Using AWS as a Disaster Recovery Site for your Azure Workloads
In today's world, businesses are no longer limited to a single cloud provider.
Many organizations now run their primary workloads on one cloud platform, such as Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, or Amazon Web Services (AWS), while leveraging another provider for specific use cases like disaster recovery. A popular multi-cloud strategy is when a company can host its primary operations on Azure and use AWS as a disaster recovery site.
They make use of AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery, which allows businesses to replicate workloads from other environments to AWS for fast, reliable recovery in case of failure. It can achieve a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of as low as one second and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of about five to twenty minutes, depending on your operating system.
Replicating all your environments from Azure to AWS is a smart move, as it will give you true geo-diversity across different cloud infrastructures. You reduce the chances of both your primary and backup environments being affected by the same issue, boosting your availability and business continuity. Downtime is one thing businesses can’t afford, as it’s a big loss to them.
It will also be cost-effective, as AWS offers flexible pricing options like Amazon S3 Glacier for cold storage and Spot Instances for affordable computing power. This allows you to set up DR infrastructure without keeping everything running all the time. You can replicate data and only spin up workloads when needed, during a disaster, or for DR drills, saving significantly on costs compared to running a hot standby 24/7.
Relying solely on one cloud provider limits your choices. By spreading your workloads across Azure and AWS, you gain strategic control. If Azure services degrade or your organization needs to pivot in the future, having infrastructure already set up in AWS gives you the flexibility to move fast and maintain operations without starting from scratch.
This can also be a way of showing compliance, as some industries require DR plans to span multiple providers or regions. Using AWS as a DR site helps you meet these requirements while also showing that your organization takes business continuity and risk mitigation seriously.
At DevOps Foundry, we help businesses unlock the power of multi-cloud by setting up reliable, cost-effective disaster recovery solutions using AWS and Azure. Let us help you build resilience where it matters most.
