If you determine DRaaS is the right approach to disaster recovery planning for your organization, there are some important questions to consider. We have aligned these questions to our key decision criteria.
PRICING
What is the pricing model?
Is the pricing a la carte, bundled or priced upfront?
What is the minimum contract period?
Do you have to purchase an on-premise appliance outright or can you lease it?
Is there a mix of upfront and recovery event costs?
If there is a monthly subscription cost, what is it based on (e.g., storage, failover resources, etc.)
What happens to your pricing if the amount of protected storage increases or decreases during the contract period?
Is there a cost for declaring a disaster or other DR-related charges?
Is there a cost for performing a DR test?
Is there a cost for support or onboarding?
What professional services are available from the service provider to facilitate disaster recovery and how much do they cost?
ORCHESTRATION
Does the solution provider offer orchestration?
What functionality is offered via runbooks?
Does the solution provider offer customized scripting?
Does the solution provider offer generic script templates that can be easily modified?
What level of performance can be expected when failed applications are hosted in the cloud?
How will users access internal applications?
How will customers, partners and users access outward-facing applications?
Will virtual private networks be managed or rerouted?
How does a virtual desktop infrastructure affect user access and who manages it during disaster recovery?
How long can a customer run in the service provider’s data center after a disaster is declared?
PROTECTED ENVIRONMENTS
What applications, operating systems, and databases are directly supported?
How frequently is the data backed-up or synchronized?
Can the solution protect virtual and physical environments?
Which virtual environments can the solution provider support?
Can the solution provider support your physical (non-virtualized) environments?
How do you ensure administrators and users receive access to servers/applications?
Will the DRaaS offering protect all of your line-of-business applications and platforms?
Does the DraaS solution incorporate file size management to reduce storage needs?
DR TESTING
What are the DRaaS provider’s testing processes?
Does the solution provider offer unlimited DR tests or is there a limit?
What are the limitations of the DR tests?
Can the DR tests be performed with a self-service model?
Can you perform your own testing?
What is the maximum duration of each DR test event?
RECOVERY SPEED
How long does it take to recover an application? Server? Data?
Can you boot virtual machines on the local appliance and from the cloud?
Does the solution provider support a self-service model?
How complex is it to move from a backup to a live state?
Is there a SLA for recovery time?
How will the solution provider pay you if they fail to meet the SLA?
What is the maximum number of VMs the DRaaS supports?
What DR resources are available for recovery?
How does the solution provider manage, track and update these resources?
What are the rules for declaring a disaster?
CLOUD CHOICE
Can the solution provider replicate to a private cloud?
Can the solution prover replicate to their own data centers?
Where are the solution provider’s data centers located?
What are the security certifications of the solution provider’s data centers (SSAE 16, SAS70 certified)?
Can you replicate to a public cloud? If so, which ones (Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure)?
If replicating to a public cloud, what is the SLA in terms of recovery time?
What is the process for failover within the public cloud?
SUPPORT
What are the hours of support?
Where is the support based (in-shore or offshore)?
What happens if the provider cannot deliver DR services?
How much help can be expected in a DR event?
What happens if multiple customers have a disaster, does that impact the available resources
Are there time limits on how long the provider will host the recovery environment?
FAILBACK
How does the provider manage restoration/failback?
Is there a danger of data loss during failback?
Does the failback process introduce downtime?
Do you have to halt production when you failback resources or is it seamless?
Is the failback process self-service or do you need to engage the solution provider?
Does the solution provider offer a technical resource (human being) to help with the failback process?
Are there additional charges, penalties, or other costs associated with long-term hosting?
Ready to speak with your DRaaS Solution Advisor, call us today
