Some organizations have been using AWS and Azure for off-site data protection and foundational compute services for some time now, but today many seek ways to maximize cloud value and better plan and execute application migrations en masse. Perhaps you have hesitated because it’s a complex task and it can be difficult to determine which applications to migrate and which cloud resources to adopt. How can you strike a balance between your performance needs and your budget limitations? In addition, there’s the issue of ensuring that a solid backup and disaster recovery plan is in place as you make your migrations.
The key is planning — along with using the appropriate software and processes to help facilitate the migration. The right tools can help you identify which applications to migrate to the cloud as well as help you optimize your use of the cloud for disaster recovery moving forward.
Achieving a quick win in the cloud
Let’s talk disaster recovery. Replicating your backup data to the cloud or even using the cloud as a backup target can be a smart bet to protect your business from unplanned data loss and malicious attacks — especially for those organizations without remote sites. Be sure to consider backup and disaster recovery software that gives your unique organization the flexibility and options it needs.
- Do you need on-premises backup software that backs up directly to the cloud? Or is it better to back up on premises and replicate backups off-site for disaster recovery?
- Do you need source-based deduplication that you can deploy on premises and in the cloud to help reduce storage costs?
- What about deploying backup software in the cloud itself to protect applications and data that reside there?
- Do you need to replicate backups to multiple cloud sites for disaster recovery — or to address a true 3-2-1 backup strategy?
- What about protecting cloud-native applications such as Office 365?
Using separate backup solutions to protect data on-premises and in the cloud makes your data protection strategy more complex and expensive. Find a solution that allows you to do both and manage the process from one dashboard.
Many have found that leveraging the cloud is not so simple. Performance issues, unexpected costs, ensuring application availability and data protection, data security and a wide range of other challenges have caused many cloud initiatives to fail.
The independent IT analyst firm DCIG took a look at several helpful software tools available from both cloud providers and independent software providers (ISVs) like Quest. Their resulting report offers best practices for selecting backup and disaster recovery solutions as well as application migration planning tools conducive to cloud adoption.
Your organization’s journey to the cloud can be simpler, faster and less risky. Having the tools in place to plan, monitor and manage that ongoing journey is key to ensuring flexibility and success as you move forward.
