Cloud Disaster Recovery

Cloud DR usually costs 40–70% less than traditional DR. Traditional DR needs duplicate gear and data center space—often $50K–$200K per year for SMBs. Cloud DR is pay-as-you-go; many teams spend $2K–$10K per month based on data and recovery goals. You pay mainly for storage and a small amount of compute until failover. Most get full DR at 30–60% of traditional cost.

Backup protects data; DR protects your whole operation. With backup you can restore files and databases, but you still have to rebuild servers and apps—often taking days. Cloud DR keeps ready-to-run copies of your environment in the cloud. When something goes wrong, you fail over to those systems in minutes or hours. Backup = data safety net. DR = fast recovery of operations.

It depends on your recovery goal (RTO) and design. Warm standby (systems ready, not running): 1–4 hours. Hot standby (systems already running): minutes with automated failover. Cold standby (infrastructure defined only): 4–12 hours. We design to your RTO. Faster recovery costs more, but even basic cloud DR is often 70–90% faster than traditional DR at lower cost.

Yes. Good cloud DR uses immutable backups and an isolated recovery environment. Ransomware can't reach your DR from production. Immutable copies can't be encrypted. When ransomware hits, you fail over to the clean DR environment and restore operations while you fix production. The DR side must be isolated from production so ransomware can't spread.

Test at least quarterly; do a full failover test once a year. Quarterly: check replication, sample recoveries, and that the team knows the steps. Annual: full failover, confirm apps and network work, and record actual recovery time vs. goals. Regular testing finds problems before a real disaster and builds confidence.