Organizations are under immense pressure to lower IT spend. Reducing the cost of disaster recovery is a great place to start but you have to make sure that the cuts to impact recovery capabilities. In our on-demand webinar “Reduce Backup Costs with Better Primary Storage,” my colleague, Scott Armbrust, and I spoke about how organizations can dramatically reduce the cost of their backup infrastructure by improving primary storage. The right primary storage solution can also play a significant role in lowering the cost of disaster recovery.
A successful disaster recovery effort starts with proper planning, and part of the plan is to ensure that you are getting data to the remote location and that the time to gain access to that data is understood.
Better Primary Storage Replication Can Lower DR Costs
Primary storage replication can get data to the remote location, and the data is in a native, immediately accessible format. Unfortunately, lowering the cost of disaster recovery is hard to do with primary storage replication. While most vendors include a remote replication feature with their primary storage system, they often require that the customer purchase the target storage system for the DR Site from the vendor. If your vendor only sells all-flash arrays (AFA), that means you are also buying another AFA at your DR site. An AFA for DR is a very high expense for a storage system that, hopefully, you won’t use very often.
A hybrid or even a hard disk-based solution is a much better alternative for the target DR storage system. The system’s performance, at least until there is a disaster, won’t impact asynchronous replication speed, and a hybrid or HDD system’s cost is dramatically lower than the price of an AFA. The only concern is the performance of the system when and if there is an actual disaster. If the organization users count on AFA performance in production, during the disaster, HDD performance will leave users unhappy.
If you are using an AFA in the primary data center, then it makes sense to have a hybrid system as the DR target. With a hybrid system, if a disaster occurs, the most active data is on flash, keeping users happy, but the bulk of the data is on a hard disk tier, which saves a lot of money, keeping CFOs happy.
The ability to mix the type of storage solutions used in the primary data center and the disaster recovery site is critical to lowering disaster recovery costs. StorONE’s S1 Enterprise Storage Platform enables customers to use our TRUprice tool to configure and price a solution for both their primary and secondary locations. In most cases, customers can buy a new storage solution for their primary location, and for the disaster recovery site for less than they will pay for a single primary storage system from our competitors.
Location Flexibility Can Lower DR Costs
Some primary storage solutions will offer an option to replicate to the cloud, implying that the customer will save money. Using the Cloud for DR is not always the least expensive option. While StorONE can also replicate data to a cloud instance of S1, it is not always the best choice for the customer. Forcing a customer into a decision to compensate for an overpriced alternative — an all-flash array into a DR site — is not flexible. Location flexibility means the customer can locate their DR target where it makes the most sense both economically and meets the DR goals.
If the customer has a secondary site with reasonable connectivity, then using that site, that the organization already owns, for disaster recovery is often less expensive than continuously renting space in the cloud.
Also, cloud replication is not the sales as cloud failover. Customers need to ensure that data replicated to the cloud is accessible and ready for use. Processes need to be in place to transform machine images and to start cloud server instances correctly. A customer-owned site may make more sense and may have a more seamless failover process. In the end, the choice should be the customers’, and they should have the ability to change their strategy as business demands dictate.
StorONE’s S1 Enterprise Storage Platform provides complete location flexibility. Customers can run in the location of their choice and change locations with relative ease. They can use a campus-wide stretch cluster as well as cascading replication.
Free DR Workshop
At Storage Switzerland, I conducted highly rated disaster recovery workshops around the world and helped organizations develop real-world proven disaster recovery plans. S1’s DR capabilities are one of the key reasons I came to StorONE.
On Tuesday, June 16th, I am hosting a whiteboard roundtable at 11:30am ET to discuss Modern DR Strategies. Virtual seating is limited so that the session can be interactive. It is a whiteboard session, not a never-ending series of slides. I will respond to customer questions in real-time.
During the session, I’ll provide some practical suggestions on reducing the cost of disaster recovery. These are steps you can take right now without buying additional products. I will also offer insight into how StorONE can help you lower DR costs and improve data protection. If you’d like an invitation, please send an email to info@storone.com with “DR Workshop” in the title.
