The Cloud is a Cost-Effective Option for Disaster Recovery

Cloud hosting makes for easier recovery after any type of accident

Disaster recovery is all about trade-offs: you need to find a cost-effective solution that is always active and makes it as easy as possible to recover your data and restart your business if something bad happens. Of course, “something bad” covers quite a range of events, and could be applied to a lost laptop, a server crash, a break-in, a fire at headquarters, or a larger disaster like the recent earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan.

The sheer magnitude of that range should make it clear that an effective disaster recovery option needs to include secure offsite backup at regular intervals.  Cloud Hosting is an excellent option for securing business data against disasters because it consolidates all your data in an offsite location that is more secure and better-maintained than the internal IT infrastructure in most companies. It also means an in-house disaster won’t destroy valuable IT hardware and software that would then need to be replaced. And cloud computing allows a high level of service and security at a fraction of the cost of maintaining equivalent in-house data facilities.

Some of the direct benefits of the cloud hosting model are:

Servers are moved offsite to commercial facilities – lower risk of break-in, theft or hardware failure

• State of the art security measures are always in place, and are updated and upgraded as needed – makes hacking or data-interception less likely
• An event that destroys an office won’t necessarily affect the data at all – leaving you one less thing to worry about during rebuilding
• Backups occur daily, and archives kept for at least 1 month
• For added security, data can be geographically redundant – i.e. mirrored in multiple data centers in different locations

Unfortunately, disasters happen to businesses. Cloud computing makes recovery easier since your main server resources and data storage are already offsite, and are consolidated for backup. And since your service provider is intimately familiar with your system, it’s possible to store your data as a useable image, rather than a series of files.  Recovery images contain your files and all the formatting, partition tables, and volume configuration needed for complete and instant disaster recovery.

Any kind of backup and recovery resource is better than nothing. But a plan that’s so complex you never implement it is worse than nothing – you have no coverage, and you have the expense and hassle of trying to do it yourself. Cloud computing offers an unprecedented combination of backup features at a low price, along with all the other benefits of Cloud Hosting for your business. A cloud server hosting IT model can help you get in business, stay in business, and recover from any mishaps along the way.

Atlantic.net offers an array of services included managed, dedicated and HIPAA compliant hosting solutions with HIPAA disaster recovery – contact us today for a consultation.