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AWS can be used as the infrastructure running your disaster
recovery site. Additionally, AWS offers a number of services that
can help you replicate your source applications into the AWS
infrastructure and recover them in the case of a disaster.
AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery
AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (AWS DRS) is designed for
cloud-based disaster recovery of virtual and physical servers.
Elastic Disaster Recovery continuously replicates applications
and databases from any supported source to AWS using block-level
replication of the underlying server. The service allows you to
use AWS as a disaster recovery site for on-premises applications
comprising servers (physical and virtual), including databases.
During normal operations, Elastic Disaster Recovery continuously
replicates changes to the source data to a staging area subnet
in your AWS account. The staging area design uses affordable
storage and minimal compute resources to maintain ongoing
replication. When you initiate a failover or drill, the staged
resources are used to automatically create a full-capacity
deployment in your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), which is
used as the disaster recovery site. You can launch recovery
instances on AWS within minutes, using the most up-to-date
server state or a previous point in time. After the disaster,
you can use Elastic Disaster Recovery to fail back to your
primary site.
AWS DataSync
AWS DataSync is an online data transfer service that
simplifies, automates, and accelerates moving data between
on-premises storage systems and AWS storage services, and also
between AWS storage services. DataSync can copy data between
Network File System (NFS), Server Message Block (SMB) file
servers, self-managed object
storage, AWS Snowcone,
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
buckets, Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS),
and Amazon FSx for Windows File Server file systems.
If you have large network-attached storage (NAS) appliances, AWS
recommends using AWS DataSync for replicating them to Amazon S3,
Amazon S3 Glacier, Amazon EFS, or Amazon FSx for Windows File
Server.
Amazon Application Recovery Controller (ARC)
Amazon Application Recovery Controller (ARC) gives you
insights into whether your applications and resources are ready
for recovery, and helps you manage and coordinate failover using
readiness check and routing control features. These features
continually monitor your application’s ability to recover from
failures, and enable you to control your application recovery
across multiple AWS Regions, Availability Zones, as well as on
premises. These capabilities make application recoveries simpler
and more reliable by eliminating the manual steps required by
traditional tools and processes.
