How disaster recovery works?
The notion of disaster recovery is based on two concepts - failover and failback.
Failover is the process of switching to a redundant or standby physical or virtual machine upon the failure of the previously active physical machine.
In turn, failback is the process of restoring operations to a primary physical machine after they have been shifted to a secondary machine during failover.
Disaster Recovery includes the replication and hosting of physical or virtual servers to provide failover in the event of a manmade or natural catastrophe. This process is often performed by a third party.
What are the disaster recovery requirements?
With Acronis there are no special requirements to add another layer of protection to your key workloads. You can recover in Acronis Cloud majority of your virtual and physical machines. When choosing a disaster recovery solutions for your company you may consider the following requirements :
- Your vendor data center location to ensure compliance and data sovereignty rules
- Security of your disaster recovery vendor datacenters
- Availability of SaaS solution to avoid investments in disaster recovery infrastructure
How is DR different from a regular backup?
Traditional backup allows you to flexibly manage your RPO – since you have numerous copies of your data, you are able to decide to what state in the past you want to recover. Disaster recovery doesn’t give you that RPO choices, but dramatically improves your RTO. With DR protection enabled you can get your fully functional, tested system back up and running in minutes.
Should I test my disaster recovery plan?
The success of your disaster recovery plan depends on preparedness of people and processes as much as the backup tools used. Ideally, you should test your disaster recovery procedures every 3 months (but no less than once a year). Do not forget to amend and extend your disaster recovery plan during and after these exercises.
How safe is my data in your datacenters?
Acronis Data Centers are Tier-IV designed. Acronis Data Centers are equipped with UPS and backup diesel-generators and are designed to ensure constant power availability during indefinite power outages. In addition, there are redundant HVAC, network and UPS systems. With 99.995% availability, Tier-IV is the highest availability level for any data center on the planet. Acronis Data Centers are SSAE-16 certified. Acronis Data Centers are extremely safe Physical safety and security is ensured via high fences, 24x7 security personnel, and video surveillance with 90-day archiving. Biometric hand-geometry scan and proximity key cards are required for access.
What's the main difference between Backup and Disaster Recovery?
Backup is about copying your data to a safe location. Disaster Recovery (DR) is about keeping your business *running*. A DR solution, like Acronis, not only backs up your data but also provides the cloud infrastructure to run a replica of your servers, allowing you to failover and continue operating almost instantly after a disaster.
What are RTO and RPO?
RTO (Recovery Time Objective) is how quickly you can recover after a disaster. Acronis DR offers an RTO of minutes. RPO (Recovery Point Objective) is how much data you can afford to lose. With continuous data protection, Acronis provides an RPO of seconds, meaning minimal data loss.
How does the failover process work?
When your primary server goes offline, you can initiate a failover with a single click in the Acronis console. This instantly spins up a recovery server in the Acronis cloud, running a replica of your system from the latest backup. Your network traffic is then redirected to the recovery server, keeping your services online.
Can I test my disaster recovery plan?
Yes. Acronis allows for easy, non-disruptive testing. You can perform a test failover in an isolated cloud environment at any time to ensure your DR plan works as expected and to meet compliance requirements, all without impacting your live production servers.
What systems can I protect with Acronis DR?
You can protect a wide range of critical workloads, including physical Windows and Linux servers, VMware and Hyper-V virtual machines, and major business applications. It's designed to provide a comprehensive business continuity solution.
What happens when my primary server is back online?
The process of returning to your primary server is called "failback." Acronis makes this easy. It automatically syncs any data that changed while you were running in the cloud back to your primary server, ensuring a smooth and consistent transition with minimal disruption.
Is this solution secure?
Absolutely. All data is encrypted with strong AES-256 encryption both in transit and at rest in Acronis's secure, certified cloud data centers. You can also establish a secure VPN connection between your local network and the cloud recovery site for added protection.
Do I need my own data center for this to work?
No. That's the primary benefit. Acronis provides the disaster recovery site for you in their secure cloud. This eliminates the massive cost and complexity of building and maintaining your own secondary data center.
