With the cloud computing growing in popularity so quickly with consumers, more companies are now turning to it for production websites. But what about cloud-based disaster recovery? Can it offer similar benefits? Disaster recovery tends to be complex, expensive, and time-consuming.

It makes sense to plan ahead in order to figure out what your business requires. Putting a disaster recovery plan into the cloud can greatly assist in alleviating some fears associated with its setup.

Here are four of the major benefits of cloud-based disaster recovery:

Quicker recovery

The biggest difference between cloud-based disaster recovery and regular recovery practices are the difference between RTO and RPO. Cloud-based data recovery will give your website the ability to recover from warm sites immediately. This will drastically reduce your RTO and RPO times from weeks or days to just a few hours. Where traditional DR involves booting up from cold sites, things are different as far as cloud recovery is concerned.

With the help of virtualization, the whole server, including the OS, patches, applications, and data get encapsulated into one virtual server. This server can then be backed up or copied to off-site data centers and then spun on virtual hosts within minutes if there is a disaster. For companies which cannot afford to wait after disasters and for the situation to get to normal, cloud-based solutions could be the difference between keeping the business up and running or having to close the doors.

Monetary savings

Cloud storage is extremely cost effective since you need to only pay for storing what you want. Without any capital expenses to worry for, you can use the pay as you go model which will help you keep your TCO down. You do not have to store backup tapes which could take forever to access in times of emergencies. While it is expensive to implement DR plans, a cloud-based DR can help make everything so much more affordable.

Scalability

Putting disaster recovery into the cloud creates a lot of flexibility. Increasing or decreasing storage capacity for your business demands is much easier when compared to traditional backups. Instead of having to commit to specific amounts of storage for certain times and worrying about whether you will be meeting or exceeding your requirements, you could simply scale your storage as required.

Security

Despite the myths which say otherwise, having cloud-based disaster recovery plans is very secure if you are using the correct service provider. Cloud service providers may argue that they can offer as much security features as compared to traditional infrastructure, but as far as disaster recovery for business is concerned, you cannot afford to take any chances.

It must be noted here that if you have your website hosted on one cloud service, it will be smart to host the recovery site with that provider as well. This will cut down on confusion and help smoothen out the failover process since the same technology is being used for both. This is why you should consider a complete service provider who offers what you require to keep both the production and recovery sites running smoothly.