Building Business Continuity into Hybrid-Cloud

George Y. Chen
Global Product & Solutions Enablement

August 16, 2023

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses face numerous challenges when it comes to data management and protection.

Defining effective backup, disaster recovery (DR), and business continuity objectives in particular, stand out as crucial. At Hitachi Vantara, we understand the importance of ensuring data resilience and uninterrupted operations for businesses that have embraced or are considering cloud or hybrid-cloud architectures.

Some of the key concerns include the distance between primary and DR sites, choosing between Active/Active or Active/Passive configurations, determining the Recovery Time Objective (RTO), and deciding on the backup frequency. Without careful planning, disruptions or data loss can severely impact operations.

That’s why it’s essential for customers to establish their own Backup and DR objectives, ensuring they understand the distance between primary and DR sites, the type of configuration required, the required RTO, and the optimal data backup frequency. In collaboration with our business partner, Equinix, we offer an innovative solution, Hitachi Cloud Connect for Equinix, to address these challenges and deliver cost-efficient, high-performance, and secure data management.

Backup and DR Best Practices

An effective backup strategy calls for three copies of the data, stored in two different media types, with one copy being offsite. By adhering to this best practice, businesses safeguard their data against loss due to hardware failures, cyber threats, or natural disasters.

Hitachi Cloud Connect for Equinix empowers companies to implement this best practice, ensuring data redundancy and data accessibility, while minimizing the risk of data loss. A successful disaster recovery plan involves having a DR data center located at a significant distance from the primary data center. This geographic separation reduces the risk of both sites being affected simultaneously by regional disasters. With Hitachi Vantara’s Cloud Connect for Equinix, businesses can deploy their DR data center in proximity to the cloud, ensuring faster and more efficient data recovery in case of a disaster.

Cost, Performance, and Security Aspects

One of the most significant benefits of Hitachi Cloud Connect for Equinix is its cost-effectiveness. By right-sizing the requirements and deploying DR and backup sites on Equinix environments, businesses can significantly reduce the costs associated with building and managing their own DR site. Moreover, by leveraging Equinix’s cloud on ramps globally, data is made available within 1-2 milliseconds, which enables swift access to critical information without the need for excessive infrastructure investments. Hitachi Vantara’s Cloud Connect for Equinix also leverages the performance capabilities of our Virtual Storage Platform (VSP), ensuring that businesses experience superior data access and transfer speeds.

This level of performance is vital in hybrid-cloud architectures, where seamless data movement between on-premises and cloud environments is essential for optimizing workloads and maintaining efficiency. Last, security is a top priority for businesses handling sensitive data. Hitachi Cloud Connect for Equinix ensures robust security by utilizing Equinix’s private network, which offers a highly secure environment that does not rely on the internet. This private connectivity minimizes the risk of data breaches and unauthorized access, instilling confidence in customers regarding their data’s safety.

Hitachi Vantara’s Cloud Connect for Equinix in collaboration with Equinix presents an all-encompassing solution for businesses seeking to enhance their backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity strategies. By addressing the challenges of defining objectives and leveraging best practices in backup and disaster recovery, this innovative offering ensures data resilience and uninterrupted operations. The benefits of reduced costs, superior performance, and enhanced security make it an ideal choice for companies adopting cloud or hybrid-cloud architectures. With Hitachi Cloud Connect for Equinix, businesses can confidently navigate the digital landscape, knowing their data is safeguarded and their operations are primed for success.

George Y. Chen is Global Product & Solutions Enablement at Hitachi Vantara.