Reassessing Your Disaster Recovery and High Availability Posture: Lessons from Hurricane Helen

The widespread damage caused by Hurricane Helen is a sobering reminder of the vulnerability of physical infrastructure during large-scale natural disasters. Many organizations found themselves unprepared, with critical communication systems and data access completely offline just when they needed them the most. For Public Safety Organizations, this can mean the difference between life and death.

With natural disasters growing more frequent and intense, there’s an urgent need to ensure your Disaster Recovery (DR) and High Availability (HA) strategy is resilient enough to maintain operations even when major infrastructure is down. It's never too late to reassess your posture, and recent events have made it clear that many organizations need help preparing for these scenarios.

We recommend leveraging AT&T FirstNet alongside devices like Cradlepoint offers another layer of network resilience. Cradlepoint devices, installed at stations and in emergency vehicles, provide critical network failover capabilities, enabling multiple communication options via cellular or satellite networks. These devices ensure your organization maintains seamless connectivity even when traditional communications systems go down, allowing real-time communication and coordination in disaster zones. By combining Microsoft 365’s always-on services with the redundancy provided by Cradlepoint, public safety teams are equipped with several layers of high availability, ensuring they stay connected during emergencies.

Why Microsoft 365 Is Your Best Bet for High Availability and Disaster Recovery

Microsoft 365 isn’t just a suite of productivity tools—it’s a cloud-native platform designed for continuous availability and resiliency, making it a superior solution for both high availability and disaster recovery compared to traditional DRaaS solutions. Here's how it stacks up against other major providers:

1. Zerto (Hewlett Packard Enterprise)

• Strengths: Zerto is well-known for its Continuous Data Protection (CDP), offering near-zero Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) and rapid recovery times, making it a strong choice for traditional DR scenarios in hybrid or on-prem environments.
• Comparison: Zerto requires the replication of systems to the cloud, which adds complexity and overhead. Microsoft 365, on the other hand, eliminates the need for this kind of replication by being a fully cloud-native platform. Microsoft 365’s communication and collaboration tools are always available, reducing downtime and eliminating the need to recover from backups for key systems like Teams or Exchange Online.

2. Azure Site Recovery

• Strengths: Azure Site Recovery integrates seamlessly with Azure-based workloads, supporting hybrid environments with automated failover for on-premises and cloud-based apps.
• Comparison: While Azure Site Recovery is excellent for broader infrastructure recovery, Microsoft 365 specifically focuses on communication and collaboration. Its cloud-native approach provides geo-redundancy and data replication across Microsoft’s global data centers, ensuring your email, files, and collaboration tools are always available without requiring the same level of disaster recovery planning.

3. AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery

• Strengths: AWS Elastic DR is scalable, flexible, and integrates deeply into AWS services, making it a top choice for organizations heavily invested in the AWS ecosystem.
• Comparison: AWS Elastic DR is ideal for recovering workloads hosted in Amazon Web Services, but it requires extensive configuration and management to recover systems like email or file servers. Microsoft 365 removes this complexity by ensuring that your email (Exchange Online), files (SharePoint and OneDrive), and collaboration tools (Teams) are always on and accessible from anywhere, with built-in security and compliance features.

4. IBM Cloud Disaster Recovery

• Strengths: IBM provides enterprise-grade disaster recovery solutions with strong integration into IBM’s cloud services and AI-driven capabilities.
• Comparison: IBM’s DRaaS is often complex and is designed for large-scale enterprise environments. While it provides robust recovery options, Microsoft 365 takes a different approach by eliminating the need for disaster recovery of individual collaboration tools—services like OneDrive and Teams are always available, even during a disaster, and can be accessed from any device with an internet connection.

5. Veeam Disaster Recovery Orchestrator

• Strengths: Veeam provides automated disaster recovery plans and testing, with strong support for hybrid environments.
• Comparison: While Veeam is excellent for orchestrating DR in complex environments, Microsoft 365 eliminates the need for such orchestration by providing always-on services for communication and collaboration. For public safety organizations, Microsoft 365’s cloud-native design ensures high availability without the complexity of managing and testing disaster recovery scripts for each communication platform.

6. Sungard Availability Services

• Strengths: Sungard is a veteran in the disaster recovery space, offering customizable recovery environments with high-touch support and regulatory compliance.
• Comparison: Sungard’s DRaaS is ideal for organizations with highly customized environments that need tailored recovery solutions. However, Microsoft 365 offers a simpler, more cost-effective solution for public safety organizations needing high availability for communication systems. Microsoft 365’s built-in redundancy and compliance features make it a plug-and-play solution for communication and collaboration without needing extensive customization.

7. Acronis Disaster Recovery Service

• Strengths: Acronis provides comprehensive DRaaS with cybersecurity features like ransomware protection, making it a strong option for organizations looking for integrated data protection.
• Comparison: Acronis excels in data backup and protection, but it lacks the communication and collaboration capabilities that Microsoft 365 offers natively. Microsoft 365 combines data protection with always-on availability for key services like email, chat, and file sharing, ensuring public safety teams can stay connected even during a disaster.

8. VMware Site Recovery

• Strengths: VMware Site Recovery provides a seamless solution for businesses running VMware infrastructure, offering automated failover and failback processes.
• Comparison: VMware’s DR solution is ideal for VMware-based environments, but it does not inherently support the comprehensive communication tools that Microsoft 365 provides. With Teams, SharePoint, and Exchange Online, Microsoft 365 ensures that even during a disaster, your organization’s communication and collaboration channels remain open and secure.

9. Expedient

• Strengths: Expedient focuses on rapid recovery for mid-sized businesses, offering cloud-based disaster recovery with strong automation.
• Comparison: Expedient is cost-effective for mid-sized businesses but requires the same kind of planning and orchestration seen in other DRaaS providers. Microsoft 365 removes the need for this by providing continuous service availability, ensuring that your public safety team remains connected, with access to critical files and communication platforms, without the need for orchestrated recovery.

10. TierPoint

• Strengths: TierPoint offers customizable DRaaS solutions with strong customer support for businesses needing hybrid or multi-cloud environments.
• Comparison: TierPoint provides flexibility, but Microsoft 365 simplifies disaster recovery planning by ensuring key services are always available and automatically replicated across regions. Instead of needing to recover email servers or file servers, public safety organizations using Microsoft 365 can continue their operations uninterrupted during a disaster.

A Call to Reassess: The Time to Act Is Now

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Helen has shown that many organizations were unprepared for the level of destruction and interruption to their IT infrastructure. The reality is that disasters can happen anytime, and with the stakes so high—especially for public safety organizations—it’s critical to reassess your DR and HA strategy now.

Starting with a comprehensive IT Assessment, we can help you identify vulnerabilities, prepare your systems for the worst-case scenarios, and ensure your communication and collaboration tools remain available when you need them the most. Microsoft 365’s cloud-first architecture is the ideal solution for ensuring high availability and business continuity during even the most challenging disasters.

In Conclusion: Don’t wait for the next disaster to reassess your Disaster Recovery and High Availability posture. Microsoft 365 provides the tools and resilience your Public Safety Organization needs to stay online and operational during any crisis. Let’s work together to ensure your systems are ready for whatever comes next—starting with an assessment of your current IT landscape.

Our comprehensive IT Assessment service provides expertise and insights needed to strengthen your IT and Cloud-First framework to ensure your organization is well-prepared for the demands of the modern digital workplace. Schedule a free 30-minute consultation today and start your journey toward Cloud-First.