DRaaS & Managed DRRecover operations quickly when disruption happens
Restore critical systems and applications quickly when outages, cyber incidents or infrastructure failures occur.
Why cloud strategy often stalls
Most organisations understand the importance of disaster recovery – but many plans are incomplete, outdated or untested. Infrastructure evolves. Applications change. New workloads are deployed. Over time, disaster recovery documentation no longer reflects the reality of the production environment. When an incident occurs, teams discover gaps in replication, recovery procedures or failover processes.
Without a tested and operational recovery capability, outages can last far longer than expected, impacting operations, reputation and revenue. Managed disaster recovery ensures recovery processes are designed, tested and continuously maintained so they work when you need them. It replaces manual recovery attempts with automated failover, continuous monitoring and regular testing to keep systems ready for rapid restoration.
How it works
Step 1
Identify critical applications
Evaluate workloads based on business impact and define recovery priorities. Determine recovery objectives for each system based on revenue impact, regulatory requirements and customer commitments.
Step 2
Design DR architecture
Define failover processes aligned to business continuity policies. Choose replication strategies (continuous, periodic, on-demand) based on RPO requirements. Select recovery locations based on infrastructure availability and regulatory constraints.
Step 3
Implement replication and monitoring
Establish continuous replication for critical systems. Deploy monitoring to confirm replication is working and alert on failures. Pre-position resources in recovery locations to enable rapid activation without procurement delays.
Step 4
Test recovery processes
Conduct regular disaster recovery drills to validate failover capability. Document results and address gaps through architecture improvements, procedure refinement or team training. Non-intrusive testing validates technical capability; full-cut testing confirms operational readiness.
Step 5
Continuously maintain DR readiness
Update recovery procedures when applications or infrastructure change. Retrain teams on updated procedures. Increase testing frequency for critical workloads. Keep documentation current and aligned to production reality.
Partners
SCC works with leading disaster recovery vendors and managed service providers to deliver solutions that meet your recovery objectives, integrate with existing infrastructure and scale with your growing needs.
Veeam is a recognised market leader in data protection and ransomware recovery, combining backup, recovery and data management capabilities to protect organisations against data loss, ransomware attacks and operational disruption. Veeam’s immutable backup approach creates protected copies that…
Dell Technologies provides scalable compute, storage and data protection platforms for modern hybrid environments, supporting virtualisation, analytics and AI workloads across data centre and cloud infrastructure. SCC has achieved Titanium Black partner status with Dell Technologies, the highest…
Rubrik delivers zero trust data security that assumes compromise and builds resilience through immutable backups, encrypted data management and orchestrated recovery. SCC works with Rubrik to design data protection and cyber resilience solutions spanning your hybrid infrastructure. Rather than…
Commvault is the gold standard in cyber resilience, unifying data protection, security, intelligence and recovery on one cloud-native, AI-enabled platform. Over 25,000 enterprise customers rely on Commvault to defend against ransomware and recover full business operations in minutes. The platform…
Ensure rapid recovery when disruption happens.
Speak with our resilience specialists to assess your recovery requirements and design a disaster recovery plan aligned to your business continuity objectives.
FAQs
What is the difference between backup and disaster recovery?
Backup restores data. Disaster recovery restores systems, applications and infrastructure after major disruption. A backup can recover a deleted file. Disaster recovery can restore an entire application stack when the platform hosting it fails completely. Backup answers “how do I get my data back?” Disaster recovery answers “how do I get my business back?” Both are essential for complete resilience.
How often should disaster recovery be tested?
Recovery plans should be tested regularly to confirm failover processes work as expected. Industry best practice suggests testing at least annually, though testing frequency depends on your risk tolerance and the criticality of the systems involved. More critical workloads warrant more frequent testing—quarterly or even monthly in high-stakes environments. Testing also accelerates after infrastructure changes or application updates that might affect recovery procedures.
What is a DR drill?
A disaster recovery drill simulates a failover scenario to validate that systems can recover without disrupting production. A DR drill might test failover of a specific application, a group of applications, or the entire environment, depending on scope. Drills can be non-intrusive (testing failover capability without actually failing over) or full-cut (actually switching to the recovery environment to confirm full operational capability). Full-cut drills provide the highest confidence but require careful scheduling to avoid business impact.
How quickly can systems recover during a disaster?
Recovery time depends on defined recovery objectives and the architecture implemented. Recovery time objective (RTO) is the target time to restore systems after failure. Recovery point objective (RPO) is the acceptable data loss measured in time. A system with a one-hour RTO requires failover capability to activate within one hour. Achieving fast RTOs typically requires automated failover, continuous replication and pre-positioned resources in the recovery location. Longer RTOs allow manual recovery processes and lower-cost architectures but expose you to longer outages.
Does disaster recovery require ongoing management?
Yes. Recovery plans must evolve as infrastructure and applications change. When you deploy new systems, disaster recovery scope expands. When you retire applications, recovery procedures simplify. When you migrate workloads between clouds or data centres, recovery architecture may shift. Managed disaster recovery services maintain these updates automatically, ensuring plans remain current. Unmanaged plans drift quickly, creating a false sense of preparedness.
What does managed disaster recovery cost?
Costs depend on the number of systems protected, the recovery architecture implemented and your recovery objectives. Systems requiring fast recovery (low RTO) cost more than those allowing extended recovery windows. Continuous replication is more expensive than periodic replication. Standby resources in the recovery location cost more than on-demand activation. Managed services also include testing, monitoring and plan maintenance. SCC can model costs specific to your workloads and recovery objectives.
What happens if a failover test fails or recovery takes longer than planned?
Failover tests that fail reveal issues before a real incident forces you to discover them. When tests show gaps—for example, failing to recover a dependent system or recovery taking longer than your RTO—those gaps can be addressed through architecture improvements, testing of specific procedures, or recalibration of recovery objectives. Managed disaster recovery services analyse test results and recommend improvements. Some gaps may require architectural changes; others may only require updated procedures or team training. Regular testing progressively reduces surprises.