Editor’s Note: As of January 2022, iland is now 11:11 Systems, a managed infrastructure solutions provider at the forefront of cloud, connectivity, and security. As a legacy iland.com blog post, this article likely contains information that is no longer relevant. For the most up-to-date product information and resources, or if you have further questions, please refer to the 11:11 Systems Success Center or contact us directly.
11:11 Systems has worked with customers on their DR strategies for the past 10 years now, so we know that one of the most important aspects of DR planning is recovery times. At first glance, it seems obvious – recovery times should be as fast as possible for all workloads at all times. However, the speed of recovery needs to be balanced against other factors in the DR decision landscape, such as cost, prioritization of workloads, and customer and business impact. In our recent survey on “The State of IT Disaster Recovery in the UK,” when asked about how quickly their employees would be able to access IT systems following a disaster, respondents reported the following:
- 98% stated that employees would be able to access IT systems following a disaster within 24 hours.
- 42% stated that critical systems would be available immediately following a disaster
- 27% claim access to all systems would be available immediately
- 22% stated that they could get systems back online within a few hours.
In addition, 69% of survey respondents told us that mere minutes would have a highly disruptive or catastrophic impact on their businesses, and this jumped up to 90 when it came to downtime that extended into hours. So, recovery times are clearly important. But how do you manage the different parameters to achieve recovery times that are achievable, cost-effective, and cause minimal business impact?
In a recent webinar, the advice given was to pay particular attention both to how quickly you can recover (usually termed RTO – Recovery Time Objective) as well as to which point in time you can recover (RPO – Recovery Point Objective). The RPO achievable has become extremely important, especially for highly transaction-based businesses, to ensure that any loss of business data is minimized.
At 11:11, we’ve integrated Zerto with our DR cloud platform because it provides near real-time replication with RPOs of 10 seconds achievable by our customers. The use of journals in 11:11 DRaaS for Zerto also enables flexibility in terms of recovery points. The solution supports journals from hours up to 14 days so that you can get very granular about the point in time that you recover, ensuring you bring the environment back to its healthiest point. This becomes very important with the current increasing threat of ransomware – you’re able to go back to a specific point in time prior to the ransomware attack.
Additionally, the 11:11 DRaaS solution enables recovery in minutes very easily and flexibly. Virtual Protection Groups (VPGs) enable grouping and tiering of VMs for protection, which ensures consistent recovery points (RPOs) across all grouped machines and prioritization of different applications for recovery. For more info on VPGs, read this technical blog from one of our 11:11 Cloud Engineers.
Make sure you download our Survey Report on “The State of IT Disaster Recovery in the UK” for more insight into DR strategies, challenges, and plans.
