How to Budget for Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery

@Bluelock | #BLRaaS | www.bluelock.com

You’ll Learn How To:
•  Create a solid plan for moving
your DR plan forward
•  Identify how to approach and
integrate cloud-based DR into
your budget
Pat O’Day
Chief Technology Officer,
Bluelock (@odayP)

•  Identify the amount for which
to budget


WHAT HAPPENED IN 2013

Cloud is More Prevalent Than Ever
According to Gartner, IaaS is forecast to
grow at a CAGR of 37.8% through 2017
TOP 5 MOTIVATORS FOR ADOPTING CLOUD

Source: IBM

Gartner Forecast Overview: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 1Q13 Update. 03 May 2013.


Your Risk and Impact Have Changed
•  Disasters (natural and man-made) are increasing
•  Businesses are becoming more reliant on
technology, making IT more important than ever
FEMA Declared Disasters
(1953-2012)
300
250
200
150
100

2010

2007

2004

2001

1998

1995

1992

1989

1986

1983

1980

1977

1974

1971

1968

1965

1962

1959

1956

0

1953

50

Source: http://www.fema.gov/disasters/grid/year


Improvements in
Replication Technology
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Low Barriers to Entry
Improved Recovery Quality
Testability, Ease of Use
SAN Agnostic
100% Software-based
Application-aware…


Natural Disasters and Weather Extremes
Flood

Hail

Thunderstorm
High Winds

Ice
Storm

Power
Outages

Philadelphia

1086

674

2641

5

Yes

Indianapolis

481

1269

2562

11

Yes

Baton Rouge

87

271

948

5

Yes

Nashville

545

963

2330

9

Yes

Boston

342

599

1172

2

Yes

New York

1281

561

2027

9

Yes

Pensacola

245

314

828

0

Yes

Minneapolis

167

1841

1765

4

Yes

Chicago

374

996

1711

12

Yes

Seattle

34

11

11

0

Yes

San Francisco

69

2

10

0

Yes

Los Angeles

175

29

74

0

Yes

Las Vegas

108

51

121

0

Yes


What’s Stopping You?
•  If the world is a scarier place and you’re more
at risk and new DR solutions are more
compelling—why aren’t you doing this?
–  Not a priority
–  DR is too expensive
–  Connecting to the cloud is complex
–  Cloud is still scary
–  Not in our skill set to plan and manage DR


ABOUT BLUELOCK

Bluelock Virtual Datacenters
5-Series Virtual Datacenters
Production Hosting
Public Cloud resources for hosting production and business critical
workloads. This VDC type supports even the most complex hosting
requirements such as HIPAA and PCI compliance.

Recovery-as-a-Service
Cloud-based disaster recovery resources that enable customers to
replicate VMware-based workloads to the Bluelock Cloud from their
own datacenter or other cloud environments.

Test / Dev / Demo Hosting
Public Cloud resources for hosting test, development and other preproduction needs. This pay-go, no commitment cloud environment
matches the risk and budget profile for your less critical workloads.


To-Cloud RaaS vs. In-Cloud RaaS

4-Series Virtual Datacenter

Bluelock VDC
Las Vegas


To-Cloud RaaS
Your Datacenter

Bluelock VDC
Las Vegas



In-Cloud RaaS
Your Datacenter

Bluelock VDC

Bluelock VDC

Las Vegas

Indianapolis



PICK YOUR APPROACH

3 Ways to Transform Recovery
1

Walk Before You Run
Start small and learn to use the cloud with minimal
impact on your existing systems.
Example: Get cloud experience protecting one critical app

Pick a Set of Applications

2

Learn how Recovery-as-a-Service truly works by
holistically protecting your business critical apps.
Example: Protect a group of apps with similar recovery objectives

Re-think Everything

3

Transition your entire DR plan to the cloud, remove the work
and energy your team spends on DR plans to a provider.
Example: Stop doing tape backups and move all DR to the cloud


To-Cloud RaaS
Tire Discounters

•  Regional retailer in the Midwest, implemented a RaaS solution
for added security, scaling ability and other attributes
•  ERP and Inventory systems run on VMware infrastructure at private
datacenter which extends to remote offices
•  Chose a joint solution from Bluelock and TW Telecom that allowed for
a dynamic network connection. The flexible bandwidth removed the
need for expensive, static “pipes”
•  How it works:
•  During normal operations, the recovery point application checks for changes in the
Tire Discounters environment and only the changes only are pushed up to the
Cloud, so a relatively small throughput required.
•  During a disaster recovery failback scenario, however, most or all data from the
Bluelock cloud is pushed back to the Tire Discounters environment and tw telecom
Dynamic Capacity kicks in to increase throughput.


To-Cloud RaaS
Ursinus College

•  Liberal arts college just outside Philadelphia
•  Net new Bluelock customer
–  First-time cloud buyer

•  Has websites and other external-facing apps in
their datacenter they want to recover in
the cloud
–  Requires DMZ infrastructure to leverage a second
site; Bluelock enables a more cost effective way to
access a second site for DR


To-Cloud RaaS
eMeter

•  Leader in energy information management
•  Looked at public cloud to simplify IT operations
and provide high security
–  Customer since late 2011

•  Initiative has now grown to 2 5-Series VDCs to
serve training courses in a hybrid cloud
environment as well as the test/dev
•  Needs to protect its SaaS application that turns
energy meter data into usable information

DOLLARS & DETAILS

Determine the Value of Your Application
•  What is the impact of your application going
down on the bottom line of your business?
–  For a day, a few days, or longer?

•  What is the likelihood of a disruption happening?
–  For a day, a few days, or longer?

•  (Impact) x (likelihood) = The Value of protecting
your application


Determine What RTO/RPO You Want
•  RTO = The maximum time your application can
be down after a declaration.
•  RPO = The age of the files that are recovered
after a declaration.
•  Determine the rate of change of your application
to identify your ideal RPO. Use the value of your
application to determine your RTO.

Are You Using Your Resources Efficiently?

Under-provisioning
Putting recovery
time at risk

Typical provisioning
model

Over-provisioning
Over-spending on
insurance (DR)
Typical application
performance


Budgeting for Monthly Costs
Cost at recovery:
•  Port Speed (10Mb, 100Mb, 1Gb)
•  CPU & Memory
Monthly service price depends on:
•  Replication Service fee = # VM’s
committed
•  Storage
•  Data transfer cost
•  Pay-go for monthly resources above
commit level


Other Cost Considerations
•  Timing
•  Testing
•  Network Impact
–  Performance & RPO Management
–  Dynamic Networking

•  Services


Timeline and Milestones for Implementation
Week 1

Week 4

Week 8

Month 3

Month 6

Engagement

Customer receives welcome
pack and RaaS Questionnaire

Kickoff call with
Professional Services (1hr)

Implementation objectives
complete

Implementation

Creation of client specific
‘Recovery Runbook’
Implementation/Login
Access Granted

Customer Operational
Full Access to Portfolio, Bluelock Support
1st Recovery Test

Professional
Services Year
End Review

Review

UP AND RUNNING IN 3-4 WEEKS!
Customer engages
Bluelock when ready

2nd Recovery Test

Timeframes for interim milestones are for illustration only and will depend on customer specific criteria.


Budget for Testing
•  How frequently do you need to test?
•  Traditional testing
–  Some providers say you can do as many tests as
you want, but you pay a larger monthly premium.

•  RaaS testing
–  Some providers offer a number of free tests, and
you pay-as-you-go for additional testing. Because
you aren’t paying for resources constantly,
non-testing costs are lower.

Self-Service or Guided Testing
•  Self-service testing
–  For organizations with strong IT staff and
consider this a core competency

•  Guided testing
–  For organizations with less experience in DR
or those that prefer to invest time in other core
IT functions


Click-to-Test: Rewarding Good Behavior
•  Bluelock provides resources to encourage
testing 2x per year
•  If you schedule your test with Bluelock, we
credit your account for the resources used
during the test
•  Can also choose to test on an isolated
network to prevent disruption to your
production workload


What kind of vendor do you
want to work with?
•  Compare a high-touch vendor with
low-touch vendors
•  Do you want implementation services or
does your team want to handle everything?
•  Do you want a vendor who is an extension
of your team, so they can assist you with
declarations and testing?


DR Services
•  Datacenter Recovery Assessment & Planning
•  DR Runbook Integration (RaaS + Broader DR strategy)
•  Implementation Services
WHICH SOLUTION IS RIGHT FOR YOU?

WALK BEFORE
YOU RUN

PICK A SET OF
APPLICATIONS

RE-THINK
EVERYTHING


Connect with Bluelock
Questions, comments or want more detail
on DR in the cloud? Connect with Bluelock!


How to Budget for Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery

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