Disaster Happens. Downtime
doesn't have to.

Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) is a cloud-based backup and disaster recovery service that ensures quick recovery of data and applications in the event of a disaster. This service model allows businesses to back up their critical data and systems in a third-party cloud environment for complete restoration of operations following a natural disaster, an outage or man-made disasters that might impact business continuity. DRaaS offers a cost-effective alternative to building and maintaining your own off-site disaster recovery (DR) site since it doesn't require hardware or software installations. The service providers deliver the IT infrastructure, computing and networking resources, and IT support, significantly reducing your burden and costs.

DRaaS providers replicate all crucial data and applications or primary sites to a secondary infrastructure that serves as a DR site. When the primary site fails due to a disruptive incident, the access/control is automatically switched to the secondary DR site through the failover process. Through automation and orchestration, DRaaS achieves instant failover, enabling you to continue business operations with minimal or no downtime. Once the issues have been resolved, access to the primary site can be restored through the failback process.

Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) focuses on minimizing data loss in the event of a crisis by storing the data to a secure off-site location. BaaS helps improve data security and reduce data storage volume through deduplication and compression. BaaS can be extremely useful for long-term data retention and archives; however, it can't be used as a recovery option for your infrastructure. With BaaS, while your service provider is responsible for securely backing up your vital workloads, you are responsible for the security and management of your infrastructure.

DRaaS, on the other hand, focuses on quick recovery and business continuity while minimizing data loss and downtime after a disaster. DRaaS helps protect data and preserves the entire infrastructure, applications and systems, ensuring critical operations aren’t disrupted following a disruptive event. Since DRaaS extends far beyond just backups, it is often more expensive than BaaS.

DRaaS offers a more cost-effective, reliable and faster disaster recovery alternative to in-house DR solutions. Some of the key benefits of DRaaS include:

1. Cost-effectiveness: DRaaS can be much more affordable than building your own disaster recovery infrastructure, which requires a large capital investment. DRaaS providers provide the infrastructure and resources for disaster recovery to a secondary site. This ensures significant cost savings in the long run.

2. Saves time and effort: DRaaS providers manage, update and protect the infrastructure for DR needs, saving you and your team substantial time and effort. Your IT team can utilize the time and effort typically spent researching, implementing and testing disaster recovery plans for other strategic initiatives or core operations.

3. Flexibility and scalability: With an in-house disaster recovery solution, you may not utilize some of the storage space at all but still pay for it. However, with a cloud-based solution like DRaaS, you only pay for what you use. DRaaS is also highly flexible and scalable — you can easily upgrade your service as per your company's needs.

4. Faster recovery: Unlike traditional disaster recovery, DRaaS solutions ensure a speedier recovery. This means your business can quickly resume normal operations (often within minutes) following a disaster.

5. Access to expert IT support: Outsourcing DR responsibilities to a DRaaS provider eliminates the need to hire additional IT staff and gives you access to expert IT support. Reputed DRaaS providers like Unitrends provides 24/7/365 support — just a phone call away if the need arises.

No business is immune to data loss or downtime — a harsh reality. Statista reports nearly 52 million data breaches in the second quarter of 2022. According to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report 2022, the average data breach cost is now $4.35 million, up 2.6% from $4.24 million in 2021. Data loss and downtime can not only cost your business heavy financial losses but can also bring it to a screeching halt. Therefore, a robust disaster recovery plan is a prerequisite for businesses today.

DRaaS enables large and small businesses to implement a reliable disaster recovery solution that ensures business continuity no matter the circumstances. Additionally, DRaaS providers do the heavy lifting, reducing the stress and burden on the users. With DRaaS, failover to the secondary DR site is almost instantaneous, enabling businesses to quickly resume business operations following a disruptive incident with minimum to no data loss or downtime.

Unitrends cloud backup and recovery experts perform custom implementation, testing and recovery of servers and data using the purpose-built Unitrends Cloud. Our experts then spin up your designated servers or virtual machines (VMs) in the Unitrends Cloud and deliver a comprehensive, fully operational recovery based on a pre-planned and tested runbook and your predefined recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTOs/RPOs).

For Elite and Premium service levels, actual recovery time and recovery points are automatically tested monthly, and any issues that may impede recoverability are automatically identified and corrected.

DRaaS plans are available to businesses via the traditional subscription-based and pay-per-use models. DRaaS, like other as-a-service models, may vary in scope and cost.

With Unitrends, depending on the service level, DRaaS may be licensed on a per-machine basis (Premium, Elite and Standard) or per-volume (Standard). With per-volume licensing, any supported machine within the protected volume may be enrolled in DRaaS.

Many DRaaS providers' service-level agreements generally include a guarantee for recovery time and recovery point objectives of critical IT resources.

Unitrends uses the fastest recovery available for your environment and DRaaS service level. Premium and Elite service levels include custom implementation, testing and validation services, and DR testing ahead of time to ensure recovery meets contractually guaranteed RTOs.

Through a formal Service Level Agreement, Premium DRaaS customers are guaranteed a one-hour RTO, and Elite DRaaS customers a 24-hour RTO. These guaranteed RTOs are accomplished through Unitrends' upfront planning, automation and regular Recovery Assurance testing.

Recovery times for Unlimited or Standard DRaaS will vary based on your environment; however, your DRaaS service will include a manual test that demonstrates recoverability and RTOs, so you'll know what to expect in the event of a disaster.

You can mix and match DRaaS service levels on different servers/VMs in your environment to achieve the best level of DR for your recovery objectives and budget.