Every company faces risks of extended downtime due to disasters, cyberattacks or hardware/software failure. While some risks are unavoidable, many are preventable. That’s why having a disaster recovery plan and the proper tools is crucial for all businesses, large or small. Without one, companies may suffer data loss, lost productivity and revenue, regulatory fines, lawsuits or reputational damage. Disaster recovery service help organizations regain access to critical IT infrastructure and systems after an unexpected disruption.

The process of recovering from a disaster starts with backing up and replicating IT infrastructure in a secondary location or the cloud. Then, in the event of a disaster, the organization can transfer production workloads to the secondary location and resume operations. Cloud disaster recovery solutions are becoming more cost-effective than on-premises backup and recovery solutions because of the scale, shared infrastructure and less-expensive cloud resources they leverage.

To ensure the success of a business’s disaster recovery strategy, organizations should regularly test their plans. However, testing can require a significant amount of time and effort. It can also be expensive, primarily because of the need for IT staff to take time away from other business functions to perform tests.

Many businesses choose to outsource their disaster recovery to third parties. This is known as disaster recovery as a service, or DRaaS. There are three primary DRaaS models: managed, assisted and self-service. In the managed DRaaS model, a third party takes responsibility for implementing and managing an organization’s disaster recovery plan. However, organizations that choose this option must maintain a close relationship with their DRaaS providers to keep them up to date on any infrastructure, application or service changes.

An organization’s disaster recovery solution should include both proactive and reactive components. Preventive efforts can include ensuring the proper configuration of IT infrastructure, monitoring environments for compliance and security violations, and deploying tools to automate routine tasks. In the event of a disaster, a response plan should include how to recover from a disaster, including which servers to restore, how to manage the failover and how to recover from a failed server.

DRaaS solutions have evolved from simple backup and recovery options to include replication, failover, booting virtual machines (VMs) in the cloud and advanced network recovery capabilities that can automatically route traffic around WAN bottlenecks. They can also include image-based VM replication that eliminates the need for on-premise hardware and allows you to recover from a VM in a matter of minutes.

The type of DRaaS solution you select will depend on the size and complexity of your IT environment and the availability of on-premises equipment. Regardless of the solution you choose, make sure it includes a powerful tech stack designed for MSPs, such as Datto’s all-in-one BCDR solutions that are available as preconfigured appliances or software-only virtual and imaged solutions. They enable MSPs to protect their clients’ IT environments and provide reliable disaster recovery as a service. It’s the best way to protect your clients’ infrastructure and get them back up and running after a disaster strikes.