Overview
Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) is a cloud-based business continuity model that replaces the traditional investment in a secondary data center. When the primary infrastructure becomes unavailable due to a natural disaster, hardware failure, cyberattack or human error, workloads are brought up in the DR environment within predefined RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and RPO (Recovery Point Objective) targets.
The biggest problem with traditional DR is that it goes untested. The "we have a secondary data center but have never actually run it" scenario is a common risk in enterprise IT. DRaaS makes it easy to carry out tests and drills without affecting the production environment. Indexline mandates a semi-annual DR drill standard for all its customers; the results of every drill are documented and improvements are planned.
Integration with leading DR platforms such as Veeam, Zerto and Commvault forms the technology backbone of Indexline DRaaS. When the continuous replication capabilities of these platforms bring RPO down to minutes or even seconds, they also provide point-in-time recovery capacity against ransomware attacks. Immutable backups and air-gapped copies are critical components of a cybersecurity-focused DR strategy.
RTO and RPO targets should not be technical parameters set without business process analysis; they must be realistic targets defined with the participation of business units and backed by the financial impact of every hour of downtime. As part of its business impact analysis (BIA) service, Indexline assesses the business criticality of each system and sets targets realistically.
Seeing DRaaS only as a technology for the moment of disaster is an incomplete view. In fact, a well-designed disaster recovery program helps the organization know its IT inventory better, makes critical dependencies visible and reduces operational blind spots. Which system depends on which database, which integration and which gateway becomes clear while the disaster recovery plan is being prepared. This exercise alone delivers high value in terms of organizational maturity.
Organizations often associate disaster recovery only with major natural disaster scenarios. In real life, however, the more frequent causes of outages are storage corruption, misconfiguration, human error, accidental deletions, faulty patch rollouts and ransomware attacks. That is why a modern DRaaS approach cannot be limited to keeping a copy at a second site; it must create different recovery options for different types of loss. Fast failover, a clean recovery point and a controlled failback plan must be considered together.
One of the most common misconceptions in business continuity planning is believing that all systems are equally critical. In most organizations, only a few systems are truly business-stopping critical, while a broader group of systems can tolerate outages for certain periods. Proper DR design makes this distinction. This way, the budget is directed toward truly critical applications, while more economical protection tiers are created for lower-priority systems. In every project, Indexline carries out this prioritization by validating it together with the business units.
The success of DRaaS depends as much on communication and process discipline as on technology. In a disaster, it is not enough for the servers to come back up; who makes which decision, which teams act in what order, how users are informed and under which criteria the return to normal operations begins must all be defined in advance. For this reason, alongside the technical plan, runbooks, an escalation matrix, communication templates and post-drill action records must also be treated as part of the service.
In today's threat landscape, cyber resilience has taken precedence over classic business continuity. Especially in ransomware attacks, quickly bringing all systems back up is not always the right move; first, a clean data point must be selected, the scope of the incident understood and security measures applied to prevent the same attack from recurring. That is why Indexline DRaaS programs focus not just on recovery but on secure recovery. The goal is not only to bring systems back up but to bring them back without reinfection and while preserving data integrity.
In the long term, DRaaS does not just reduce risk for the organization; it also delivers a significant advantage in audit readiness, customer trust and contractual SLA compliance. Regular drill records, measured RTO/RPO results, responsibility matrices and proven recovery processes build confidence at board level, especially in regulated industries. That is why a DRaaS investment should be seen not as a cost item but as a corporate assurance mechanism.
How It Works
Business Impact Analysis (BIA): The business criticality of systems, the cost of downtime and RTO/RPO requirements are determined. The DR scope is prioritized.
Replication Configuration: Data copying to the DR infrastructure is initiated through continuous replication or periodic snapshots.
Orchestration Plan: Which systems are brought up in which order, along with dependencies and network configuration, is documented as the DR orchestration plan.
Network Transition: DNS failover, IP remapping and load balancer configuration are prepared for the DR environment.
DR Drill: A DR drill is carried out without affecting the production environment. Compliance with RTO/RPO targets is measured.
Monitoring: Replication health, latency and data consistency are monitored continuously. Replication failures are reported via alerts.
Continuous Improvement: The DR plan is updated based on drill findings and changes in the IT environment.
Key Features
Continuous Data Replication
Continuous replication at data center or VM level is provided with second-level RPO. Point-in-time recovery points are preserved against ransomware.
One-Click Failover
DR orchestration is automated. In the event of an attack or failure, failover can be triggered with a single click or automatically.
DR Environment Isolated from Production
DR drills are carried out in sandbox isolation without affecting the production environment.
Immutable Backup
Immutable backup copies prevent ransomware from encrypting backups. An air-gapped copy option is available.
RTO/RPO Reporting
After every drill, the actual RTO and RPO values are compared against the targets and reported.
Cross-Platform Support
VMware, Hyper-V, physical servers and cloud VMs are managed on the same DRaaS platform.
Ransomware Recovery Points
Hourly snapshots preserve clean recovery points from before a ransomware attack.
Automatic DNS Failover
During failover, DNS records are updated automatically and users are redirected to the DR environment.
Benefits & Advantages
Cutting the cost of a secondary data center by 70-80% democratizes DR investment.
With continuous replication, RPO drops from hours to minutes; the risk of data loss is minimized.
Easy drills periodically verify whether the DR plan actually works.
After a ransomware attack, immutable backups enable a return to a clean recovery point.
For compliance audits, the DR plan, drill records and RTO/RPO evidence are documented systematically.
Recovery speed after a disaster increases; average business downtime is reduced dramatically.
Clear prioritization of business-critical systems makes budget and resource allocation more rational.
Decision-making confusion during a disaster is reduced; teams act in a controlled manner based on predefined runbooks.
Thanks to a cyber resilience perspective, the organization becomes better prepared not only for infrastructure failures but also for malicious attacks.
A culture of periodic drills strengthens crisis coordination between IT and business units.
Industry Use Cases
Finance
A bank implemented DRaaS for BCBS 239 compliance and reported its DR drill results to the regulator.
Healthcare
A hospital recovered from a ransomware attack within 2 hours using immutable backups; patient data was protected.
Manufacturing
A critical ERP system was moved to DRaaS; after a hardware failure, full operation was restored in 45 minutes.
Public Sector
An e-government platform met its statutory business continuity requirement with DRaaS; annual DR drill reports were prepared.
Retail
A season-critical e-commerce platform was protected with DRaaS; a 30-minute RTO target was achieved against infrastructure failures.
Education
A university's student information system was secured with DRaaS; outages during enrollment periods were prevented.
The Indexline Approach
The DR plan and drills deserve equal importance. Many organizations postpone drills after purchasing DRaaS. Indexline manages this risk systematically by including a requirement of at least two drills per year in customer contracts.
RTO and RPO targets must be realistic and business-driven. Zero RPO is technically possible but very expensive; zero RPO should be reserved for systems that truly need it. Business impact analysis is the tool for striking this balance.
The ransomware threat is reshaping DR strategy. For cyber-resilient DR, immutable backups, point-in-time recovery points and clean recovery procedures have become mandatory.
In the Indexline approach, DRaaS is not a service where a replication license is installed and left alone. It is designed as a living program together with business impact analysis, an application dependency map, a communication plan, a drill schedule and action management.
A one-size-fits-all DR target is not right for every organization. Instead of trying to protect all systems equally, we build a tiered protection model based on business impact; this both rationalizes costs and provides stronger protection for critical systems.
In a real disaster, success is determined as much by people's preparedness as by technology. That is why, alongside the technical architecture, we treat team roles, approval mechanisms and crisis communication as integral parts of the plan.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are RTO and RPO?
RTO (Recovery Time Objective) is the maximum acceptable time a system can remain offline. RPO (Recovery Point Objective) is the maximum acceptable period of data loss. For example, an RTO of 2 hours and an RPO of 1 hour means recovery within no more than 2 hours of a failure and no more than 1 hour of data loss.
Can drills be carried out without affecting the production environment?
Yes, modern DRaaS platforms make it possible to run drills in an isolated sandbox environment. DR VMs are cloned and brought up in a separate network environment; production DNS and traffic are not affected. Once the drill is complete, the environment is deleted.
Which recovery point can we return to after a ransomware attack?
Clean recovery points covering the period before the attack need to be identified. With hourly or daily snapshots, it is possible to return to the pre-attack state. Immutable backups guarantee that ransomware cannot encrypt the recovery points.
Which DR platforms do you use?
Veeam Backup & Replication, Zerto, Commvault and VMware Site Recovery Manager are the main platforms we use. The most suitable platform is selected based on the customer's existing infrastructure and RTO/RPO targets.
Is DRaaS covered by ISO 27001?
Yes, ISO 27001 covers business continuity management (Annex A.17). The DRaaS implementation and drill records directly satisfy the controls of this clause. Drill reports are prepared in audit-evidence format.
Can physical servers be included in DRaaS?
Yes, physical servers can also be included in continuous replication with Veeam Agent and similar tools. P2V (Physical to Virtual) conversion takes place in the DR environment; recovery is performed as a virtual machine.
How is the cost of DRaaS calculated?
Protected data volume (GB/TB), number of VMs, RPO frequency and SLA level affect pricing. Compared with a traditional secondary data center, a cost advantage of 60-70% is typically achieved. We offer a free assessment for a detailed cost analysis.
How is the DR plan kept up to date?
The DR plan should be updated whenever changes occur, such as adding/removing systems, architectural changes and staff rotation, and reviewed every six months. Automated DR orchestration platforms can partially reflect system inventory changes automatically.