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Latisys Launches Disaster Recovery as a Service
Cloud service provider Latisys is offering disaster recovery as a monthly service (or DRaaS). The portfolio of DRaaS solutions ranges from simple offsite data backup to near-instantaneous continuous availability (geoclustering) services.
Jason Verge
May 16, 2013
3 Min Read
Cloud service provider Latisys has launched Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), a tailored service requiring no capital investment by the customer. The portfolio of DRaaS solutions ranges from simple offsite data backup to near-instantaneous continuous availability (geoclustering) services.
Latisys DRaaS services feature a consultative approach, which that begins with a critical business impact analysis that distills the need for disaster recovery into three key concepts:
A company’s recovery point objective (RPO) - how much data can you afford to lose?
Recovery Time Objective (RTO) - how soon do you need to have your systems up and running?
The Cost of Downtime - how much does an hour of downtime actually cost?
"Our customers are increasingly asking for comprehensive DR solutions," said Christian Teeft, VP of Engineering, Latisys. "In the past you had to maintain a completely redundant infrastructure at a cost of 2X, putting DR out of reach for most small-to-medium enterprises. Today we have a range of options that can be tailored to your specific RPO (Recovery Point Objective) RTO (Recovery Time Objective), making DR more affordable, more powerful and more effective.”
Based on the traditional concept of cold, warm, and hot site Disaster Recovery, Latisys’ DRaaS offerings include a wide range of options:
Data Protection (cold) - Managed data protection using EMC Avamar. These managed backup services ensure that data can be restored from a disk–a good option if cost of downtime is low, or if there is contractual or regulatory obligation to fulfill.
Storage Replication (warm) - Several options for storage replication are available, including using the HP 3PAR StorServ storage platform to replicate from the storage system to a remote location. This is ideal if RPO and RTO both need to be less than 12 hours.
Workload Replication with VMWare (even warmer) - VMWare Site Recovery Manager (SRM) maintains a scripted recovery plan to shut down specified virtual machines and automatically restore them to a recovery site. RPO is less than one hour and RTO is less than four hours.
Workload Replication with Microsoft (warmer still) - The Microsoft Hyper-V Replica function performs asynchronous replication over commercially-available broadband networks, enabling enterprises to perform manual failover in the event of a disaster. This form of hypervisor replication is a good option for smaller enterprises or those already invested in Microsoft technologies.
Geoclustering (hot) - When cost of downtime is very high, Latisys can design active/active geoclustered database replication and globally load-balanced sites with nearly instant failover. This is a good option for companies with thousands of transactions per hour.
The Latisys Cloud - Powered by the HP CloudSystem Matrix, Latisys’ enterprise cloud infrastructure provides flexible and cost-effective access to DR compute resources.
The portfolio features a range of options, balancing the continuous availability needs of the high end of the market, with simplicity and flexibility needed for a large part of the market looking to get a DR plan together.
"Latisys has made the capital investment in hardware as well as the operating investment in people and processes to tailor a DR solution to specific customer requirements," said Pete Stevenson, CEO of Latisys. "DR is an increasingly important component of any enterprise IT business strategy and Latisys is focused on making DR both affordable and available so resources are actually there when businesses need them most."
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