UK Cloud service provider The Bunker has launched what is describes as an ‘ultra secure’ disaster recovery service for small to medium sized businesses.

The data center, located on the former US air base at Greenham Common, claims it can simplify the process for business by consolidating data backup and disaster recovery into one fixed monthlyprice, in which businesses only pay for what they use. The service provider also claims it can add value to the disaster recovery process, with automated reporting and partial granular restore turning the chore of security into a management asset.

If the bombs should fall

The offering – billed as Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) – is to be hosted on the company’s ‘ultra secure’ private Cloud and can accept any combination of physical and virtual infrastructure, it says.

The ability to backup and restore to and from virtual machines in the private cloud needed to be simplified, and users need to be assured they only pay for invocation when it’s used, said Bunker CTO Philip Bindley.

“Historically, disaster recovery and business continuity planning were beyond the financial reach of SMBs,” said Bindley, “advances in private cloud and virtualisation have changed that and they no longer need to expose themselves to unnecessary risk.”

The ‘granular restore’ options range from partial to full ‘bare metal’ disaster recovery without involving the client in complicated service migration to an alternative location, according to Bindley. Users also have the option to perform their own partial recovery without any intervention or invocation by The Bunker.

The Bunker has also developed a sandbox facility for disaster recovery testing of the client’s entire environment, as often as required. This enables clients to create qualified security assessor (QSA) standard auditable reports for compliance purposes.

Too many organizations are hostage to doubts over whether their patchwork of backup plans will help them recover from disaster, said Bindley.