Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) Sydney | Cloud Failover
Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) is a managed service that replicates your servers and systems to the cloud so that, if your primary site or infrastructure fails, the business can fail over and keep running from those cloud copies. It turns disaster recovery from a plan on paper into a tested, ready-to-run capability without you buying and maintaining a second data centre. 4iT provides DRaaS for businesses across Greater Sydney.
Sydney MSP
Greater Sydney, NSW
- Microsoft Partner
- Sophos Partner
- Ubiquiti Partner
No 2nd site
cloud replaces secondary hardware
Pay monthly
no capital outlay
Key facts
- DRaaS replicates your systems to the cloud so you can fail over and keep operating if your primary infrastructure goes down.
- It removes the cost of building and maintaining your own secondary disaster recovery site.
- DRaaS is designed around your recovery objectives: how fast you must be back (RTO) and how much data you can lose (RPO).
- Failover can cover a single critical server or your whole environment, depending on what the business needs running.
- Regular failover testing is part of a proper DRaaS service, so recovery is proven rather than assumed.
What is disaster recovery as a service?
DRaaS is disaster recovery delivered as a managed, cloud-based service. Instead of keeping spare servers in a second location, your systems are continuously replicated to a cloud environment. If your primary systems fail, whether from hardware failure, ransomware, fire, or flood, you fail over to the cloud copies and the business carries on while the primary site is repaired or rebuilt.
The “as a service” part is what makes it accessible to SMEs. Traditionally, this level of resilience meant owning a second site with duplicate hardware, which only large organisations could justify. DRaaS turns that capital expense into a managed monthly service, so a 30-person business can have genuine failover capability that used to be the preserve of enterprises.
How is DRaaS different from backup?
Backup is about recovering data; DRaaS is about recovering operations. A backup lets you restore files and systems, but restoring can take hours or days, during which the business is down. DRaaS keeps a running or near-running copy of your systems in the cloud, so failover is measured in minutes, not days. The business keeps trading while the primary environment is dealt with.
The two work together rather than competing. Backups remain your long-term, point-in-time copies for recovering from data corruption or deletion that happened weeks ago. DRaaS is the fast-failover layer for keeping the business running right now. A complete strategy uses both, which is why DRaaS sits inside our wider backup and disaster recovery service rather than replacing it.
Who needs DRaaS?
DRaaS makes most sense for businesses that cannot tolerate long downtime. If a day or two offline would cost you serious money, customers, or contractual penalties, the fast failover DRaaS provides is worth the monthly cost. Businesses with tight recovery time objectives, regulatory obligations, or systems that the whole operation depends on are the natural fit. If ransomware is the trigger, our ransomware recovery service covers the immediate response while DRaaS is the long-term resilience layer.
For a business where a longer recovery is genuinely survivable, traditional backup with a solid restore process may be enough, and we will tell you so rather than sell capability you do not need. The honest way to decide is to put a number on what an hour, a day, and a week of downtime would actually cost you, then weigh that against the DRaaS monthly fee. Usually the answer is clear once the downtime cost is on the table. For businesses starting from scratch, our guide to writing a disaster recovery plan is a good starting point.
Frequently Asked Questions
Failover with DRaaS is typically measured in minutes to a couple of hours, depending on how it is configured and your recovery time objective. Because the systems are already replicated and ready in the cloud, there is no lengthy restore-from-scratch step. The exact figure is set during design, where we match the failover speed to what the business actually requires.
No. DRaaS and backup solve different problems and work together. DRaaS gives fast failover to keep operating after an outage; backups give point-in-time copies for recovering from data loss, corruption, or deletion that may have occurred earlier. A complete strategy uses both, and we design them as one rather than treating DRaaS as a backup substitute.
We bring up your replicated systems in an isolated cloud environment and confirm they start correctly and function, without disrupting your live systems. Testing proves the failover actually works and surfaces any issues before a real incident. Regular testing is part of a proper DRaaS service, because an untested recovery plan is just an assumption.
It can be, because DRaaS replaces the large capital cost of a second site with a predictable monthly fee scaled to what you protect. You can also apply it selectively, covering only the systems the business genuinely cannot run without, which keeps the cost proportionate. We scope it to your critical systems and recovery objectives rather than protecting everything at maximum cost.
If long downtime would seriously hurt your business, it is worth knowing whether DRaaS is the right fit and what it would cost to protect your critical systems. We are happy to work through your recovery objectives and map out a sensible failover plan.
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4iT Support covers SMEs across Greater Sydney including the Hills District, North Shore, Parramatta, and the CBD. No lock-in contracts. Straight answers.