Anyone who has moved to the cloud, or is still considering it, has asked about disaster recovery (DR) at some point. Answering the question for me is a function of where you are on the spectrum of cloud evolution.
If you are developing for a cloud-native environment, for example, you should be designing and building your applications from the ground up to accommodate disaster recovery. Being able to deploy applications globally and provide a high value, low latency user experience is one of the primary reasons for GE’s evolution to public cloud. For example, a cloud-native application should be designed to run in an active/active state across multiple regions of the globe with near real-time replicated information. On the other hand, if you are lifting and shifting a traditional application into the cloud, you need to leverage both cloud provider and internal infrastructure tools to achieve the required DR specs.
Just as in on-premise solutions, successful DR in the cloud requires that you have a clearly defined set of recovery point and recovery time objectives. However, you also need to determine whether your applications are responsible for meeting these requirements - cloud native applications, or whether you have traditional applications hosted in the cloud, which still require underpinning infrastructure support for disaster recovery.
Just as hiring the right employee comes down to the ideal combination of skills and cultural fit, success in cloud-based DR comes down to the right mix of technology and requirements mapped to the appropriate business needs and the application capability in the cloud. Be sure to consider all of these requirements as you work to solve your DR challenges.
Lance Weaver is the Chief Technology Officer for Cloud at GE Corporate. His organization is responsible for the architecture, design and implementation of GE’s Industrial Internet and Enterprise IT global strategy leveraging Public, Private and Hybrid Clouds. In his prior role, as CTO of GE Appliances and Lighting, Lance was responsible for the overall technology vision of a $9B division of GE leading a 400 member global team delivering core infrastructure services, application middleware and data analytics. Lance has also held several additional roles for divisions of GE including Executive Director – Application Infrastructure, IT Operations Leader and Chief Information Security Officer. Prior to joining GE, Lance was a consulting engineer for ten years designing, selling and implementing infrastructure solutions for a broad range of customers. Lance holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice from Truman State University.
