AWS Webcast - Business Continuity in the AWS Cloud

Business Continuity in the

AWS Cloud

Gerard Ngo – Account Manager

AWS Worldwide Public Sector

What is AWS?

Basics of Business Continuity

Why AWS for Business Continuity?

AWS services that can be employed

Common BC/DR architectures

Agenda

What is AWS?

Application Services

Compute Storage Databases

Networking

AWS Global Infrastructure

Deployment & Administration

AWS Platform

AWS Global Infrastructure

11 Regions

consisting of

29 Availability Zones

and

53 Edge Locations (CDN)

Customer Decides Where Applications and Data Reside

AWS Region View

- Independent/Separate Geographic Areas

- Isolated from other Regions (security boundary)

- Comprised of multiple Availability Zones

- Availability Zone = 1 or more “data center”

- Availability Zones connected through redundant low-latency links

- Customer chooses a Region and Data stays within Region.

- Enables High-Availability Architecture

Availability

Zone A

Availability

Zone B

Availability

Zone C

Sample US Region

AWS Availability Zone (AZ) View

- Multiple Isolated locations within a Region

- Availability Zone = 1 or more “data center”

- Independent Failure Zone

- Physically separated

- On separate Low Risk Flood Plains

- Discrete UPS

- Onsite backup generation facilities

- Fed from different segments of utility provider

- Redundantly connected to multiple tier-1 ISP’s

- No “Disaster Recovery Datacenter”

- Built for Continuous Availability

- Customer decides Availability Zone for Compute

Availability

Zone AAvailability

Zone B

Availability

Zone C

Sample US Region

~ Data Center

Trusted by Enterprises Around the World

Public Sector Customers Worldwide

Certifications

SOC 1, 2, and 3

ISO 27001

PCI DSS for EC2, S3, EBS,

VPC, RDS, ELB, IAM

FISMA Moderate Compliant

Controls

HIPAA & ITAR Compliant

Architecture

Physical Security

Datacenters in nondescript

facilities

Physical access strictly

controlled

Must pass two-factor

authentication at least twice

for floor access

Physical access logged and

audited

HW, SW, Network

Systematic change

management

Phased updates

deployment

Safe storage decommission

Automated monitoring and

self-audit

Advanced network

protection

Built to enterprise security standards

http://aws.amazon.com/security

Basics of Business

Continuity

DR is part of a wider set of policies and controls…

DR & business continuity

It’s not an all or nothing thing

Choose what needs to failover and what does not

Some things more important than others

Some things will still be working

High availability Backup Disaster recovery

Keep your applications

running 24x7

Make sure your data is protected

and can be recovered if it is lost

Get your applications and

data back after a major

disaster

Each set of IT assets will have different requirements…

DR & business continuity

Recovery Time Objective

(RTO)

How quickly you need this asset to be recovered?

e.g. 1min? 15min? 1hr? 4hrs? 1day?

Recovery Point Objective

(RPO)

How ‘fresh’ the recovery must be for the asset?

e.g. zero data loss, 15mins out of date?

Assets will sit on a spectrum of technical complexity…

DR & business continuity

Rebuild when

required from

offsite backup

Run hot-hot

configuration with

auto-failover

Why AWS for Business

Continuity?

The fundamental economic model…

Traditional, second datacenter

Primary SiteRouters

Firewalls

Network

Application Licenses

Operating Systems

Hypervisor

Servers

SAN fabric

Primary Storage

Backup

Archive

Secondary SiteRouters

Firewalls

Network

Application Licenses

Operating Systems

Hypervisor

Servers

SAN fabric

Primary Storage

Backup

Archive

The fundamental economic model…

Utility, on-demand datacenter

Primary SiteRouters

Firewalls

Network

Application Licenses

Operating Systems

Hypervisor

Servers

SAN fabric

Primary Storage

Backup

Archive

AWSRouters

Firewalls

Network

Application Licenses

Operating Systems

Hypervisor

Servers

SAN fabric

Snapshot Storage

Backup

Archive

Secondary

site costs

With utility services you might be able to:

Business & technical drivers

Reduce costs

Slash DR budgets by up to 50%

Reduce on-premise

Eliminate 30%+ of on-premise

physical equipment

Consolidate sites

Eliminate the need to run a

secondary site

Remove aging

technologies

Eliminate tape for backup and

archive

Challenges around Cost

Conventional DR Sites

High Cost

Low ROI

Implemented only for

most critical systems

Usually scaled down to

50% of production

Systems in a remote

region challenging

Cost Effective – On Demand Infrastructure

Business Continuity on AWS

Unprecedented

capabilities to implement

DR sites

Easily set up DR sites on

different geographic

regions

Cut down DR site cost by

up to 70%

Substantial savings on

software licenses

AWS services that can be

employed

Amazon

Simple

Storage

Service (S3)

AWS Import/Export

AWS Storage

Gateway Service

AWS Direct

Connect

Amazon Virtual

Private Cloud

(VPC)

Amazon

Route 53

Amazon Elastic

Compute Cloud

(EC2)

Amazon Relational

Database Service (RDS)

Amazon

Elastic Block

Storage (EBS)

Object storage &

transfer services

Networking services Foundation services

S3 and Elastic Block Store

AWS storage is ideal for DR

Simple Storage ServiceHighly scalable object storage

1 byte to 5TB in size

99.999999999% durability

Elastic Block StoreHigh performance block storage device

Volumes of 1GB to 16TB in size

Mount as drives to instances with

snapshot/cloning functionalities

Glacier

DurableDesigned for 99.999999999%

durability of archives

Cost effectiveWrite-once, read-never. Cost effective for long

term storage. Pay for accessing data

3 to 5 hour Retrieval time

Direct ConnectDedicated connection between your IT

infrastructure and the AWS datacenters

Extend your network infrastructure and

VLANs into AWS

VPN ConnectionA Hardware VPN connection connects

amazon environment to your datacenter

Internet Protocol security (IPsec) VPN

connection

Commonly used hardware supported

Virtual Private CloudPrivate, isolated section of the AWS Cloud

Launch resources in a virtual network that you

define

complete control over your virtual networking

environment

Internet

Internet

Connecting to AWS

Common BC/DR architectures

4 main patterns

Common BC/DR architectures

Backup & Restore Pilot light

Warm standby in

AWS

Multi-site solution in

AWS & on-premise

Let’s start with Backup & Restore

Common BC/DR architectures

Backup & Restore Pilot light

Warm standby in

AWS

Multi-site solution in

AWS & on-premise

Advantages to starting a journey with this pattern

Backup & Restore pattern

Simple to get started

Easy starting point for exploring the AWS cloud

Low technical barrier to entry

Focus on incorporating cloud into your DR

strategy, not on complex technical issues

related to hot-hot systems

Cost effective

Very high levels of data durability at low price

Cost of storing snapshots in S3

Archiving possibilities beyond tape using Glacier

The preparation process…

Backup & Restore pattern

Take backups of

current systems

Store backups

in S3

Move to long term

archive in Glacier

The process…

Backup & Restore pattern

Take backups of

current systems

Store backups

in S3

Detail how you will restoring from backup or

recover from archive

Move to long term

archive in Glacier

Push backups to AWS

Recover servers during DR

Let’s look at the Pilot Light pattern…

Common BC/DR architectures

Backup & Restore Pilot light

Warm standby in

AWS

Multi-site solution in

AWS & on-premise

Moving along the DR spectrum…

Pilot light architecture

Build resources

around replicated

dataset

Keep ‘pilot light’ on by replicating core

databases

Build AWS resources around dataset

and leave in stopped state

Scale resources in AWS

in response to a DR

event

Start up pool of resources in AWS when

events dictate

Match current production capacity

through auto-scaling policies

Pilot light

Pilot light

Let’s look at the Warm standby pattern…

Common BC/DR architectures

Backup & Restore Pilot light

Warm standby in

AWS

Multi-site solution in

AWS & on-premise

Moving along the DR spectrum…

Warm standby architecture

Build resources

around replicated

environment

Operate a warm standby by replicating

app servers and core databases

Build AWS resources around dataset

and run in limited capacity

Moving along the DR spectrum…

Warm standby architecture

Build resources

around replicated

environment

Operate a warm standby by replicating

app servers and core databases

Build AWS resources around dataset

and run in limited capacity

Scale resources in AWS

in response to a DR

event

Scale up pool of resources in AWS when

events dictate

Match current production capacity

through auto-scaling policies

Warm standby - prep

Warm standby - recovery

Let’s look at the Multi-site pattern…

Common BC/DR architectures

Backup & Restore Pilot light

Warm standby in

AWS

Multi-site solution in

AWS & on-premise

Moving along the DR spectrum…

Multi-site architecture

Deploy resources

necessary to operate

full production

Operate a full stack by replicating app

servers and core databases

Fail over to AWS in

response to a DR event

Sufficient resources in AWS to handle full

peak load

Multi-site - prep

Multi-site - recovery

Where to learn more

Resources

Disaster Recovery on AWS: aws.amazon.com/disaster-recovery

Architecture Center: aws.amazon.com/architecture

Using AWS for Disaster Recovery

http://media.amazonwebservices.com/AWS_Disaster_Recovery.pdf

Backup and Recovery Approaches Using AWS

http://media.amazonwebservices.com/AWS_Backup_Recovery.pdf