What is DPaaS and why do you need it?

Back-ups and disaster recovery plans are essential to protect your data and the continuity of your day-to-day business. But because of the rapid growth of data and the increasing demands of its governance and compliance, it is getting harder for a lot of organisations to make the necessary investments to guarantee data security and reliability. And this is where DPaaS (data-protection-as-a-service) can give you peace of mind: it protects your data and ensures the continuity of your business. 

What is DPaaS? 

DPaaS is a combination of the following three managed services: 

• Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS)
  Gives you access to a redundant storage platform in the cloud 

• Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) 
  Backs up your data and restores it, if necessary, from a created back-up 

• Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) 
  Protects your data and applications against interruption by disasters and emergencies 

Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) 

Traditional storage has a number of drawbacks. On the one hand, the storage capacity that you need to access is constantly increasing. This means that you regularly have to buy in extra storage. But this can lead to long delivery times and high extra cost. What is more, you always need more installed storage capacity than you currently have use for. 

Determining the right capacity is no straightforward matter. If you buy in too much, you will have more than enough available, but you end up paying for unused capacity. Buy too little and you will soon have to buy more – and then you might run into problems because of long delivery times, or because your storage capacity is no longer adequate for your data requirements. 

Traditional storage solutions are not always user-friendly either. On top of that, compatibility problems can often throw a spanner in the works. 

Storage-as-a-Service can also offer solutions to protect against the fallout of a ransomware attack. Snapshotting and vaulting can provide maximum protection for your data at its primary location. This type of protection enables you to recover much faster from a ransomware attack, because you do not need to call upon your back-ups. 

Storage-as-a-Service resolves the storage capacity problem by offering you a flexible storage capacity in the cloud in an Opex model (pay as you use). You simply pay each month for the capacity that you use. This means that you do not have to worry about providing scalability.  

Back-up-as-a-Service (BaaS) 

Back-ups are well known to be a complex process, and complexity is the enemy of reliability. You want a guarantee that the back-up schedule will be executed as planned and that no data will be omitted or corrupted during the process. Bearing that in mind, you also have to test the restoration of your back-up on a regular basis to see if anything is going wrong; this is the only way that you can be sure that your back-up plan will work when you need to call on it. 

Back-ups also come with specific issues. For example, not all data is equally important: some data will need to be backed up daily, while for other data a weekly back-up may suffice. And what about the matter of ransomware? If ransomware has encrypted your data before you made your back-up, the back-up will also be encrypted and this will offer you zero protection against ransomware attacks.  There are solutions for this, and with cybercrime making the news daily, the demand for such solutions is constantly growing.  What would happen if all your data, including your back-ups, were to be encrypted tonight? 

With Back-up-as-a-Service, the complex back-up process is taken off your hands in a service managed by experts, allowing you to focus on your core business. The continuity of your business is guaranteed, and if you want to restore a back-up, you can be sure that it will happen quickly. 

Additionally, with Back-up-as-a-Service you will benefit from constant monitoring and reporting. And, as with Storage-as-a-Service, you only pay for what you use. 

Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) 

The keystone of DPaaS is Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service, the answer to the challenges of traditional disaster recovery. To guarantee the continuity of your business, your company needs to employ a method that will quickly put your IT back into operation if a major disaster occurs. However, many companies have a heterogeneous IT landscape, with diverse architectures and operating systems. 

Varying workloads can also put demands on the smooth flow of your business. Do not forget that your IT infrastructure and requirements are dynamic: with every change you make, your disaster recovery process should be updated too. If this does not happen, you might have to deal with these inconsistencies at a critical moment and your recovery will be delayed. Disaster recovery can be a complex puzzle. 

Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service relieves you of this complex task, giving your own IT staff more time to focus on your core business. A managed service of this type offers you faster recovery in the event of a disaster by duplicating your infrastructure – including essential redundancy and scalability – at a lower price than you could do it for yourself. 

A typical scenario for DRaaS consists of a workload that operates either on premises or in a private cloud, and is backed up locally. DRaaS adds functionality to this by keeping the DR environment in sync, in conformity with the agreed SLA, in your public cloud subscription (Azure, AWS, GCP, etc.). Extensive automation makes it easy to test disaster recovery in a non-disruptive way – and execute it effectively.  Our reporting system makes it easy for you to check whether all your DRaaS-enabled workloads are being monitored in line with the agreed SLAs. 

Cegeka protects your data 

Cegeka can unburden your organisation completely from data protection measures. We do this in three domains: 

• Consultancy 
  We act as your advisor, evaluating the health of your data processes and establishing where improvements can be made. 
• Design and implementation 
  We draw up an architecture and design a plan for the optimal protection of your data. If you wish, we can also perform the migration for you. 
• Managed services
  With DPaaS, we offer a fully managed service to protect your data, including 24/7 remote control and monitoring. 

Why choose Cegeka as your partner? 

If you maintain your data in your own data centre, we can manage this remotely. You can also store your data in the Cegeka Cloud – in which case we provide a managed service in accordance with your data requirements. And if you store your data in the public cloud, we can manage this as well. It is even possible to combine the two in a hybrid model. 

We have extensive experience of data protection, following best practice in this domain, and we have established strong partnerships with the main suppliers, including IBM, Dell, CommVault, HP, Lenovo, Oracle and Microsoft. We also make use of advanced functions such as immutable back-ups, which provide protection against ransomware. What is more, we provide you with access to secure, redundant, Tier 3 data centres across Europe. 

Do you want to know more about the services we offer for protecting your data? Contact us for more information.