Disaster Recovery Software Overview

The software manages an enterprise’s workload and stores it on a secondary site for future data recovery. If there is infrastructure failure or a natural disaster, the software helps businesses recover their information in a hassle-free manner.

Why Use Data Recovery Software?

• Recovery of data in case of virus attack or hardware and software failure
• Reduced chances of data loss in any unforeseen circumstance 
• Prevent disruptions to workflows, sales & applications
• Useful integrations help build secondary data centers for the recovery sites
• Cloud backups for protecting IT assets reduce data recovery times
• Replicates the IT environment for a more streamlined recovery operation
• Secured VPN access for testing the replica system on a regular basis
• Snapshot of information stored in a virtual environment for data recovery
• Detailed file backups are comprehensively encrypted for data security.

Benefits of Disaster Recovery Software

• Complete reliability: Disaster recovery software is trusted widely for doing backups, and users get backup verification alert that the files have been saved securely.
• Comprehensive data protection: Software protects the data saved on all types of hypervisors and operating systems to ensure the complete safety of your virtual machines.
• Scale-out storage system: The software offers a centralized system for storing the data with greater scalability. Data optimization with scale-out storage capabilities is a benefit that all companies should utilize.
• Simplified remote management: The DR recovery software lets you manage, replicate and recover backups from any location. In addition, you can use the software for driving service-level agreements and policies.
• Resource efficiency: Disaster recovery software offers powerful data compression tools for efficiently backing up information in as little time as possible.
• Limited losses: By backing up your data, the software eliminates downtime issues. You would also be spending less now on hiring the services of technical experts for backing up data.
• Business reputation: Disaster recovery management software prevents unexpected downtimes and irreversible damage to a business’s reputation and its corporate image.

Features of Disaster Recovery Software

• Data capturing: The DR recovery software supports multiple bootable recovery modes so that you can save the data in any format.
• Strong encryption: Strong encrypting capabilities ensure that not just the backups are safe but there is no possibility of data breaches over a public network.
• Disk imaging: The module is useful in continuous backing up of the hard disk data in a compressed file even when applications are running on your device.
• Low RTO & RPO: The software lowers recovery time objective and recovery point objective for reducing backup and restoring times.
• Customization: Backup and disaster recovery software is customizable as you can use it to control the recovery times and the replication frequency.
• Augmented inline deduplication: Deduplication ensures that data blocks get transferred & stored at their backup location all at once. The module reduces the need to save the data on both offsite and local locations.
• Automated compliance reporting: The disaster recovery management software supports patches and test upgrades for validating DR replicas and doing automated compliance reporting.
• Offline storage: It ensures faster recovery of damaged or lost files. It is also quite easy to manage the backup and recovery with offline storage.
• Flexible Data Capture: Disaster recovery software provides flexible data management capabilities that help with validating DR replicas and making verifiable recoveries.  
• Network Resource Efficiency: The software covers network applications, servers, wireless networks, WANs, and LANs for preventing network interruptions, and ensuring resource efficiency.  

How to Select the Best Disaster Recovery Software?

• Compatibility: Irrespective of the type of IT infrastructure you use, an ideal disaster recovery tool would be compatible with virtual/on-cloud and on-premises environments.
• Recovery capabilities: Disaster recovery management software has to have recovery capabilities for data stored on the cloud and on-premises.
• Customizable: The software needs to have quick control options so that you can select how what, where, and when can the data be restored.
• Flexible data capture: Backup and disaster recovery software should support all data formats so that you can save all types of data.
• Storage efficiency: Make sure to check for data compression tools available in the DR recovery software that you select. This way, large files could be compressed, and less time is required for making backups.
• Unlimited scalability & monitoring: Scalability is important s the data will grow with time. Further, choose the product that offers a single point of control for data recovery and executing backups.

How Does Disaster Recovery Software Work?

The software starts its recovery process by conducting a scan of the system for identifying which data is missing or corrupted and what is its exact location. This assessment gives a complete overview of damaged files before initiating the data recovery process. Disaster recovery management software scans the following information:

• Filename
• File size
• Date & time information
• Physical location on a storage device

To begin with, the software uses heuristic and deterministic algorithms for finding a deleted or lost file’s location. Once the exact location is known, the disaster recovery software platform begins its work.

There is a second method too being used by the software. Here the software searches for the known file types by studying patterns to be found at the beginning and the end of the file. This method usually works when the first method fails and shows the end & beginning of a file. The software can identify the signatures in a file and is, therefore, ideally suited for documents and images not to be found in a file explorer.

How to Use Disaster Recovery Software?

You can use DR software for the following functionalities:

• Ransomware recovery: Disaster recovery software with inbuilt data security architecture can do early detection and provide backup snapshots for defending against ransomware attacks.
• Non-disruptive DR testing: Backup and disaster recovery software supports audit trails, reporting, and non-disruptive DR testing for reducing operational complexities. It also helps meet the compliance requirements.
• Boosting operational efficiency: The software provides automated data recovery for eliminating data silos and protecting business-critical apps on a single unified platform.

Types of Disaster Recovery Software

• Data center disaster recovery: This type of disaster recovery plan software creates a remote, offsite data backup and helps prevent outages and downtime due to disasters. It provides features like physical security, backup power, support personnel, fire suppression, and utility providers.  
• Cloud-based disaster recovery: Cloud-based disaster recovery plan software utilizes the data center of cloud providers as its recovery site. Cloud disaster recovery solutions cost less and ensure faster recovery and backup.  It provides secured remote access to your critical data in a virtual environment in case of any downtime or failover.  
• Virtualization disaster recovery: This disaster recovery solution places a virtual server on cloud or reserve capacity. This method saves you from the hassle of reconstructing a physical server in case of disaster. Further, the recovery time objectives (RTO) can be easily achieved here.  
• Disaster recovery as a service: DRaaS may be cloud-based or site-to-site service-based. In case the software is cloud-based, there would be a remote desktop protocol or VPN for reconnecting users. If it is site-to-site service based, the provider would offer server replacement service and host a secondary hot site.