Cloud technology is extremely beneficial when it is used as part of an organization's disaster recovery (DR) plan. These days, it is possible for a company to produce a cloud-based recovery site which replaces an incapacitated primary data center is. A huge number of alternative strategies are used in cloud for disaster recovery and disaster prevention.

Cloud-based DR  is the process by which an effective DR is put in place within the reach of any given company or organization. Fundamentally, there are six steps which need to be considered before the implementation of cloud DR.

The implementation of cloud based DR involves the following steps:

- Evaluation of organizational needs is crucial in determining all the results of any given assessment process. Factors such as the determination of infrastructure and configuration play a crucial role.

- After determining data protection needs, it is important that you identify the appropriate cloud hosting provider for accommodating these needs. Not all providers are capable of replicating and hosting a VM (virtual machine).

- After identifying a viable cloud provider, one has to estimate the expenses for using cloud-based disaster recovery.

- In order to take all DR initiatives to the cloud, one has to devise a strategy to managing Internet bandwidth.

- In case your organization is dependent on cloud for storage, very little logistical planning needs to be done.

- Instead of going with clustering, one can make use of cloud for DR. Replication of VMs to the cloud is simpler as compared to clusters.

Some hypervisor vendors offer interesting features on their cloud based DR model. These features are crucial for performing certain tasks especially for redirecting workloads of any given user. A few third-party backup vendors also offer similar features without the help of administrators for IP address injection configurations and certain DNS modifications.

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