News

New Disaster Recovery Options Feature AWS

• By David Ramel
• 01/26/2016

With nearly three-quarters of companies reportedly "failing" at disaster recovery (DR), new options to ease the process are continually emerging to work with the Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) cloud, an ideal backup and recovery data store.

Cases in point: two new options from Quantum Corp. and HotLink Corp.

Quantum launched its Q-Cloud Protect virtual deduplication appliance on the AWS Marketplace, to work with the company's Quantum DXi portfolio of deduplication disk backup solutions.

The company said it's "designed for companies with single sites looking to protect their business against localized disasters, organizations eliminating tape for off-site protection and companies seeking a hybrid-cloud approach to backup and DR."

Quantum said that, in addition to being an alternative to sending tapes off-site for DR, its product cuts capital expenses via predictable, metered pricing and also reduces cloud storage and data transmission costs via its variable-length deduplication and replication engine that replicates data stored on an on-premises appliance to the cloud service.

"You can't have a conversation about IT (or data protection) modernization without talking about 'the cloud'," the company quoted analyst Jason Buffington at Enterprise Strategy Group as saying. "And certainly one of the more exciting intersections between cloud services and data protection is in the use of off-site data survivability and BC/DR preparedness; ideally as an extension of one's primary data protection strategy and architecture. Q-Cloud Protect is designed for just that. Considering Quantum's long-standing presence in not only disk-based (DXi) but also tape-based (LTO) protection medium, cloud-based solutions are the next logical step."

HotLink, meanwhile, just today announced its new Managed DRaaS (Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service) that uses AWS "to provide holistic VMware data protection and cost-effective business resiliency."

"Recent research from the Disaster Recovery Preparedness Council shows that 73 percent of companies are failing in terms of disaster readiness, and 58 percent rarely or never test their DR plans because it is overly difficult, manual and expensive," HotLink said in a statement today. "The new HotLink Managed DRaaS is specifically designed to provide IT organizations with the advanced technology, skilled resources, cloud knowledge, hybrid IT experience, methodology and continuous service delivery needed to ensure their environments are protected -- whether the disruption is a security breach, networking failure, software issue, human error or other unexpected condition."

The new product works with HotLink DR Express, a VMware-certified DR/BC solution that's integrated with VMware management and features automated VMware data protection in AWS, such as backup, replication, disaster recovery and business continuity, the company said.

Coincidentally, HotLink also garnered a supporting quote from Buffington at research firm Enterprise Strategy Group.

"In 27 years of working in the data protection field, I can attest how important it is that BC/DR solutions operate as a seamless extension of your day-to-day IT environment in order to be effective in quickly recovering operations following a failure," the company quoted the analyst as saying. "Integrating the normal IT operations and DR/BC capabilities within a management framework is a must; leveraging hybrid-cloud services that offer BC/DR expertise makes even more sense. All of this ensures that when something bad happens, you'll have a full-sized spare tire rather than a low-mileage, low-speed donut."