Accelerate Your Cloud Transformation with AWS DRS and oXya

In this article, we’ll be looking at two use cases of AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS) with oXya’s cloud eXcellence team. The first use case consists in building, in just a few clicks, a backup site (disaster recovery site) on AWS. The other consists in migrating critical applications “as is” to AWS. 

AWS DRS: Definition and Main Features  

The main purpose of AWS DRS is to protect IT systems by replicating them in real time on the cloud. The replicated systems offer business continuity in case of disaster by resuming activities directly on AWS.  

When implementing this solution, the starting point is to deploy a DRS agent on the on-premises hypervisor layer, then to define the cursors to configure replication settings. Amazon then detects these servers and establish replication continuously.  

Among the useful features included in DRS is the ability to temporarily test the servers on Amazon to simulate a failover. This action has no impact on the source servers and can be likened to a form of dry run to validate failover operations. 

4 Benefits to Using DRS to Migrate your Critical Applications to AWS

Using AWS DRS to migrate to the cloud is particularly advantageous for many reasons:  

1. Significant downtime reduction

With DRS, failover to the cloud is performed in only a few minutes. By comparison, rebuilding an infrastructure of about fifty applications can require several days if you don’t use a service like DRS.  

2. Resilience and protection of critical data

AWS DRS uses what’s called block-level data replication, meaning each modification that’s carried out on the source server is immediately replicated on the target server.
Snapshots are taken from the source server and copied on the target server at regular intervals, which minimizes losses in case of failure (RPO). Moreover, the data is protected during the compression and encryption stage, before they transit to AWS.  

3. Transfer charges under control

The costs of the DRS service are minimal and predictable; the service is billed on a pay-per-use basis with an hourly rate. 

4. Easy to use

The service is easy to implement and our oXya teams can help you rapidly deploy this solution within a few weeks. The data replication mechanism is intuitive and robust. In addition, the solution can also facilitate migration between zones or different hyperscalers, which offers an advantageous flexibility during a migration project.

Creating Disaster Recovery Sites with AWS DRS

Within the AWS framework, creating disaster recovery sites allows you to failover critical applications from one region to another, in case of a major failure. 

When it comes to SAP applications, having a DRP solution is a must for business teams, particularly in the manufacturing industry, where production lines are sensitive to all SAP interruptions. Therefore, a DRP solution based on DRS technology becomes a necessity. 

In the event of a problem, such as a cyberattack, the granularity of AWS RDS restore points allows recovery of operations on AWS up a few minutes before the incident. 

In short, AWS DRS is a flexible solution that can be used for a wide range of projects, whether for disaster recovery or application migration. Contact us for more information on our SAP solutions or to learn more about our AWS cloud native services.