6- Conclusion

Public and Private Cloud Computing services create new risks in terms of Disaster Recovery due to centralization, increased reliance on single supplier and technical complexity of underlying data storage technologies. Public and Private Cloud Computing services also bring the illusion of resilience as a consequence of high availability. Experience shows however that high availability technologies tend to increase the risks of data loss and reduce resilience.

A well defined disaster recovery plan must thus be defined for any critical applications hosted on the Cloud. We have suggested in this white paper to follow a test driven approach and use automation tools to conduct disaster recovery tests on a daily base. We have also demonstrated why it is required to implement Cloud disaster recovery with at least 2 independent suppliers, subject to different legislations and located on multiple continents.