Cut disaster recovery complexity with Ergo and VMware
On every organisation’s list of ‘worst case scenarios’ will be the risk of an outage, something caused by natural disaster or a cyberattack that is significant enough to stop a business functioning. Increasing reliance on technology and the data it constantly generates means business continuity plans with advanced DR (Disaster Recovery) capabilities are more important than ever.
The problem with traditional DR is that it can be expensive to implement and complicated to manage. You have the additional cost of owning a ready-to-go DR site, with all the resource-hungry tasks that come with planning, testing and maintaining the failover environment.
As with many Ergo propositions, our cloud approach is about modernising and simplifying, in this case through our partnership with VMware. Together, we’re not just addressing the old obstacles to business continuity with VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery, we’re delivering on the most demanding requirements of our clients when it comes to RPO (Recovery Point Objective), the ideal point in a timeline that a business could return without losing data, and RTO (Recovery Time Objective), the maximum time a company can tolerate being down.
Mitigating the risk
With the speed of business accelerating all the time, the risks around not finding an appropriate DR solution are greater than ever. Lost employee productivity is one of them, but the bigger external risk comes from reputational damage that will test customer loyalty. And there will be a real impact on the bottom line if business opportunities are missed, or an outage leads to data loss that breaches regulatory rules and accrues penalties.
The last point becomes much more of a danger if the disaster is the result of a cybersecurity attack. There have been many recent examples of ransomware preventing organisations from accessing their data, and their frequency and severity has increased dramatically over the last few years. A 2022 IBM report found that the share of breaches caused by ransomware grew 41% year-on-year and it took 49 days longer than average to identify and contain them. It is now the no.1 cause of DR events with the average cost of a breach totalling $4.54m.
One of the benefits of the VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery solution is that it uses a number of features to mitigate data loss, including replication techniques that ensure near-real-time protection of data and point-in-time recovery. This is achieved with virtualised infrastructure designed for DR purposes, where failover and failback is to and from a Software-Defined Data Centre (SDDC).
Cloud advantages
With most organisations now on some kind of cloud journey, VMware Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service solution has features and benefits that will be familiar. It combines scale and cost-efficient cloud storage with simple Software-as-a-Service management. When it comes to failover to the SDDC, it follows public cloud principals where you only pay for what you use.
Because VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery eliminates the need to keep a second site, just in case something happens, it reduces the total cost of ownership by 60%. And the good news is that existing VMware customers will already have the skills in place to run a solution for v-Sphere based infrastructure that covers backup, disaster recovery and ransomware.
Source: VMware
Ergo has a tried-and-tested process for implementation. It starts with the planning phase where we look at the existing data estate and its DR readiness; then it’s about defining the scope of the DR plan, identifying critical applications and understanding their software dependencies. Finally, we configure and populate the SDDC as we begin testing the plan against recovery objectives.
Not for the first time, an Ergo proposition is about cutting through complexity to get to business value. VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery helps avoid the pitfalls and excessive costs of traditional business continuity solutions, many of which are ill-equipped for the way modern organisations function. Keeping the business going, managing data and staying compliant, becomes a well-executed procedure, rather than a shock to the business that risks untold damage.
We at Ergo have a dedicated team of experts who can help with your disaster recovery strategy and its implementation. We offer a free assessment to spot gaps in the scope of your disaster recovery plan. Our experts will scan your network and identify business applications, highlighting areas that require urgent attention. Fill out the form below and we will contact you.
