Better IT Infrastructure Resilience: Off-Premises Options

How resilient is your IT infrastructure? Threats from man-made and natural disasters threaten business operations with service disruptions, potential system failure, and data loss.

Organizations are moving their critical IT infrastructure off-premises to third-party data centers and cloud services providers to reduce the chances of IT disruption. By moving their primary or backup systems off-premises, they can avoid a single point of failure and take advantage of the provider’s expertise in disaster preparedness, data protection, and investments in resilient data centers.

In this post, we’ll discuss some of the options businesses have when moving off-premises.

Cloud-based IT resilience options

Aside from being located outside of an on-premises data center, all of these options have the ability to utilize Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) and Backup as a Service (BaaS) for additional resiliency.

What is cloud-based disaster recovery?

Cloud-based disaster recovery is DR hosted in the cloud. For instance, businesses might work with a cloud provider to back up their data in a private or public cloud platform. The business’s specific application needs, recovery point objectives, and recovery time objectives will help identify which platform is best. Learn more about why Disaster Recovery in the cloud is better.

Businesses have several options for moving their primary or backup IT infrastructure systems off-premises with a cloud provider. The main options are:

Hosted private cloud

A private cloud is a cloud deployment meant for a single organization. The organization owns the hardware and does not share resources with others.

With hosted private cloud services, the organization pays to lease the server and other hardware from a provider. Unlike an on-premises private cloud, a hosted private cloud resides at a third-party data center. That enables you to benefit from the provider’s investments in:

• redundant power sources for guaranteed uptime
• network connectivity options for always-on connections
• disaster-proof facility construction
• physical and cybersecurity with 24/7 staffing

The private cloud provider may also handle cloud maintenance, software updates, security, support, monitoring, and facility management. This cloud option is also solely dedicated to your business. By not sharing resources with other tenants, your risk for disruption also decreases. Learn more about the benefits of the private cloud.

Multitenant or Public Cloud

A multitenant or public cloud is another option where your applications and data are managed in a provider’s shared cloud. With these cloud platforms hosted in provider data centers, you don’t need to worry about managing the hardware portion of the infrastructure – that’s the responsibility of the provider.

Aside from resiliency benefits, these cloud platforms also offer easier scalability (when compared to other infrastructure options), ease of access to other services, like security or DRaaS, and the ability to monitor the performance in a centralized portal. With the multitenant cloud option, you can choose a provider with data center locations closer to your customers, enabling lower latency and better network performance.

Also read: Avoid These Legacy Application Migration Pitfalls

Physical off-premises IT resilience options

Some businesses don’t want to manage their own data center infrastructure, but also prefer to manage their own equipment. 3rd party data center providers offer many benefits to help those businesses become more IT resilient.

Colocation

Colocation facilities have been around for decades but have regained popularity as the demand for IT outsourcing and disaster recovery has risen. A colocation facility hosts customer servers and provides all building maintenance, equipment, security, and around-the-clock monitoring.

Colocation providers typically have disaster-resistant facilities and 24-hour staff, along with redundant power sources, and network connections. Should one connection or power source fail, the facility will divert to a backup. Read our guide on colocation and data centers.

To ensure your colocation partner has the IT infrastructure capable of withstanding disaster, check that it is certified in three key disaster-related standards:

• ISO 22301, an international standard for business continuity management for natural and man-made disasters and technology failures.
• The Uptime Institute certification for Tier IV fault-tolerant facility infrastructure or Tier III concurrently maintainable site infrastructure
• Trusted Site Infrastructure (TSI) requirements for data center construction, fire handling, security, cabling, energy, air, organization, and documentation.

Hybrid & multicloud offer the best of both worlds

According to a RightScale report, 84% of businesses had a multicloud environment and 58% had a hybrid environment. This was up from the prior year and will continue to see growth throughout the next few years.

Also read: Hybrid Cloud vs. Multicloud – What’s the Difference?

Utilizing the cloud allows brings better reliability and redundancy. When there is an outage or disruption, other cloud platforms can step in using data or system replication. This allows for faster recovery. The use of a hybrid cloud or multicloud deployment creates more opportunities for redundancy during a disruption.

That’s not all. In hybrid cloud environments with colocation, a business may also get the benefit of having another layer of protection in a third-party data center.

The reliability and redundancy of multicloud and hybrid cloud are a big reason businesses are turning to a combination of colocation, public, private and multitenant clouds for their IT infrastructure, critical applications, and data.

How will you find IT resilience in 2021?

You need to find the right provider to help you navigate the best options for your business. You might want to start with a cloud readiness assessment, so you can understand your needs and the best path forward for your business.

TierPoint has a variety of cloud services, colocation, and disaster recovery options to ensure that your data and IT infrastructure are protected in the event of natural disasters or man-made disruptions. With over 40 data centers across the country, we can offer locations that are conveniently near your offices or several states away to ensure regional resilience. Our clients have access to multiple cloud platforms and services to meet any off-premises and DR requirements.

Let’s talk about your disaster recovery strategy. Contact us to determine the best colocation, cloud, or disaster recovery solution for your needs.

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