Azure cloud business continuity planning is often overlooked during cloud migration. As in traditional environments, continuity should be considered from a business perspective, evaluating the potential impact of downtime on business operations in the worst-case scenario. In this blog, I delve into Azure cloud continuity planning, also considering the cloud’s shared responsibility model. What is shared responsibility fundamentally about? Let’s find out.
Infrastructure Planning - The Foundation of Everything?
When considering infrastructure to be placed in the Azure cloud, several continuity-related choices must be made when selecting technologies. Often, when migrating to the cloud, organizations resort to using servers out of old habit, but by purchasing virtual servers, you are only buying Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). In this case, you are responsible for the entire server, starting from the operating system level, and for ensuring its continuity. A better option is often to strive to choose cloud platform services (PaaS) where possible, thereby outsourcing the maintenance and continuity of the server and operating system level to the cloud service provider, and focusing yourself on managing the application running on the Microsoft-maintained platform.
It is a very clear choice that by outsourcing responsibility, you gain significantly more in terms of continuity. As Microsoft maintains the services in the background, it aims to ensure the fault tolerance of the platform it provides. Let’s take Azure Kubernetes Services as an example. By building containers on top of your individual servers, you rely on the fault tolerance you’ve built yourself, but by choosing
Backup Also Involves Choices
When we talk about backing up services, the same principles apply. When backing up servers, you back up the operating system and the data stored within the server. When backing up platform services, Azure cloud offers pre-designed solutions. For example, when backing up Azure web applications, the underlying platform databases can also be backed up, which simplifies the planning of overall recovery.
Azure cloud’s native backup services are robust, offering excellent tools for backing up servers and various Azure cloud services. Backed-up data can be geographically distributed as needed, according to business requirements, and data can be set as immutable, protecting it from external tampering. And to gain comprehensive management in a single view, Azure offers Azure Business Continuity Center tools to support your efforts!
Several third-party products are also available for backing up Azure cloud services, but for these, I strongly recommend at least evaluating whether Azure’s native backup solutions would be sufficient to support your own continuity.
What about Shared Responsibility?
In addition to the shared responsibility for security and continuity varying according to the degree of outsourcing – i.e., whether you choose infrastructure, platform, or software as a service from cloud technologies – Microsoft, as a cloud service provider, has also shared responsibility for the continuity and reliability of its Azure services.
Regarding cloud service management, continuity planning must therefore also consider what responsibilities belong to the cloud service provider and what responsibilities belong to your IT department.
The shared responsibility model defines responsibilities between the cloud service provider and the customer. Even if you maintain your services on a cloud platform, Microsoft cannot take full responsibility for everything. Therefore, continuity planning, knowing your own responsibilities, is crucial!
Continuity Plan as a Tool
Azure cloud continuity requires planning, just like continuity planning for any more traditional environment. There might be slightly fewer things to take care of depending on your choices, but at a minimum, you are always responsible for your own data in cloud services. Therefore, your own plan should be compared to the shared responsibility model, and you should strive to ensure that potential recovery is sufficiently efficient for your business needs.
However, no plan is truly a plan until its functionality has been tested. It is advisable to practice recovery from various everyday situations and to test the functionality of backups. Can you be sure that the database you maintain is recoverable in the way you envision if you have never tested recovery?
The Savonians are right. It is important to remember that the responsibility lies with the recipient. As partners, we can help ensure business operations and their continuity, but ultimately, you in IT management are responsible for your own IT environment and the business fuel within it. Responsibility can be shared, but it can never be fully outsourced. Therefore, it is important that you also remain aware of continuity and the status of backups, and regularly test recoveries in cooperation with your partner. Also,
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