Disaster Recovery and Backup Process in Applications Using Cloud Engineering Services

Disaster Recovery and Backup Process in Applications Using Cloud Engineering Services

Introduction

If an organization loses its critical application data due to some unexpected reason, it becomes a daunting task to retrieve it, involving a lot of time and cost. Hence, it becomes indispensable for all organizations to strategize data recovery and backup plans using cloud engineering services to control the recovery process. The recovery process involves creating a robust backup system, deploying appropriate technologies, and continuous testing. All popular cloud computing and service providers like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform offer disaster recovery and backup processes.

Main Actors

  • 01

    Application Owner or System Administrator

    The person who manages and maintains the application within the cloud, ensuring security and identifying disaster issues.

  • 02

    Cloud Service Provider

    The company that provides cloud engineering migration services, vital infrastructure, and tools to manage physical and virtual resources efficiently, ensuring the availability and reliability of cloud services.

  • 03

    Disaster Recovery Team

    This team includes experienced cloud migration engineers responsible for executing the disaster recovery plan, ensuring that the recovery process is well-orchestrated and predefined.

  • 04

    End Users

    The clients or customers who use the application to perform different tasks depending on its functionality and availability.

Pre-Conditions

  • Cloud Hosting

    AWS cloud engineers and Azure cloud engineers have hosted the application on the cloud infrastructure successfully, including its components, data, and configurations. It helps to integrate disaster recovery and backup processes with cloud services seamlessly.

  • Formulating a Disaster Recovery Plan

    The company has developed and documented an effective disaster recovery plan, defining the recovery goals, strategies, processes,  and stakeholders involved. The plan shows the approach how to deal with different disasters.

  • Schedule the Backups

    The organization has conducted scheduled and regular backups at regular intervals to capture the most up-to-date information. These backups are an essential component of the disaster recovery process.

  • Data Encryption and Security

    Google Cloud engineers have encrypted and stored the application’s data securely in the live environment and backups. The step helps to prevent unauthorized access and maintain data integrity and privacy.

  • Resource Allocation

    Cloud migration engineers have allocated all available resources, servers, storage, and network infrastructure within the cloud environment to streamline and optimize the disaster recovery process. These resources are part of the recovery plan and are pre-defined to ensure a rapid recovery.

Post-Conditions

  • Successful Recovery

    Cloud engineering services help to complete disaster recovery and backup processes successfully, restoring the application to its functional state, ensuring that it is fully operational, and serving end users.

  • Data Integrity

    Cloud migration engineering services ensure that data integrity is thoroughly maintained during the recovery process. The recovered data comprehensively matches the data availed during the last backup. It is immaculate and has no unauthorized alterations.

  • Nullifying the Downtime

    AWS Cloud Engineers or Azure Cloud Engineers try to mitigate downtime issues by completing the recovery process efficiently. They aim to enhance operations and increase the speed to minimize end-user disruptions. 

  • User Access

    Once the application data backup has been restored and all disaster issues have been addressed successfully, customers can quickly resume access to application data. The traffic gets redirected to the recovery environment.

  • Monitoring and Optimization

    Cloud engineering services ensure continuous monitoring of the recovery environment to provide stability and performance. Necessary optimization or scaling actions are performed to meet performance requirements and maintain the application's availability.

  • Lessons Learned

    Google Cloud engineers perform an extensive post-recovery analysis to identify areas that need improvement after the disaster recovery process. It helps them to prepare and plan recovery and backup strategies for the future. 

Main Flow

Alternative Flow

Alternative Flow
  • Failure During Recovery Process - If the recovery process encounters any unexpected losses during any phase, AWS cloud engineers will immediately initiate the escalation process to identify the bottlenecks and rectify those with the support of technical experts and cloud service providers.
     
  • Data Loss During Recovery - The organization may incur data loss challenges during the recovery and backup due to corrupted backups, incomplete data restoration, or other unforeseen complications. In such circumstances, cloud migration engineers must take instant action that includes recovering data from off-site backups, secondary data sources, or historical data repositories to minimize the impact of the data loss. The data recovery team informs all stakeholders about the potential data loss and its implications.
     
  • Extended Downtime - Sometimes, the recovery process may take longer than usual, impacting productivity and end users. If such an issue happens, it becomes pivotal for the data recovery team to continuously communicate with clients and provide them with regular updates on data recovery.
     
  • Testing and Verification Issues - The recovery team can also face issues during the testing and verification phase where application data does not recover properly and function correctly. In that case, they may perform additional testing and troubleshooting to rectify the problems.
During Recovery Process

Conclusion

Data backup and recovery processes using cloud engineering services help to establish business resilience and scalability in the digital landscape. Cloud migration engineers can initiate and plan a comprehensive disaster recovery strategy by complying with the latest regulations and the best industry standards. Data recovery teams can unleash the benefits of cloud infrastructure and services to restore the application’s full functionality and integrity and minimize downtime. 

Suggested TechStack

Data Virtualization Tools

Data virtualization tools help to manage and separate backup and recovery environments. They may take additional support from containerization platforms.

Backup and Recovery Software.png

Organizations may require backup and recovery software tools to take data backup smoothly and accurately. Recovery tools help to accelerate the recovery process.

Cloud Service Providers.png

You may opt for any of the popular cloud service providers, like AWS, Azure, or GCP, based on your specific business requirements and budget to scale up recovery and optimize storage.

Encryption and Security Solutions.png

Cloud migration engineering services provide robust security with Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) during the data transition. It ensures data encryption during storage.

Monitoring and Reporting Systems.png

Organizations must implement the best-in-class monitoring and reporting tools to track the health of the backup and recovery process and monitor application infrastructure regularly. 

Recover All Critical Data Successfully With Cloud Engineering Services

Perform Regular Backups Without Data Loss

Discuss a project