Disaster recovery (DR) refers to the strategies and processes in place to restore IT infrastructure and data after a disruptive event like a cyber attack, natural disaster, or system failure. Dell offers a cloud disaster recovery service that provides automated offsite replication and failover to public clouds like AWS, Azure, and VMware.
Dell Cloud Disaster Recovery is a subscription service that replicates backups and virtual machines to a public cloud provider for failover in a disaster scenario. Key benefits include lower DR costs, faster recovery times, reduced complexity, and flexibility to failover to different cloud providers or back to on-prem infrastructure (Dell).
By leveraging Dell’s technology partnerships with cloud providers, Cloud DR offers an automated, cost-effective DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service) solution for organizations looking to use public clouds for their DR strategy and meet their RTO/RPO targets.
How Dell Cloud Disaster Recovery Works
Dell Cloud Disaster Recovery (Cloud DR) utilizes Dell’s cloud storage and data protection solutions like Data Domain and Avamar to replicate backups from on-premises environments to public clouds like AWS, Azure, or VMware Cloud. Backups are continuously replicated to ensure an up-to-date copy exists in the cloud that can be restored in the event of a disaster.
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The process works by installing the Cloud DR software in the on-premises environment alongside Data Domain or Avamar. Virtual machines and other systems are backed up locally, and then backups are replicated to the chosen public cloud environment using encryption. In a disaster scenario where on-prem systems are inaccessible, administrators can spin up the replicated VMs in the cloud to restore service quickly.
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Dell leverages its data protection portfolio including Avamar and Data Domain to enable reliable, encrypted replication and recovery. The Cloud DR infrastructure provides automation, orchestration, and built-in networking capabilities to simplify failover and recovery during a disaster. Organizations gain cloud-based resilience while maintaining control of data security and compliance.
Disaster Recovery Scenarios Supported
Dell Cloud Disaster Recovery protects against a wide range of disaster scenarios that can disrupt IT operations and cause data loss, including:
Natural disasters like floods, fires, earthquakes, and severe weather that can damage on-premises IT infrastructure. According to Dell’s whitepaper, Dell Cloud Disaster Recovery, the solution provides automated disaster recovery to the cloud to maintain business continuity in the event of natural disasters.
Cybersecurity attacks like ransomware that can encrypt on-premises data and disrupt access. Dell Cloud DR maintains off-site backups in the cloud that can be used to recover from such attacks. The Dell Cloud Disaster Recovery Installation and Administration Guide states that disaster recovery testing prepares for successful failover in the event of cyber attacks.
Human errors like accidental data deletion that can cause data loss. Cloud-based backups act as an air gap to protect against such errors. According to Dell, workloads can be directly run in the public cloud after failover.
Cloud Storage and Replication
Dell Cloud Disaster Recovery leverages Dell storage and replication technologies to enable disaster recovery in the cloud. Specifically, it utilizes Dell EMC Data Domain and Avamar to replicate data to Dell cloud storage. Data Domain provides deduplication and compression to reduce the amount of data sent over the WAN to the cloud. Avamar utilizes agent-based backup and its own variable-length deduplication technology to efficiently replicate data offsite.
The Cloud DR solution supports both image-level VM replication using Data Domain Virtual Edition (DD VE), as well as file-level and application-level Avamar backups. For VM replication, DD VE integrates with VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V to capture VM snapshots and incrementally update them to the cloud repository. Avamar provides granular recovery of files, folders, application data, system states and entire VMs.
Replication policies can be configured based on Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) and target cloud storage. Data Domain Cloud Tier and Object Storage on Amazon S3 or Azure are supported targets. Compression and deduplication optimize bandwidth utilization for replicating large datasets over lower bandwidth connections.
Recovery Time and Recovery Point Objectives
A key benefit of Dell Cloud Disaster Recovery is the ability to achieve low recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs). RTO refers to the maximum acceptable length of time that a business process can be disrupted before negatively impacting the business. RPO refers to the maximum amount of data loss that is acceptable in the event of a disruption.
With Dell’s cloud disaster recovery solution, RTOs can be reduced to minutes through rapid virtual machine recovery. By replicating data to Dell’s secure cloud storage, RPOs can be minimized to seconds or minutes instead of hours or days. This is a significant improvement over traditional on-premises disaster recovery solutions. Dell leverages its cloud architecture and data replication technologies to provide businesses with a resilient disaster recovery solution with industry-leading RTO and RPO capabilities.
According to one analyst report, “Dell Cloud Disaster Recovery helps organizations meet their desired RTOs, ranging from a few minutes for mission-critical applications to hours for less business-critical applications.” [1]
Security and Compliance
Dell Cloud Disaster Recovery offers robust security and compliance to protect your data. Dell uses AWS server-side encryption to secure data at rest in S3 storage. Supported encryption methods include SSE-S3 and SSE-KMS.
Cloud DR provides enterprise-grade security through features like RBAC, MFA, and audit logging. It meets compliance standards including HIPAA, GDPR, PCI-DSS, ISO 27001, and more. Dell partners with AWS to deliver security assurance on physical data centers as well as virtual infrastructure.
With built-in WAN optimization and encryption, data is secured in transit over the public internet. Cloud DR enables secure DRaaS while maintaining regulatory compliance across regions.
Monitoring and Alerting
Dell Cloud Disaster Recovery provides various tools for monitoring the health and status of recovery operations. Administrators can configure alert policies to notify them if certain conditions are detected.
The Cloud Disaster Recovery dashboard in the PowerProtect Data Manager console allows admins to monitor overall status, view recovery point objectives, track data replication jobs, and see the progress of any active failover or failback recovery operations. This centralized dashboard enables real-time visibility into the health of the DR environment.
In addition, administrators can enable email alerts for various conditions like replication errors, inactive targets, insufficient snapshots, and more. Alert policies can be customized to send notifications on a defined schedule or as triggered by specific events. This helps admins stay on top of any issues that may impact recoverability.
According to the PowerProtect Data Manager Administrator Guide, “Email alerts are generated when the status of any configured alert changes from normal to warning or from warning to normal.” [1] Alerts provide crucial visibility to ensure DR environments are meeting RTO/RPO targets.
Supported Systems and Integration
Dell Cloud Disaster Recovery supports a wide range of infrastructure, operating systems, and applications. This allows organizations to replicate their production environments to the cloud for disaster recovery.
For infrastructure, Dell Cloud DR supports Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, Cisco UCS, HPE servers, and more. It can protect physical servers as well as virtual machines running on hypervisors like VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V.
At the OS level, Dell Cloud DR supports Windows Server and Windows desktop operating systems. It also supports major Linux distributions like Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Ubuntu Server, and CentOS.
For applications, Dell Cloud DR integrates with Microsoft applications like Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint, and Active Directory. It also supports Oracle, SAP, and Epic electronic health record systems. Other supported apps include file servers, collaboration tools, ERP software, CRM systems, and custom LOB applications.
By supporting this diverse range of infrastructure, OSs, and applications, Dell Cloud DR provides comprehensive protection for production environments. Organizations can design disaster recovery plans to meet their specific needs using Dell’s flexible, heterogeneous support.
For a full list of supported configurations, refer to the Dell Cloud Disaster Recovery Compatibility Matrix: https://www.delltechnologies.com/asset/sv-se/products/data-protection/briefs-summaries/H16867_data_domain_cloud_dr_sb.pdf
Cost and Pricing
Dell Cloud Disaster Recovery pricing is based on capacity and usage. There are two main pricing components:
Capacity pricing includes the costs for storing your protected data in the cloud and replicating data to the cloud. This is charged per terabyte of cloud capacity used per month. Higher tiers of capacity provide discounts on a volume pricing model.
Usage pricing includes fees for recovery operations for actual disasters or tests. This includes any data transfers from the cloud storage back to your production environment. Usage fees are charged per gigabyte of data transferred.
In addition, there are also fees for onboarding services and ongoing support. Dell offers several packaged offerings that bundle together capacity, usage, and services into a single predictable price.
For a customized quote, the Dell Cloud Disaster Recovery pricing calculator can provide estimates based on your specific workload needs: https://www.delltechnologies.com/en-us/solutions/business-applications/data-protection/index.htm
Overall the pricing model is intended to provide flexibility to scale capacity as needed while only paying for actual disaster recovery usage. This can provide significant cost savings compared to maintaining a secondary physical site.
Conclusion
In summary, Dell Cloud Disaster Recovery is a robust solution that helps organizations protect their data and recover quickly in the event of outages or disasters. Key benefits include:
- Automated replication to Dell cloud storage for efficient offsite backups.
- Recovery time and recovery point objectives as low as 15 minutes to meet business continuity needs.
- Orchestration and automation of disaster recovery workflows and failover.
- Integration with on-prem Dell infrastructure for streamlined management.
- Military-grade encryption and compliance offerings to secure your data.
- 24/7 monitoring and alerting to detect disruptions.
Dell’s end-to-end involvement in infrastructure, cloud, storage, networking, and services gives it competitive advantages in delivering a simplified yet powerful disaster recovery solution. With Dell’s experience helping organizations protect critical systems and data, companies can feel confident entrusting business continuity to Dell Cloud Disaster Recovery.
