12 Disaster Recovery Service Providers for Your Business
With the influx of regularly working remote employees, the number one security trend of 2022 was attack surface expansion, increasing data vulnerability, and a need for robust business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) strategies. BCDR is a term that broadly describes the architecture of a disaster recovery solution or service provider’s offering – in short, recovery as a service.
Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) is for when disaster strikes. DRaaS is a category of cloud computing that protects organizations in the event of system failures caused by disasters like power outages, security breaches, and natural disasters. Specialist disaster recovery companies provide solutions.
Experienced disaster recovery experts should undertake disaster recovery work to mitigate data loss. Unified communications are important to maintain responsibility, even if you must install additional software for automated protection of supporting infrastructure, especially in remote locations.
The most common question about disaster recovery (DR) is its effectiveness. A seven-tier model of recoverability was designed in the 1990s to address this question. Today, broadly speaking, DR is an effective data protection strategy. However, the quality of the DR solution employed determines how quickly a business can restore its data and keep moving forward.
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What are disaster recovery services?
Disaster recovery services provide failover in the event of any threat to business continuity via data unavailability.
What are the main functions of a disaster recovery solution?
The main functions of disaster recovery plans are business continuity planning and disaster recovery planning after data loss. Business continuity planning ensures essential operations can continue during and after a disaster, even a natural disaster. Disaster recovery plans focus on recovering data, systems, and infrastructure to facilitate smooth failover.
DRaaS services are provided in numerous ways, including on-demand, based on usage, or through subscriptions. There are three main models: managed DRaaS, where the vendor takes full responsibility for disaster management; assisted DRaaS, which is a hybrid DRaaS where an organization selects what aspects of disaster recovery or what data they want to manage themselves; and self-service DRaaS, where an organization manages their own DRaaS solution but relies on a vendor to provide some management software and hosting services.
What are some examples of disaster recovery?
Disaster recovery solutions leverage three complementary methods of storing data to restore it in the event of system failure. These methods are snapshots, replication, and backups.
- Snapshots are images of a system at a specific time that are stored locally and used for version control and to restore previous versions of files.
- Replication refers to creating exact copies of data with every production change logged in the cloud. Changes are stored on another site or system.
- Backups are comprised of replicated files and snapshots that are copied to secondary storage. Backups are traditionally used for compliance and granular recovery using the image and file-based recovery methods.
What are the benefits of using DRaaS?
The biggest benefit to using a DRaaS is data security and business continuity. With a comprehensive, robust solution, businesses are protected with automated features, built-in capabilities, and vendor support teams that collectively prevent data loss and accelerate recovery during and after an incident occurs. If you’re wondering if a DRaaS is “worth it,” consider these factors:
- Malicious attackers specifically target backups to block recovery and increase ransom demands. Recovery as a service uses various features to prevent backup deletion, so businesses don’t have to consider paying a ransom.
- Backup jobs and data encryption designed to protect data cannot rely solely on it. Unfortunately, backups fail up to 43% of the time.
- Long-term compliance with industry regulations and cybersecurity liability insurance often require disaster recovery services.
- The performance and integrity of traditional backups may not be verified regularly or often require manual testing, which can be compromised by human error. The result is “backup burn,” meaning that your backups cannot be restored after an incident.
- Hardware-free backup and disaster recovery (BDR) with Direct-to-Cloud (D2C) deployment reduces vendor management and maintenance costs and enables boot-free upgrades for ongoing product innovation.
- Local Cache acceleration enables cloud recovery at the speed of on-premise recovery using an inexpensive local USB or NAS device.
What should you consider when choosing a DRaaS?
Not all DRaaS solutions are equal, and not all vendors are designed for all types of businesses. With that said, a DRaaS service provider should employ both on-premise and cloud-based data backups for its clients.
For example, data must be backed up and replicated to the cloud in real-time to enable uninterrupted data access and business continuity. However, backing up and replicating data can result in downtime, particularly when performing your own disaster recovery. That’s why it’s best to choose an expert service provider.
Legacy chain-based disaster recovery relies on incremental, dependant backups, so if one backup fails, all backups occurring after the unforeseen data corruption or infection are entirely unusable. And because the original backup and chain must be maintained, chain-based backups are storage-intensive and can lead to data bloat and surprise fees.
Modern, chain-free backup technology stores data in a native virtualizable state with a pointer array algorithm so that each recovery point is independent. This way, when corruption occurs, bad data blocks are isolated and can be independently deleted without risking the data integrity of your backup data set. Without duplicated backup data being created, there’s no need to overprovision or limit storage.
Here is a checklist to ensure your DRaaS is a good solution for your disaster recovery requirements from disaster recovery experts. Ask your provider if they:
- Are SOC 2 compliant
- Can assist you in meeting HIPPA and GDPR compliance standards
- Support Windows and Linux
- Can meet competitive disaster recovery service-level agreements (SLA)
- Deploy flexible recovery options, e.g., cloud-based and appliance-based
- Utilize Chain-Free backup technology instead of chain-based
12 excellent DRaaS solution providers
Here are some excellent service providers for the best disaster recovery solutions for critical workloads.
Axcient
Axcient, founded in 2002, is an integrated business continuity and disaster recovery platform designed for optimizing disaster recovery procedures for unique or customized applications, providing full recovery as a service.
With the industry’s first patented Chain-Free technology, built-in data deletion rollback, automatic backup integrity testing, and self-managed DR and DR testing, Axcient ensures rapid and reliable recovery for its partners. Axcient’s comprehensive BCDR solutions offer choice and flexibility with deployment options that satisfy most use cases – including endpoint backup, hardware-free BDR, full-service BDR, and public or private cloud backup. It’s the ideal disaster recovery tool, offering the best disaster recovery services using automation, innovation, and usability. By providing recovery as a service, Axcient makes it simple to access and restore data from any device, regardless of how it was deleted.
Trusted by thousands of businesses to store and protect more than 10 billion files and applications, Axcient takes the pain points out of the disaster recovery process.
Free trial? 14-day trial and/or 1:1 demo.
Use case? 100% dedicated to helping Managed Service Providers (MSPs) protect their clients.
Industry suitability? SMBs and enterprises.
Acronis
Founded by Russian entrepreneurs in 2003, the company has data centers worldwide, but its headquarters are in Switzerland. The acquisition in 2012 of GroupLogic, enabled Acronis to integrate mobile environments into enterprise solutions. As well as BDR, Acronis provides enhanced cybersecurity protection. Acronis products are backup – rather than replication-based. The company offers a pay-as-you-go pricing structure and branding options. Features include VPN-less deployments and an intuitive-to-use management GUI.
Free trial? 30-day trial with limited recovery storage.
Use case? Aimed at MSPs.
Industry suitability? Large enterprises.
Arcserve
Arcserve, established in 1983 and formerly of CA Technologies, is a well-known name in the data protection niche, particularly in the hybrid workspace. Its solutions manage backup images from the company’s data protection appliances, including OneXafe, ShadowXafe, OneXafe Solo, and ShadowProtect. It is partnered with the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The company’s solutions are popular in India, with millions of customers. The company’s solutions are plug-and-play with multiple modules to create diverse, personalized solutions.
Free trial? Free trials for selected backup solutions.
Use case? Profitable for cloud service providers.
Industry suitability? SMBs and Enterprises, resellers and MSPs.
Carbonite
Set up in 2005, Carbonite was acquired by OpenText in 2019. It is an automated backup solution for small businesses and software working environments. It focuses on backing up files and folders, like those from Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Google Workspace, Salesforce, Box, and Dropbox. It offers push-button recovery of organizational data from metadata to working files and applications, including mail, calendars, tasks, channels, shared drives, and personal sites.
Free trial? Free trials for some business backup solutions.
Use case? Back up team collaboration tools and business-critical SaaS data.
Industry suitability? Small and mid-sized businesses.
Datto
Datto was founded in 2007 by Austin McChord after he created a backup device at his parent’s home. Datto was acquired by Kaseya in 2022. Datto offers flexible preconfigured appliance or software-only solutions designed specifically for MSPs at a flat fee that is easy to onsell. Features include an immutable cloud to protect the business infrastructure and Exabyte class scalability, which allows unlimited storage across geographically disparate locations.
Free trial? View a demo.
Use case? MSPs with international clients.
Industry suitability? SMBs and enterprises. ALTO is a business continuity BDR appliance designed for small businesses, while SIRIS is designed to service the enterprise market.
Ekco
Ekco Cloud was founded in 2015 and is a fully managed solution that provides cloud readiness and cloud migration consulting services. The team focuses on providing personalized, customer-focused solutions and is self-labeled “the MSP for MSPs.” Personalized services include dedicated cloud teams and group specialists for tailor-made solutions in many scenarios. It is based on the VMware cloud-verified platform. In 2022, the company acquired Unity Technology Solutions.
Free trial? Free consultations.
Use case? Support for hybrid environments to ease local IT team load and reduce staffing costs.
Industry suitability? On-demand services for SMBs and enterprises.
N-able
Split off from SolarWinds and rebranded in 2000, the company provides easy-to-use business continuity solutions with no proprietary appliances required, ideal for MSPs. Competitive advantages include inclusive cloud storage, workstation protection, a unified, multitenant dashboard, recovery testing, and free backup archiving. Allows virtual and bare-metal recovery. Cove Data Protection was launched in 2022 with a flagship Standby Image feature. As Cove says, “One size doesn’t fit all.”
Free trial? 30-day free trial.
Use case? Protects servers, workstations, and Microsoft 365 domains.
Industry suitability? MSPs, SMBs, and enterprises.
Nutanix
Founded in 2009, Nutanix offers software-defined multi-cloud hybrid platform offerings, including desktop services, database automation, cloud management, and self-service infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) powered by a unified control plane for custom integrations. The choice of hypervisors includes Nutanix-designed AHV ( Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor) or a native bare metal hypervisor. Its intellectual property stack boasts 374 registered patents.
Free trial? Test drive Nutanix’s cloud platforms.
Use case? Mission-critical applications like government, healthcare, financial, and automotive systems.
Industry suitability? Enterprises requiring self-service or hybrid options.
Quorum
Highly ranked in the data disaster and recovery niche, Quorum was founded in 2008 and maintains VM clones of physical and virtual servers. Quorum solutions incorporate private cloud DRaaS in the Quorum cloud, local high availability (HA), and Archive Vault for scalable storage. Quorum offerings are slightly more expensive than other solutions, but the business provides multiple options. OnQ Pod puts up to 400TB of data at your disposal, and OnQ Cube is the lighter version for smaller installations.
Free trial? Request a quote.
Use case? Server protection can be extended to include cloud backup.
Industry suitability? SMBs and enterprises.
Tierpoint
The business offers multiple cloud recovery offerings powered by integrations with numerous backup and recovery specialists. Tierpoint’s hyper-converged hybrid cloud offerings are supported by Zerto’s IT Resiliency Platform, Nutanix Leap, VMware’s vCloud Director Availability, Dell EMC’s RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines (RP4VMs), and IBM Managed Services. Tierpoint was founded in 2010 and is known in the computing industry for other services, like colocation, provision of rack space, and cloud migration. Argo Infrastructure and RedBird Capital Partners are two of its 10 investor partners.
Free trial? Request a quote.
Use case? Organizations operating under industry-specific regulations, for example, healthcare, energy, and financial systems.
Industry suitability? Enterprises.
Unitrends
In partnership with Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Salesforce, the company provides multiple packages, including Elite DRaaS with a 24-hour recovery SLA and Premium DRaaS with a one-hour recovery SLA. Allows Windows bare metal recovery without appliances and is touted as a “white glove recovery solution,” which means it is hands-free for customers. Unitrends was founded in 1989, which makes it one of the longest-standing DRaaS providers on this list.
Free trial? 30-day free trial of backup software.
Use case? Endpoint recovery that’s ideal for mobile workers.
Industry suitability? SMBs and enterprises.
Veeam
Image-based replication of all types of applications and data to integrated service providers, enabling them to provide customers with a one-stop disaster recovery solution. Veeam has an extensive network of partners, including IBM, Google, Nutanix, Microsoft 365, Cisco, HPT, and AWS. A unique selling point is a free backup and replication community edition available. Veeam was launched in 2006 by Russian entrepreneurs but is now US based. Its philosophy is to simplify backups.
Free trial? 30-day free trial for any Veeam Platform products.
Use case? All-arounder but has separate licensing structures for some providers.
Industry suitability? Veeam Availability Suite is for enterprise backup and recovery use and includes Veeam One, which is designed for data monitoring and analysis.
Wrapping up
Unfortunately, websites for most of the featured data management solutions contain numerous dead ends, seem to have been constructed with smoke and mirrors, or are simply bloated. Much marketing for these data protection products uses the same technical jargon. This makes them virtually impossible to navigate for any useful information, so it’s suggested that potential buyers participate in trial and demo opportunities.
Can organizations manage to weed their way through the overabundance of information alone? Depends on your level of in-house BCDR knowledge and expertise. What is abundantly clear is that businesses of any size will benefit from the advice of an independent MSP. These disaster recovery experts can help you navigate the top backup and disaster recovery solutions for your IT infrastructure – whether in a production, virtual, or cloud environment. A notable exception is Axcient, whose website is jargon-free, easy to navigate, and packed with useful information.
How well could you sleep with reliable cloud-based backups and recovery?
Take a deep dive into Axcient’s proprietary, automated security features to see how we’re ensuring uninterrupted business continuity — no matter what:
