Disaster recovery is currently mostly carried out by replicating applications between primary and secondary data centers. When the primary data center experiences a disruption that interferes with the organization’s business continuity, the secondary data center will take over the functions of the primary data center and activate the replicated applications. Then, with virtualization, organizations can then perform replication at the virtual machine level. One of the advantages of virtualization in a disaster recovery scheme is that the secondary data center can be passive (virtual machine), inactive, but the organization can still get adequate RTO.
Because organizations keep secondary data centers in a passive state, both service providers and businesses actively seek Disaster Recovery (DR) services. Service providers don’t need to allocate 1:1 resources (unless specific requirements apply) because virtual machines remain powered off. At the same time, organizations benefit from cost efficiency, since providers can optimize resources through shared infrastructure.
When choosing a Disaster Recovery service, organizations should evaluate several key factors:
RPO (Recovery Point Objective)
RPO defines how much data your organization can afford to lose during a disaster. For example, an RPO of 15 minutes means the system replicates data from the primary to the secondary data center every 15 minutes.
Two main factors influence RPO: data change volume (data delta) and replication bandwidth. As a reference, a 1 Mbps network can transfer around 300 MB of data in one hour. To achieve a 15-minute RPO for 300 MB of data, your organization needs approximately 4 Mbps of bandwidth. If you require an RPO of zero, you must implement synchronous replication.
RTO (Recovery Time Objective)
RTO determines how quickly your organization can restore operations after a disaster. Several factors affect RTO, including how fast teams detect the issue, coordinate with the DR provider, initialize applications, and reconfigure the network.
In practice, teams may still need to perform manual steps, such as verifying applications, depending on the backup and recovery approach.
Disaster Recovery Time
Organizations must ensure that DR services do not disrupt applications running in the primary data center. Providers should use solutions that minimize performance impact during replication.
They must also maintain strong performance when activating the secondary data center. To ensure alignment, organizations should regularly run DR test scenarios and validate performance expectations with the provider.
Consistency
Providers must maintain data consistency during disaster recovery. This includes application consistency, transaction consistency, and point-in-time consistency.
For example, systems running on Windows often use Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) to ensure consistent data states during replication and recovery.
Location in Disaster Recovery
Organizations should carefully choose the location of their secondary data center. Government regulations often require a minimum distance—such as 30 km—between primary and secondary sites.
Distance affects WAN costs and increases latency. To manage latency, many organizations choose asynchronous replication. However, if you need synchronous replication over long distances, you must invest in additional infrastructure to reduce latency.
Finally, organizations should thoroughly evaluate the readiness of their DR service provider. This includes checking 24/7 support availability, team structure, disaster recovery planning (DRP), and the provider’s ability to conduct DR simulations. These factors ensure a smooth and reliable recovery process when a disaster occurs.
Conclusion
That concludes our explanation. If you would like to read other articles about technology or want more information about Indonesian Cloud products, you can visit our website Indonesiancloud.com. See you in our next article.
Best regards!
Garibaldi – Senior Cloud Consultant IndonesianCloud