Backup

Instant File Restoration – A whole new ball game for Data Backup on Azure

Bobby Varghese

Since its inception, Azure Backup has played a vital role in helping enterprises back-up their data on-premises or in the Cloud. Recently, besides Backup-as-a-Service, Microsoft introduced Restore-as-a-Service for instant restore of enterprise data.

Using this service, enterprises can recover their data from previously created restore points without paying additional costs. With Instant Restore, you can not only create a writable snapshot of the recovery point but once you do this, you can create one or more ISCSI based recovery volumes. These can be browsed to recover items by simple copy-paste method from recovery volumes to your favorite destinations.

Benefits of using Azure Backup for Instant File Recovery:

  1. Single restore process – an enterprise may use Azure Backup Agent to back its on-premises data or may use Azure VM Backup to protect Azure VMs. They can instantly restore their data using Restore-as-a-Service model. It acts as a one-stop mechanism to immediately recover an enterprise’s files and folders.
  2. 2. Instant recovery – the option to instantly recover files from Cloud backup of Azure VMs or on-premises file servers, is one of the main advantages of Azure Backup. Whether an enterprise has accidently deleted a file/folder or is simply validating a backup, instant restore helps in reducing the downtime drastically while recovering the files.
  3. Review before restore – users can run and check files with the help of applications such as Oracle and SQL directly from the Cloud recovery point snapshots, without having to first restore them. In this way, they can review the final list of files before restoring them.
  4. Flexibility in recovery – Since Azure Backup provides the entire snapshot of the recovery point and relies on a copy of items for recovery; enterprise users can restore many files from multiple folders to a local server or even to a network share of their choice.

According to a recent update from Microsoft, customers using Azure Backup Agent and Azure VM Backup (Windows VMs) can avail Azure Backup Instant Recovery of files for preview. Click here to check how to instantly recover the files from Cloud recovery points using Azure Backup Agent.

 

Contact Sysfore’s Cloud Disaster Recovery & Backup experts for your no obligation / no cost in-depth analysis to see just how simple and cost effective it is to implement a robust cloud Backup / Disaster Recovery plan for your Enterprise. Write to us at info@sysfore.com or call us on +91-80-4110-5555 to know more.

Top 7 Tips For An Effective Disaster Recovery Plan

Bobby Varghese

Here’s a no-brainer – many companies rely on IT for their survival and they won’t be able to work if their system went down. If you think your company is one of them, then it’s important to have a proper Disaster Recovery (DR) plan in place so that you are able to reduce your downtime and get back online as quickly as possible.

Here are top 7 tips to help you implement an effective Disaster Recovery plan:

Identify your risks:
Identifying major security threats to your IT infrastructure can help you put procedures in place that will reduce the risk and determine the course of action needed for recovery.

Prioritize your activities:
Identify your most critical services and the order in which you want to restore them. This will help you create a recovery plan which will help minimize the effect of the disaster on your business.

Make a list of software details:
If you’re running different software programs in your business for different activities, make sure you have a complete list of applications you are using, their configuration settings, the contact details of the owners, and your contract details. This will help you remember the applications important for your business.

Create a response team:
This is an essential element of a DR Plan and includes personnel you will need to get your system back online. You can take help from your internal staff or can hire third party vendors to help you in this process.

Assess Recovery Procedures:
The top goal of every company is recovery and restoration of its data after the disaster. In order to collect and restore the data, the company must answer questions like where the data has been stored, who has access to the data, is the data secure, whether it can be recovered in case it’s lost and how to retrieve the data in case the company switches its users.

Keep your backup ready and waiting:
It is often said that business should never anticipate profits but should provide for all possible losses. Keep a backup of all your business resources on-site, off-site or on the Cloud so that you don’t have to worry about the data loss in case of a disaster.

Run and Test your plan:
Testing your plan is another important part of DR planning. No matter how well you’ve planned your recovery, actually implementing the process is always different from the way it was planned. Run the test plan and make the required tweaks for the final version of the DR plan.

When a disaster strikes, most of the companies suffer because of the absence of a proper Disaster Recovery Solution. Having a solid DR plan will help the businesses resume their operations after the minimum downtime and continue to provide good and reliable services to their customers and suppliers. Developing a DR plan can be time-consuming but the benefits heavily outweigh the costs should a disaster occur.

 

Sysfore can help you with a cost-efficient way to meet your disaster recovery objectives. You can write to us at info@sysfore.com or call us at +91-80-4110-5555.

Top 5 benefits of a Cloud-based Disaster Recovery that need your attention

Bobby Varghese

SMEs, as well as big organizations seldom incorporate DR as an integral part of their planning due to perceived reasons such as cost reservations. The absence of a DR plan can put your business in a compromising position.

The benefits of a cloud-based disaster recovery plan (DRaaS) aren’t obvious to many business leaders, despite the huge number of advantages it brings to the table. Here are five major benefits that you may want to take notes of:

COST BENEFITS: Many business leaders still associate a higher cost to DR. On the contrary, DRaaS can help companies devise a plan wherein they need to pay only for what they need. Duplication of companies’ data can be done on the cloud itself.

QUICK RECOVERY: The entire data, server, apps and the OS are encapsulated into a virtual server. Hence, copying and backup to an offsite data center is easy and quick.

STORAGE CAPACITY: With the virtual stock of the entire data, adding more storage space becomes easier with increasing business demands.

FLEXIBILITY: With DRaaS, companies have the luxury to choose the sequence and the types of data that may require backup in the event of a disaster.

SELF-SERVICE CAPABILITIES: DRaaS gives users/companies independent control, making it easier for testing, recovering, establishing failover and failback workflows, and setting recovery objectives.