DRaaS Awakens: Disaster Recovery Lessons From Star Wars

As excitement for the next Star Wars episode hypes up around the world, it’s clear to me that there are several parallels with Star Wars and Disaster Recovery (DR).

In Star Wars thirty years after the triumphant glory of the rebels over Darth Vader and the Imperial Empire, it appears a new dark Force will be the next threat to the Galaxy. Whether your Princess Leia holding the plans to the Death Star or Luke Skywalker being the moral compass, as the saga has shown there is always a twist and without a backup plan in place (this doesn’t mean Has Solo suddenly charging into battle, blaster first) the rebellion would not have been successful.

Protecting data

Even Star Wars has a backup plan. More often than not the plan isn’t well thought out, as it’s R2D2 acting as a walking and talking backup droid and often saves the day. So you aren’t Princess Leia using R2D2 to store the blueprints to the Death Star but we all have data we need to protect.

Although businesses do not have their own R2D2, Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) can act in the same way offering instant backup and recovery. What R2D2 brings to the rebellion, DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as-a-Service) can bring to businesses providing them with the opportunity to strike back when a disaster occurs.

DRaaS has disrupted the traditional backup and recovery market to offer High Availability (HA) and Business Continuity (BC). A hybrid cloud-based solution combines public cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS) automation software, to make DR planning easier than ever. At one time or another we all need to recover something that we have lost and DRaaS can act as a form of insurance when a disaster does strike. Cloud provides companies with data backup, fail-over of servers and the ability to have a secondary data center at a different site to allow for regional DR.

Unexpected disasters can leave businesses in a damaging situation that can affect revenue and reputation. Having a simple DRaaS solution can mean companies can be back up and running again within minutes. Imagine being on the Millenium Falcon holding off attacking Tie Fighters, counting on R2D2 to fix the hyper-drive, it can all come down to a few minutes and every second counts. In fact, the same applies to businesses. Gartner recently predicted that downtime can cost companies as much as $5,600 a minute averaging out to $300k per hour.[1] Companies need to be up and running again as quickly as possible to minimise any impact on day to day dealings.

While R2D2 often tries to pre-warn about dangerous scenarios, DRaaS can work in the same way to test recovery plans. As DRaaS doesn’t have the physical infrastructure or configuration synchronisation associated with traditional DR, there is no reason why tests can’t be conducted frequently. Not only can companies backup data and be up and running again quickly but by running regular tests they can ensure peace of mind.

It is paramount for businesses to be able to continue “business as usual” offering products and services to its customers. Therefore, a backup and DR solution is game changing, if your company was to experience an outage without a plan in place you risk losing everything. And just as importantly, companies should not rely solely on data back-up to keep vital data safe from disasters. They need to ensure a full DR plan is in place to achieve Business Continuity. Companies should be prepared to migrate to recovery servers in other locations to strike back when a disaster hits.

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