process for moving back to the primary systems and location when they are available, such as in the case of a natural disaster or where servers have to be re-imaged because they were infected with ransomware.
A Flexible and Secure DRaaS Solution for Managed Service Providers
Multiple Deployment Options
Disasters come in all forms, so having a flexible tech stack is vital to providing reliable disaster recovery service for your clients. Datto provides just such a tech stack, built from the ground up for MSPs and DRaaS. Datto’s all-in-one BCDR solutions are available as a preconfigured appliance, and software-only virtual or imaged solutions. Enabling you to protect your clients’ environments and get them back up and running if disaster strikes.
Intuitive Recovery Launchpad
Datto’s Intuitive recovery launchpad simplifies recovery of entire servers or virtual machines. Via the Partner portal you can start the recovery process for file restores, virtualization or image export in just a few clicks.
Flexible Data Retention
When it comes to storing your data we understand that you need flexibility to deal with your clients’ needs and to ensure regulatory compliance. Datto offers MSPs various data retention options from capacity- and time-based retention to infinite cloud storage.
Flat Fee DRaaS
With Datto DRaaS solutions there are no extra hidden costs, you know exactly what you pay each month. With our predictable pricing model, you can focus on your recovery. From computing power to security, DR, and Roundtrips, everything is included.
A Superior Private Cloud purpose-built for DRaaS
When deploying any disaster recovery solution, it’s vital to understand how and where your data is being stored. A public cloud makes you accountable for data security. At Datto we mitigate that concern with our world-class private cloud. It’s immutable features are monitored by a full time security team with layered security capabilities.
Immutable Cloud
An immutable cloud is vital for MSPs looking to ensure a reliable data protection service for their clients’ data. Essentially, “immutable” encompasses many design characteristics, from data that is encrypted at rest to backup files themselves, that cannot be corrupted by ransomware. Additionally, access controls such as role-based security, integration with Single Sign On (SSO) and multi-factor authentication help ensure backup data is safe and available for recovery. The Datto Cloud’s design provides maximum security and reliability for MSP clients.
Exabyte class scalability
As your MSP business grows it’s vital to work with a provider that can scale as fast as you can. Datto has an exabyte-class cloud that scales for any business of any size, so you never have to worry about running out of cloud storage. With storage at this scale there is another benefit: You can recover one or all of your client’s systems at the same time due to the size and scalability of the geographically distributed, secure Datto Cloud.
Availability / powerful
Datto prides itself on providing a robust and reliable cloud with 99.99999% availability. Due to its advanced features, immutable design, and scalability the Datto Cloud is an ideal environment for DRaaS.
Useful Resources to Help Improve Your Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Strategy
Disaster Recovery Testing Made MSPeasy
Take the stress out of DR tests with our guide from other MSPs, where they share their tips and tricks to help you master DR testing. This includes technology buying guides for DR solutions, the importance of documentation, and more.
Planning RPO & RTO
Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) are two key metrics in disaster recovery and disaster continuity planning. Knowing how long your business can survive while being offline is a key metric to gauging a successful recovery.
DR Checklist
Preparing your business for downtime can be a complex process. We’ve assembled this disaster recovery checklist so you can stay one step ahead.
Ensuring Cyber Resilience
There is no fast track to establishing cyber resilience, but Datto can help. Security and resilience have been fundamental to Datto from the start, and our world-class Information Security Team leads the MSP industry. We can help guide your cyber resilience journey.
Preparing for Natural Disasters
Disasters come in all forms, and natural disasters can be some of the fiercest and least predictable, making it vital to prepare for the worst. Discover how Datto can help you ride out these events and recover afterwards.
Recover from Ransomware
Ransomware is one of the most common threats that MSPs face today. It’s essential to ensure that you and your clients can recover if attacked. Datto solutions are designed to help you recover and detect ransomware as quickly as possible.