Want to take your business to the next level with IT Disaster Recovery Services?
IT outages halt operations, and then hardware eventually fails, and for most SMEs, even a short outage creates immediate operational pressure. Without a reliable recovery mechanism, these events cause financial losses and regulatory breaches.
IT Disaster Recovery (DR) services restore the infrastructure required to run a business, and, at Microbyte, we provide Managed Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) for SMEs to help lighten the load on your internal team. We will restore your servers, applications, and data to meet defined operational targets, ensuring you can get back to business as usual.
"Microbyte provide us with complete peace of mind by handling all of our IT and telephony requirements. From start to finish their handling of our full system implementation was professional and delivered on time." Justin Wing, Wings Skoda Contact Us
What is IT Disaster Recovery?
Disaster recovery differs significantly from making backups. A backup is simply a copy of your data, whereas disaster recovery is the ability to run that data on a functioning server.
If a server room floods or a cyberattack locks a network, a data copy is insufficient because you need an environment to host it. Microbyte engineers solutions that will restore the entire computing environment, including operating systems, networking, and user access.
We understand that your team simply needs systems back online without delay, to restore the essential tools your staff need to work, minimising the disruption to your daily operations.
How RTO and RPO Define Recovery Costs
Recovery targets dictate the architecture and the cost of the recovery solution. We align these metrics with the financial cost of downtime to ensure you aren’t overspending on unnecessary redundancy. SME outages often cost between £500 and £5,000 per hour, while high-transaction environments can exceed £16,000 per minute.
We define two specific metrics to control this risk:
- Recovery Time Objective (RTO): The maximum time a system can remain offline.
- Recovery Point Objective (RPO): The maximum amount of data loss acceptable (measured in time).
A formal Disaster Recovery Policy will document these targets. A trading platform may require an RTO of minutes due to high costs, while an archival server may tolerate up to 24 hours.
Why Ransomware Requires Immutable Backups
Ransomware is the primary driver for modern DR adoption. Attackers don’t just encrypt live files; they target your backup repositories specifically to prevent successful restoration.
Attackers often “dwell” inside a network for weeks before an attack, using this time to corrupt local backups and delete Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) snapshots. Sadly standard backups often fail against this tactic.
Immutable Storage and Air-Gapping
Microbyte implements immutable backup protection using “Object Lock” technology. Immutable data cannot be modified or deleted by any user, including administrators, for a set retention period.
We also use air-gapped storage, which separates the backup management console from the production network. So, if an attacker compromises your Active Directory, they cannot access the recovery environment. This means your data can be recovered without paying a ransom.
Cloud Recovery Architectures
We will select the recovery model based on your specific RTO requirements:
- Backup & Restore: Data is backed up to the cloud, and infrastructure is built only after a disaster occurs. This is low cost, but results in a slower recovery (hours/days).
- Pilot Light: A minimal environment exists in the cloud where data synchronises continuously, and compute resources remain off until needed.
- Warm Standby: A scaled-down version of the environment runs continuously, handling traffic immediately if the first site fails.
- Active-Active: The full environment runs in two locations simultaneously. If one site fails, the other handles the load instantly with zero downtime, though at a higher cost.
Multi-Region Resilience
Where required, we replicate workloads to multiple Availability Zones (AZs) or geographic regions, which protects your workloads from regional outages affecting a specific data centre.
Why SaaS Data Needs Independent DR
Your business relies on platforms like Microsoft 365, but many assume this data is automatically safe. Microsoft guarantees infrastructure uptime, but it does not guarantee data safety against user error or malicious deletion (the Shared Responsibility Model).
Recycle bin retention in Microsoft 365 is time-limited, meaning deleted files become unrecoverable once this window expires. Microbyte provides specific SaaS protection to close this gap. We back up SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange, Teams, and Google Drive, allowing for granular restoration of files deleted outside of Microsoft’s retention windows.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for Rapid Rebuilds
Manual server configuration is slow and prone to error, so Microbyte uses Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to automate recovery.
We use templates (e.g., Terraform or Azure Resource Manager) to define your network, firewalls, and virtual machines. In a disaster, we will execute these scripts, and the cloud environment will rebuild itself automatically according to the template, removing manual steps and significantly reducing recovery times.
The Microbyte Recovery Lifecycle
We manage the entire recovery lifecycle to ensure you are always prepared.
Phase 1: Assessment and BIA
We identify critical services and map dependencies between applications, as well as set the RTO and RPO for each workload based on your business needs.
Phase 2: Deployment
We deploy a hybrid architecture where local appliances provide speed and cloud repositories provide resilience. We follow the "3-2-1-1-0" rule: 3 data copies, 2 media types, 1 offsite, 1 immutable, and 0 verification errors.
Phase 3: Testing & Verification
Testing shows whether recovery actually works, so we perform automated daily verifications that boot backup images to prove they are functional. We also conduct an annual "Fire Drill" simulation to test the full failover process and provide a DR Test Certificate for compliance auditors.
Phase 4: Managed Recovery
During incidents, Microbyte will run the entire recovery process. We will contact vendors, manage the sequence, and restore your services. Your team can communicate with staff while we handle the technical heavy lifting.
Regulatory Compliance and Data Residency
Regulated sectors require demonstrable recovery capabilities:
- UK GDPR: Organisations must restore personal data access in a timely manner, so we ensure data stays within UK borders.
- FCA Operational Resilience: Financial firms must meet impact tolerances by March 2025, so we map IT assets to these business services.
- SRA Requirements: Law firms must protect client funds and data, so our solution ensures service continuity.
- Cyber Insurance: Insurers demand immutable backups and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) on backup consoles.
DRaaS vs. In-House Management
We know that managing DR internally creates risk and consumes valuable time.
- CAPEX vs. OPEX: In-house requires buying duplicate hardware, whereas DRaaS is a predictable monthly cost.
- The “Bus Factor”: Internal knowledge often sits with one person, so if they are unavailable, recovery fails.
- Maintenance: Internal teams often skip testing due to time constraints.
Microbyte provides 24/7 recovery expertise, functioning as your crisis management team so you don’t have to face a disaster alone.
See how we apply these principles for clients in IT Disaster Recovery in London.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How Will Microbyte Calculate My RTO?
We will conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to measure the cost of downtime for each system, and then design the architecture (e.g., Warm Standby vs. Backup) to match that cost. - Can You Recover From a Ransomware Attack Without Paying? Yes. We use immutable backups and air-gapped storage, allowing us to restore a clean version of your data from before the infection occurred.
- Do You Test Disaster Recovery Plans? Yes. We perform automated daily boot tests to verify integrity as well as a full annual failover simulation with a certificate of testing.
- Is Microsoft 365 Backup Included? We recommend a dedicated SaaS backup layer. This protects Exchange, SharePoint, and Teams data from deletion and corruption, which Microsoft's native tools do not fully cover.
Conclusion
IT Disaster Recovery Services reduce the cost and duration of outages, as well as providing the infrastructure to survive ransomware and site failures. Microbyte delivers this through automated testing, immutable storage, and a managed recovery team that executes the plan for you.
Review your recovery risks today.
Contact Microbyte to book a Business Impact Analysis. Determine your Recovery Time Objectives and protect your business from downtime.