When your data is being replicated to the cloud, finding the right partner with the expertise and skill set to ensure a successful DR strategy is important. To help you effectively evaluate DR vendors, here’s a list of the top 15 things you’ll want to ask them:
What’s included:
- Do they provide a turn-key solution that is complete from end to end?
- Do they manage the solution for you on an ongoing basis or are you on your own?
- Do they have a pricing model that charges you based on your data usage in the cloud? Are their additional charges if you exceed a certain limit?
- Do they include a DR plan or DR testing included in the cost or is that a separate project?
- Do you only get offsite storage or can you also virtualize backups in the cloud if necessary?
Equipment/Redundancy:
- Do they own their own equipment in the cloud or do they use someone else’s cloud storage?
- Do they have full redundancy at every level of their infrastructure (data centers, servers, storage, power, people)?
- Do you have a warranty for the backup appliance? Is it field upgradeable?
Security:
- Do they have independent audit per year and can produce a report from that agency?
- Do they have policies in place to control employee access to data?
- Do they have fully end to end encryption?
- Do they meet your compliance requirements?
- Have they had any type of data breach in the past two years?
Accessibility:
- Is your platform developed to take advantage of the Internet browser, not a client you have to install to get to the console?
- What happens if decide your solution no longer meets my needs and want my data in an open file source that I can use with another vendor?
- We hope you found this helpful. If you’d like more information about ThinkGard’s complete business continuity/backup & disaster recovery solution please Contact us.