Azure Disaster Recovery Reference Architecture

The Disaster Recovery Reference Architecture template provides a clear, comprehensive outline for a disaster recovery (DR) setup specifically designed for critical applications deployed in Azure. Imagine a safety net for your entire digital infrastructure – that's what this template helps you build. It ensures your business keeps running smoothly even in the face of unforeseen regional outages by:

• Dual-Region Architecture: Spans two distinct Azure regions—a primary operational region and a secondary DR region. This geographic redundancy is key to true disaster recovery.

• Automated Replication & Failover: At its heart, Azure Site Recovery manages the seamless replication of your resources from the primary to the secondary region. In the event of an outage, it automates the failover process, bringing your applications online in the secondary region with minimal downtime.

• Critical Application Components: It includes essential components like load balancers, application servers, and database servers, ensuring that all layers of your critical applications are protected.

• Intelligent Traffic Redirection: Traffic Manager handles public traffic redirection during failovers, automatically routing users to the active, healthy region. This ensures a smooth transition for your users, maintaining business continuity.

• Comprehensive Business Continuity: By integrating these services, the template provides a strong framework for ensuring uninterrupted business operations during regional outages, protecting your data and services.

How to Open This Template in Cloudairy?

Getting started with your disaster recovery plan is simple:

1. Log into your Cloudairy portal.
2. Go to the “Template Library” section.
3. Search for “Azure Disaster Recovery Reference Architecture.”
4. Click the result to preview the template's structure.
5. Click “Open Template” to begin customizing for your specific needs.

How to Use Cloudairy for This Template?

Cloudairy empowers you to adapt and manage this DR architecture with ease:

1. Open the template to understand the base setup of the DR solution.
2. Modify components to align with your application-specific needs and scale.
3. Collaborate with your teams to finalize the architecture and get approvals.
4. Visualize all resource relationships and dependencies within the DR setup.
5. Export the finalized architecture for documentation and compliance approvals.

The Building Blocks of Your DR Plan 

The Disaster Recovery Reference Architecture template includes a critical set of Azure components engineered for effective disaster recovery:

• Traffic Manager Profiles: Controls public traffic routing and intelligent failover redirection to the healthy region.

• Public IP: Exposes your application to the internet, managed by Traffic Manager during failovers.

• ILB-ASR (Internal Load Balancer - Azure Site Recovery): An internal load balancer specifically configured for application servers in the DR site.

• App Servers: Hosts your critical application backend services in both primary and secondary regions.

• Availability Sets: Ensures instance redundancy for your application servers within each region.

• Azure Site Recovery: The core service that handles replication, protection, and orchestrated failover of your resources.

• Database Servers: Stores your critical application data, configured for replication to the DR site.

• Replica Disks: Dedicated database storage in the DR site, maintained by Azure Site Recovery.

• Region 1: Your primary operational Azure region where applications are typically running.

• Region 2: Your secondary, dedicated Azure DR region, ready for failover.

• VNET-ASR (Virtual Network - Azure Site Recovery): A dedicated virtual network in the DR region specifically for Site Recovery deployments.

• ExpressRoute: Provides private, high-bandwidth connectivity to Azure, often used for replicating data efficiently to the DR region.

Summary

The Disaster Recovery Reference Architecture template enables comprehensive, cloud-based disaster recovery across Azure regions for your critical applications. It supports automatic failover, significantly reduces downtime during regional outages, and helps ensure dependable business continuity under various disaster scenarios.

With Azure Site Recovery at its core, this Disaster Recovery Reference Architecture provides peace of mind, knowing your services remain highly available. As part of a robust Azure disaster recovery strategy, this Disaster Recovery Reference Architecture helps organizations proactively safeguard operations and minimize data loss.