Azure Site Recovery is Microsoft’s disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) solution designed to help companies keep applications running during unplanned outages.
Microsoft’s Azure products and services based in Redmond, Washington are known on a global scale as one of the most secure and accessible cloud-based and data-oriented portfolio and solutions.
Azure Site Recovery has been named a leader in Gartner’s 2019 “Magic Quadrant” for DRaaS.
See below to learn all about Microsoft Azure Site Recovery as a DRaaS solution:
The DRaaS market
The global disaster recovery as-a-service (DRaaS) market is estimated to be worth $8.8 billion in 2022. It is estimated to maintain a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.6% from 2022 to 2027, reaching a value of $23.5 billion by its end.
Some of Azure’s top competitors in the global market include: Iland; Commvault; EVault; Veritas NetBackup; ServiceNow Incident Management; and Veritas Backup Exec.
Key features of Azure Site Recovery
Azure Site Recovery is a DRaaS solution that can be used in both cloud and hybrid cloud architectures for site data recovery.
It offers site recovery and fail-over testing, minimizing downtime and allowing applications and systems to continue operations through unplanned incidents that affect data integrity.
“Azure Site Recovery replicates workloads running on physical and virtual machines (VMs) from a primary site to a secondary location. When there’s an outage at your primary site, you’ll fail over to the secondary location and access apps from there,” says Siddharth Deekshitsenior program manager, Azure Site Recovery, Microsoft.
“After the primary location is back up and running, you can fail back to it. Azure Site Recovery helps ensure business continuity by keeping business apps and workloads running during outages.”
Azure Site Recovery is designed to help businesses continue operations during data-related incidents and system outages.
Some of the key features of Azure Site Recovery include:
- Minimized unplanned system and application downtime
- Integrated fail-over testing
- Built-in scalability
- Encrypted communication channels
- Continuous monitoring
- Multi-tiered support
- Comprehensive protection of physical and virtual servers
- Allows for prioritization of application recovery
- Vendor and system-independent
- Integration with other Azure products and services
Azure Site Recovery use cases
The following case studies highlight how organizations in various industries are using Azure Site Recovery:
iManage
iManage is a document and email management application, designed to enable professionals to collaborate at work and better manage their time.
Working primarily with law firms, iManage needed a solution to ensure data safety and business continuity for their clients.
By choosing Azure Site Recovery, iManage now supports its DR and business continuity efforts through Azure environments in Canada, Australia, Germany, Brazil, and southeast Asia.
“I worked in Azure Site Recovery at my previous company. I know it’s reliable and, baked into Azure, simple to implement,” Chris Finn saidcloud architect, iManage.
“It took an on-premises customer as long to acquire the technology for a DR solution as it did to complete our full Azure Site Recovery implementation. With Azure Site Recovery, we can give our customers complete peace of mind.”
Since implementing Azure Site Recovery, iManage has estimated 60% cost savings in building on-premise DR solutions and has been able to deepen customer trust.
Finastra
Finastra is a financial software company that offers clients a broad portfolio of products aimed at retail banking, transaction banking, lending, and treasury capital markets.
Looking to use the latest technologies for their infrastructure, Finestra is a firm believer that backups and disaster recovery are important and non-negotiable environmental standards they share with their clients.
Performing fail-over testing with Azure Site Recovery, Finastra was surprised by the low recovery point objective (RPO) they got and decided to implement it permanently.
“There isn’t any heavy onboarding, which is a good thing because it really isn’t needed. It’s very intuitive and easy for our team to use. The documentation is very accurate,” Bryan Heymann saidhead of cloud architecture, Finastra.
“Site Recovery’s point-and-click capabilities and documentation allowed us to onboard and go. Everything was in line with what we needed, without surprises.
By implementing Azure Site Recovery as their primary DR solution, Finastra was able to move their customer billing space from on-premises to Azure and assured their users of the ability to recover data, with multiple regional servers .
Azure Site Recovery differentiators
Azure Site Recovery stands out in the DRaaS market for several reasons:
Regional availability
Site Recovery servers from Azure are as pervasive as Microsoft’s global infrastructure. There are 11 regional recovery locations in North America, nine across Europe, and 10 in Asia-Pacific as well as Africa, the Middle East, and South America.
VMware and on-premises VM replication
Azure Site Recovery supports replication of both on-premise and VMware virtual machines to Azure. It minimizes complex system compatibility and offers increased security and protection from data.
Application-consistent snapshots
With Azure Site Recovery, applications can be kept consistent over failure. Replication data for recovery through snapshots allows users to capture the entirety of a disk’s data, in addition to all in-process transactions.
Customizable recovery
Users can set up personalized recovery plans that include fail-over sequences and application and system recovery across databases and virtual machines. Custom recovery plans can be integrated into automated Azure runbooks and include optional scripts for groups of virtual machines.
Non-disruptive testing
Azure Site Recovery enables users to perform non-disruptive fail-over tests and recovery exercises without disrupting ongoing replication processes.
Integration of BCDR
Azure Site Recovery integrates with other business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) technologies. The use of Site Recovery can be limited to a set of servers or workloads, managing the fail over of specific applications, while working in conjunction with other technologies that handle separate segments.
Fail-over planning
Site Recovery supports fail-over flexibility, allowing users to run planned failovers for sections where outages are expected without suffering data loss or downtime. Systems are automatically restored to the primary recovery point as soon as it is available.
Azure Site Recovery user reviews
Azure Site Recovery receives mostly positive user reviews on several review sites, such as:
Gartner Peer Insights: 4.4 out of 5
G2: 4.7 out of 5
PeerSpot: 4.5 out of 5
TrustRadius: 8.6 out of 10
“With a few clicks, VM protection can be set up in another region in Microsoft Azure,” -a system and software Architect, Azure Site Recovery review at G2.
“Azure Site Recovery allows my company’s SaaS solution to be available in case the primary region is unavailable. It is therefore an essential business tool for our software.”
“We use this solution mainly for compliance and a DR and a commitment to RTO and RPO. The most important feature is the ability to see what is happening in our business as well as powerful reporting and dashboards,” written by Fernando CorderoTechnology Officer at GikBrain rated Azure Site Recovery 9 out of 10 on PeerSpot.