Disaster Recovery Site: Build, Buy, or Cloud?
When disaster strikes, you better have a solid plan for where you’ll recover your operations. Join me, W. Curtis Preston, and Prasanna Malaiyandi, as we explore the nitty-gritty details of your three main options for a disaster recovery site.
We’ll dig into the pros, cons, risks, and costs associated with rolling your own DR site, hiring a third-party service, or leveraging the public cloud. Each path has its twists and turns. How do you keep a secondary site in sync? What if a regional disaster takes down your DR provider? Can the cloud flex to meet your recovery needs? Tune in for straight-shooting answers.
This episode tackles the tough questions so you can make informed, bulletproof decisions on housing your failover infrastructure. As always, I’m drawing from decades of experience as a recovering backup admin, and I've designed this podcast just for pros like yourself.
Batten down the hatches and prepare to take notes - it’s time to build a life raft for your data!
For those interested in The Gobox Studio, here you go! https://goboxstudio.com/
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W. Curtis Preston: One of the first steps, designing a disaster recovery
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plan is figuring out where you're going to recover once disaster strikes.
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If your data center or competing environment gets attacked by ransomware.
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Swallowed up in a hurricane or a sinkhole, you better have an alternate
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site lined up to restore your operations.
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We're going to explore the details of the three main options most companies
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have for their disaster recovery site.
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Including rolling your own.
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Set-up third-party Dr.
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Services and leveraging the public cloud.
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Each approach has its own pros, cons risks, and costs.
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How do you keep a Dr.
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Site in sync?
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What happens if a regional disaster takes down the recovery provider?
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Can the cloud scale to meet your Dr.
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Needs.
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In this episode, we answer all of these questions and more.
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If this is your first time joining us.
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Hi, I'm W.
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Curtis Preston.
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AKA Mr.
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Backup.
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I was a backup admin, just like you for many years.
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And then I started helping other organizations design their backup and Dr.
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Plans.
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Now I'm using this podcast to turn unappreciated backup admins
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into cyber recovery heroes.
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This is the backup wrap-up.
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Welcome to the show.
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I'm your host, w Curtis Preston, and with me, I have the most flexible
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co-host in the podcast world.
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How's it going?
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Prasanna?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I am good Curtis.
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Yeah.
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Uh, we did have some logistics issues today or this week, so, why don't
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you tell folks where you're at?
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Yeah.
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W. Curtis Preston: so logistics being, I didn't realize I
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was going to be nowhere near.
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Where I normally record anything.
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And so I happen to actually be at Pod Fest right now, which is a trade
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show designed specifically for.
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Podcasting.
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And I will say that that is why there's background noise that
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you're not used to hearing.
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So if, if this is a little noisy, I apologize for it.
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We'll do our best to trim that out.
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But I'm sitting here with a lavalier on, uh, and I can see in my immediate
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view, there's like, I don't know, a hundred people around me as I
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try to record a podcast episode.
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And by the way, I want to do a big thanks.
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The Go Box Studio.
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I I, I'm gonna take a picture of this, uh, setup that I have here.
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So this is a unit that you can buy to do podcasting, literally Absolutely.
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Anywhere.
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So, so that's what we're doing.
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We're doing, uh, I
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one next time when you start traveling.
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W. Curtis Preston: yeah, as I was walking around, I was like, Hey.
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Any chance I could use your cool setup?
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And he said, sure.
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And I was, and so I said, I would mention the product,
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it's Go Box Studio, it's great.
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And then, then I called you and then I said, Hey, do you
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wanna do record a podcast?
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Like in five minutes?
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He said, you said Okay.
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So that's why I'm saying, you know, thanks for, thanks for your flexibility today.
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no, I'm glad you were able to find a
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space and some gear, you know.
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W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, absolutely.
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We're continuing in our backup to basic series.
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Today we're talking about build, building a recovery site.
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We're, of course, continuing to work through our book, uh, modern Data
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Protection and, uh, that you can get.
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Uh, there he goes.
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Each of us hold up for a copy and, um.
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We're starting to talk about Dr.
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Right?
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We talked about, uh, before we talked about the, you know, building,
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uh, coming up with what's in a DR plan, what's not in a DR plan.
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We also talked about RTO and RPA, right?
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And or an RPO and RPA.
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And now if you're going to do a disaster recovery, if you're going to recover
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from a disaster, what will you need?
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Prasanna.
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You need someplace.
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To recover too.
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W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, exactly.
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You need what we call a recovery site, right?
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The idea is that you, you, you must obviously like this, should,
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this should be obvious, but this is a backup to basic section.
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So, uh, when the disaster strikes, right, you've got a
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massive flood, you've got a fire.
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You've got an earthquake.
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I grew up in Florida.
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A sinkhole could take your entire data center.
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Um, you, you cannot assume that your data center will be, will be available
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for you when you go to do a disaster.
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Um, can you think, can you remember, uh, a little story from
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our friend that was in, uh, the
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Yeah, the basically an island nation in the Caribbean that
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got hit by a hurricane and then, uh, lost power, lost internet connectivity
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back to the mainland, uh, tons of damage.
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And they were trying to bring up their remote office that was on the island and.
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It couldn't connect back up to the mainland because that's where they
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had all of their active directory and other services, so nothing could come
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online, even though they had the people that they flew in from the mainland
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on site, but they couldn't become operational until they got a whole
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bunch of other things up and running.
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W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, exactly.
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They, and they did what the, the first of what we're gonna talk,
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the three different options that you can do for a recovery site, um,
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which is to build your own, right.
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So they had, as I recall, they had three different.
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Physical locations on the island, right?
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And so they chose one as their recovery site.
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Does that sound about right?
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Yep.
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That was
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right.
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W. Curtis Preston: So the, uh, so the first option, there
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are three different options.
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The first option is to roll your own DR site, and, uh, I'm sure
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you've seen people do this quite a
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bit.
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exactly.
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When I used to work at other storage vendors, well known names, um, there were
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a lot of companies who would say, yes, I am going to have a production environment
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stood up in one data center, and I'm going to buy either the exact same configuration
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or something very similar and put it in another data center that I own, or
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that I'm leasing in another location.
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Sometimes it is within the same.
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Campus, if you will.
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So it's close by.
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Sometimes it's further away depending on what they are looking to recover from.
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Sometimes they might have multiple disaster recovery sites,
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depending on the type of location,
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sometimes they might have multiple disaster recovery sites, depending
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on the type of disaster that occurs.
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W. Curtis Preston: Right.
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If they're a multi, uh, state, multi-county, multi, you know, whatever
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they call it in other countries, then they could potentially use
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the other parts of the country.
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As their recovery site.
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Right.
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They, they use, like, so in our case, let's say we have, uh,
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California and Florida, right?
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And, uh, two states I picked just 'cause I used to live there.
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Um, the, you know, your, your recovery site for California could
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be in Florida and vice versa,
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You know, that would be a really bad in one scenario.
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Do you know what scenario that is
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W. Curtis Preston: uh, what would it, which one?
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having both sites in on the coast?
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W. Curtis Preston: Oh yeah.
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Yeah.
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Um.
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Actually, you know, that you, you, that you, you know that you bring that up.
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Um, I did work at a company that had their recovery sites.
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They did the, they built their own and they had their recovery
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sites in two different places.
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They had, um, one of them was in a data center in Dallas and
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the other was in the basement of the World Trade Center building.
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Right.
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And uh, this is pre nine 11.
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And there was a freak snowstorm in Dallas that took out that data center, and this
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was the week of the, uh, bombing of the, that happened in the World Trade Center.
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So basically two things happened, uh, at the same time, two
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completely unrelated things.
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Uh, sometimes the, you know, the best, best laid plans.
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Um, so, but, but that's what you can do.
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And you can have, you know, you could have, the more sites you
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have, you can basically each.
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Site can take over for another site.
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The problem with that though, is that we need extra hardware, right?
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We need, we need, uh, we need compute, we need storage, we need networking,
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and all of that costs money.
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Um, I'd say that's probably the biggest
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Yep.
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And.
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W. Curtis Preston: downside to this, wouldn't
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the well, and just going along with the money
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aspect, don't forget the people, right, that you're gonna need on the
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other site in order to maintain it.
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And speaking of maintaining it, when you make a change in production, say you roll
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out a new application or something else, you have to make sure that you're taking
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into consideration the ongoing costs on your disaster recovery site as well.
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So.
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W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
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What, what I have seen is I've seen people, uh, basically as they refresh
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hardware in the production site.
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They move these slightly older hardware to the, uh, recovery site, and that's
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a perfectly valid way to do things.
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It's just you, you know, you're right.
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You have to keep it up to date and it's, it's a bit weird because it's
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like, it's like maintaining a car.
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That you never get to drive.
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Right?
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My car,
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W. Curtis Preston: you know what, it's actually have, I have a better analogy.
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It's like me with the pool, right?
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That I have, right?
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I, I always wanted a pool.
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Now there's a pool in the back of my yard, in, in my backyard,
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and, uh, no one ever goes in it.
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All I have to do is I'm the one that has to clean it, right?
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I have to clean it.
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And, uh, and all of the things that, that, that comes with the
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pool, uh, I get to do all that work, uh, for a zero amount of joy.
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And so what, what tends to happen is the site tends to get behind
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thing, you know, and you don't really find out until you do a, a DR test.
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And, uh, so that's, um, but I, I think just in short.
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The reason why most people don't do this is the cost of doing it right?
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That they're, that they have to buy all the hardware, you
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have to get it in advance.
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Um, and all of that hardware has to be taken care of and,
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you know, all of that stuff.
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Can you think of anything else that's a, like a downside of this method?
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Um, no, uh, that's pretty much it.
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Yeah.
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I think it's just, uh, always sitting there, always.
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Like idle, basically, like you said, now there are things you could do
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to keep it sort of more functional.
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You could use it for say, doing your backups.
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I know some vendors and some companies like to do their backups off of their
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DR copy just because otherwise those resources are just sitting idle.
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And so that is one possible use of your DR site.
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And I know we've talked about sort of what can you do with copies before.
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So go back, listen to one of those episodes.
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W. Curtis Preston: Right, the one on copy data management, I, yeah, absolutely.
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Uh, the next option that we have is this idea of, uh, just like everything else,
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we have recovery site as a service.
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And the idea here is that there is a place that will make sure that they have enough
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servers of a certain kind, enough storage, of a certain capacity, and, and also,
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uh, capability and of course all of the networking equipment that you would need.
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So that the idea is, uh, well, I'm just gonna say I was, I almost said
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something, but I'm gonna, the historical idea here is you show up with your box
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of tapes and then you do the recovery.
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So, uh, I'm gonna throw that out there as one of the challenges
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with recovery site as a service.
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What, why might that be a challenge?
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Because you have the, because of the time it
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takes to rebuild stuff, right?
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Was that what you were
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W. Curtis Preston: close.
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Well, so, so in the old days I would show up with a box of tapes.
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How do I do that now?
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Oh, you replicate the data
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W. Curtis Preston: Right.
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Which means that I need to have, right.
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So in addition to providing me hardware and so, or hardware and networking.
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When I need it, they also have to provide me, I have to pay
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to basically keep a copy of my replicated backups there, which will not be free.
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Yep.
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Yeah, and I know that there are multiple companies who look at recovery as a
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service, some of them pre-provision.
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I always worry about these companies like what happens if I.
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Like the New York area gets wiped out and everyone's trying to fail over to their
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DR site in New Jersey and they under provisioned in that scenario because
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they're not gonna keep all that hardware around to guarantee no over provisioning.
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Right.
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So.
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W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
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The, I'd say that the recovery site as a service model, that
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is its biggest Achilles heel.
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Right?
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So the, the first is that.
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I mean, I mean, the good news is it's gonna be less expensive
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than the first option, right?
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Because you're not, because you're not paying for, I mean, you could, I, I'm sure
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that, you know, and by the way, like an example of the kind of service that we're
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talking about is like sunguard, right?
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Um, and that company's been around a really long time and I, I think
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they've morphed actually over, over the years to also do the third
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method that we're gonna talk about.
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But the.
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You know, they have to make money.
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And so if they're going to maintain an identical, you know, amount of
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infrastructure that is dedicated to you, that's the key dedicated to you, then
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that's going to cost you a ton of money.
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It's, it's essentially going to be more expensive than option one.
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Because you have the cost of option one plus their margin.
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exactly.
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W. Curtis Preston: So, so they're, they're gonna do that.
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Um, but what you're, but what you're describing from before is
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I think the more common model.
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And that is that you have paid for the ability to have a
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certain amount of infrastructure available to you in a disaster.
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And the risk is that.
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A bunch of you have a disaster.
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Right?
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And I, and, and, and it's not, it's not the same as the cloud
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where there is this seemingly infinite amount of infrastructure.
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You have a, you have an actual data center that is of a certain size that is meant
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to be, uh, you know, it was provisioned.
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For a certain number of customers declaring a disaster at the same time.
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And then what happens when you have a glo not a global disaster, but
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a, a regional disaster takes out everything that I, I think that's,
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that's probably my biggest concern
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I think, you know, I know we'll talk about it when
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we talk about the third option, but honestly I don't think that's any
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different than like a public cloud.
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It's just the scale is different.
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But we'll talk about that when we get to the third one.
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Uh, the one other comment I wanted to make, and I don't know if you have
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experience with this or not, Curtis, is do they still allow you to do, have like.
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The agility and flexibility of say, my infrastructure is changing, how quickly
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can I push that out to my DR site?
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Or what's the process look like and how much of a lag is there?
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W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, I think that it's going to be.
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The, the lag will be the same as what would happen if you did
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it plus some amount of time.
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Right.
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Again, it's, it's gonna be the cost of what you did it, plus of, of it's going
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to be the cost of what it would be for you plus their margin in terms of the
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lag time between production changes to changes in your recovery environment.
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It's going to be the same amount of time because it co, it takes them the same
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amount of time to order servers as it does for you, uh, plus some amount of time
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for them to sort of figure that all out.
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Right?
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Um, and the o the only thing that may not be a problem here is that they probably
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over proficient their environment,
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I would hope so.
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W. Curtis Preston: they, they hopefully over proficient their environment
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because if you need to, there have been times in the last year or two where.
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A provisioning in an order of a new server is like 90 to 120 days, right?
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So hopefully they've ordered stuff in advance and they always have extra, you
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know, capacity, which is something that they can afford to do that you might not.
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And that's where the savings comes in.
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Again, that savings comes at a risk of, uh, you know, a run on the bank.
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Uh, have you please tell me you have seen.
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Because, you know, I always, I know it's always with you and me.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I bring up a movie and you're like, I have never seen that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Have you seen?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's a wonderful life.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
All right.
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You remember the run on the bank that happens at the end?
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Yeah.
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That's basically what you and I are worried about, right?
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Is everybody coming up and wanting the resources all at once
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because it's a, a, a disaster.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
. Prasanna Malaiyandi: Do you know if when you go with the recovery as a
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service option, if all of the providers allow you to customize a hardware
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to what is there in production?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So if I use a particular vendor.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Would they allow me to use that or is it sort of, here are your standard options?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Go forth.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: I, I think both of those are.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Every, you know, uh, this is business.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Everything is negotiable, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Use our standard options and it costs you this much.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Start customizing it and it starts and it starts costing more.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, and so this is where the fact that most of us are running Wintel
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
servers, right, really helps out.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Most of us are doing virtualization, most of us are using, um, you know,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
uh, Broadcom, I think that's the new name of the, of the company, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And, and so as long as you're sticking with sort of the standard things,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
uh, from a hardware perspective, it's probably not a problem.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
But if you decide I've got to have vendor X, then um, you know, uh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
your cost is gonna go up because they're gonna buy that hardware just
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
for you, again, plus margin, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So, um, I, I think it's, it's, this is like.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Every one of these choices.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
None of these are perfect for everyone, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Let's talk about the third option and, and, and I'm sure everybody
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
knows what the third option is, and that is recover in the public cloud.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And the idea here is that they have so much infrastructure.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That you can very easily on demand with little planning.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I mean, you, you need to do planning, but it's not the same as with, um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
the recovery site as a service.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And that is you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, you can at any time just literally press a button and you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
can do infrastructure as code and poof, you've got as many.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, virtualization servers or VMs or, uh, you know, RDBMSs that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
you need, uh, and that you don't really, you know, within reason.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You don't really have to do any planning ahead.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You just have to make sure that your billing system works or you wanna
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
talk your, you're disagreeing with me.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I just want, 'cause there is a lot of
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
misconceptions about the public cloud.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Just remember it's someone else's servers, you're just borrowing them, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And so.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
If, say an example is if you took AWS and they
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
just didn't have the infrastructure to meet your DR needs in that region,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
then you may not be able to recover.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So make sure that you have a conversation, especially if you're at that large
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
of a scale with your cloud provider, to make sure that if you do need
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
those resources, they're available because someone else may be using it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And, and I guess that's what I meant by, I, I don't remember my exact words,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
but, but you need to do planning.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You don't, what I'm saying is you don't need to do planning, like we're
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
gonna declare a disaster Friday.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I, I mean, even then it is not a bad thing to.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Actually, if, if you're doing testing, I would do zero amount of
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
notification to the cloud vendor.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That's what I would do.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And just to see how they respond.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I, I guess you, you, you do need to do that type of planning.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, what I'm just saying is
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You don't need to pre for provision.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You don't need to pre-provision that they should have enough infrastructure
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and you can have those conversations.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You say, listen, when we declare a disaster, we're gonna need.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Thousand VMs, is that gonna be a problem?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And they're gonna either gonna go 50,000, I thought you were gonna say a million.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Or they're gonna say, uh, yeah, you should probably give us a call.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
But I, I think that the response is probably gonna be more the latter.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And, um, the, the other beautiful thing about the co, about the cloud is that,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and this is not true on either of the other two options, is the cost, because.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
In order for a cloud DR system to work you, you need to have the,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
the data there already, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, and, and so you need to do, you need to be backing up essentially
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
to the cloud, but that's all you're paying for at that point.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You're paying for the storage of.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You know the amount of storage that you need from that cloud vendor,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
depending on how you're doing it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It could be block storage, it could be object storage one, you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
know, the object storage is gonna be the less expensive option.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The block storage is going to be the ready to use it anytime you want it option.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
But the point is that 'cause with, with object storage, you're going to have to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
restore it to, to block storage, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So it's not gonna be.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
As quick as a restore if you, if you've essentially already restored your servers.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
But the beautiful thing is that you don't have to pay for the compute until the time
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
of, uh, testing or declaring a disaster.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
One other thing to add to that, that I think is a
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
big advantage of the public cloud is I don't actually need the exact same
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
resources compute wise on in the cloud for my testing as I do for production.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So for testing, I might pick smaller instances, lower powered compute
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
in order to do my testing because I don't need to spin up the beefy
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
systems that I would need to actually run the production workloads.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, that is a beautiful thing where,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
because again, you can't really do that in the first two options.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You, you just sort of, you get what you get, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You don't throw a fit, but here you can say, look, I, I need, you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
know, I need an M four X large for production, but, you know, an M two
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
medium will do fine for my test.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The performance isn't gonna be great.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I'm not testing the performance, I'm testing the functionality
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
of the recovery process.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, but, but I think honestly the, the greatest advantage
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
here is going to be cost.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And I think that, and also that all of that infrastructure is available as code.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
What do I mean by that?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Basically you don't need to go around configuring things.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You could code it all up, have it all available, and basically push
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
a button and say, okay, go build me my environment based, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
All based on what you've already pre-configured, and it'll go
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
do everything you needed to do.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And you don't have to sit there and manually spin up things and provision,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
connect things with networks, go log into 20 different switches and environments in
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
order to get everything up and running.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, I mean, you know, we saw this at
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
our previous employer, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That, that you can automate that and that you can, assuming you did enough, you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
know, planning, uh, and you configured everything correctly, you should just
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
be able to literally press a button and then it configures everything that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
you need to do, just like you said.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And then just as magical, you can shut it all down, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And as soon as you shut it all down, the billing stops.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That, um, you know, basically you just pay for the amount of
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
time that that infrastructure was
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yep.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Which hopefully means,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
yeah, and that also hopefully means you can do testing more often because,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
what do you like to say, Curtis?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Test, test, test, test, test.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, now I'm gonna say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna argue with
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
something and you said like.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
15 minutes ago.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And that is, this is, here's another thing that I like about the public
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
cloud versus the recovery as a service.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
While it is true, the public cloud is not unlimited, what I can do in the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
public cloud that I can't really do with a DR as a service is I can pick
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
whatever region I want to recover to.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
If I am, if I'm a, you know, a business in New York, I will
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
most likely pick, uh, a, um.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You know, like we talk about SunGard, I will pick a SunGard
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
that's in New Jersey, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You're gonna pick something that is close by because you are most likely physically
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
going to the place to make this happen.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
With the cloud, you are never gonna see that data center.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And so it doesn't matter where you pick it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Well, let me rephrase that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It doesn't matter where you pick it, but it doesn't have
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
to be down the road, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And so you're not gonna have this.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It, it, it significantly decreases the, the, the worry that there's a flood in
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
the general vicinity where you live and it takes out all the businesses, and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
then it also takes out the, you know, the recovery site and everybody's using
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
the recovery site all at the same time.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I'm just saying you can spread the load out is all
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
even the recovery as a service, you could technically go
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
from New York to Texas, assuming that your recovery as a service provider
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
is in Texas, replicate the data there.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yes, it is gonna be more painful because you may not be on site, but.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: It, it, it is true.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That is true.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I, I guess, I guess I'm just thinking that generally speaking,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
these types of recoveries were done.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
person.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Face to face.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, just I have this,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And in your mind, I know Veeam has a lot of DR partners
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
that can take Veeam backups and spin them up and use 'em for DR purposes.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Would you consider that as option two, recovery as a service, or
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
more in line with option three?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Even though we're using the word public cloud, there.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I, I think, you know, like, you know, you're talking about like
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
cloud IBR, like those guys.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I, I think that that is, that is because you're, you're generally, you're using
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
the public cloud as the underlying infrastructure, even if you are, well,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I, I think don't they all use the public
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
They might have their own, they might have their own
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
infra, but I think it's still more in line with the public cloud rather than the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I, I think the way they behave, it behaves more like the public cloud.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, and I like this, right, because it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It doesn't require you to use a different piece of software for Dr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I like this idea of using one piece of software to do, to do both backup and Dr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It saves a ton of money for the company as long as it meets your
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
RTO and RPO requirements, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, and it backs up all of the applications that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
you need to back up then.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, you know, it, it's a great way to do it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, can you think of anything else that we like, we haven't covered?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
no, I think that covers all the option.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Well, there is a fourth option,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: All right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Dang it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
There's no, I'm sorry.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I'm looking in my book and I don't see a fourth
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Which is basically you don't have a
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
disaster recovery site and you're
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
host.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: You had me worried there for a minute.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That is the fourths option.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
No recovery site, no backup.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
No plan, no joy.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, yeah, don't do that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, so I, I think if, if you can learn anything from I.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You know, what we've been covering is that plan, plan, plan, test, test, test,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and uh, also, uh, update your software and have a good password management
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
system and have MFA, all of those things.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And, um, yeah, so now's, you know, the, uh, what's the thing of, uh, uh, what's,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
what's that old thing of like, the best time to plan something is yesterday?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The next
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Uh, the second best time is today.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Something like that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Something like that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
There's some, uh, something like that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Well, anyway, fun as always, Prasanna.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Likewise, Curtis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: All right, and I hope, uh, you listeners enjoyed that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
We do it for you and, uh, be sure to subscribe.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
We don't want you to miss any episodes.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's so much easier.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It just pops up on your phone there and, uh, you can listen to our cheerful voices.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That is a wrap.
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