Quiz-Takers Return Again and Again to Prove Their Serverless Knowledge

This past November, the Cloudtech team attended AWS re:Invent, the premier AWS customer event held in Las Vegas every year. Along with meeting customers and connecting with AWS teams, Cloudtech also sponsored the event with a booth at the re:Invent expo. 

With a goal of engaging our re:Invent booth visitors and educating them on our mission to solve data problems with serverless technologies, we created our Serverless Smarts quiz. The quiz, powered by AWS, asked users to answer five questions about AWS serverless technologies, and scored quiz-takers based on accuracy and speed at which they answered the questions. Paired with a claw machine to award quiz-takers with a chance to win prizes, we saw increased interest in our booth from technical attendees ranging from CTOs to DevOps engineers.

But how did we do it? Read more below to see how we developed the quiz, the data we gathered, and key takeaways we’ll build on for re:Invent next year.

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What We Built

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Designed by our Principal Cloud Solutions Architect, the Serverless Smarts quiz was populated with 250 questions with four possible answers each, ranging in difficulty to assess the quiz-taker’s knowledge of AWS serverless technologies and related solutions. When a user would take the quiz, they would be presented with five questions from the database randomly, given 30 seconds to answer each, and the speed and accuracy of their answers would determine their overall score. This quiz was built in a way that could be adjusted in real-time, meaning we could react to customer feedback and outcomes if the quiz was too difficult or we weren’t seeing enough variance on the leaderboard. Our goal was to continually make improvements to give the quiz-taker the best experience possible.

The quiz application's architecture leveraged serverless technologies for efficiency and scalability. The backend consisted of AWS Lambda functions, orchestrated behind an API Gateway and further secured by CloudFront. The frontend utilized static web pages hosted on S3, also behind CloudFront. DynamoDB served as the serverless database, enabling real-time updates to the leaderboard through WebSocket APIs triggered by DynamoDB streams. The deployment was streamlined using the SAM template.

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Please see the Quiz Architecture below: 

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What We Saw in the Data

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As soon as re:Invent wrapped, we dived right into the data to extract insights. Our findings are summarized below: 

• Quiz and Quiz Again: The quiz was popular with repeat quiz-takers! With a total number of 1,298 unique quiz-takers and 3,627 quizzes completed, we saw an average of 2.75 quiz completions per user. Quiz-takers were intent on beating their score and showing up on the leaderboard, and we often had people at our booth taking the quiz multiple times in one day to try to out-do their past scores. It was so fun to cheer them on throughout the week. 
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• Everyone's a Winner: Serverless experts battled it out on the leaderboard. After just one day, our leaderboard was full of scores over 1,000, with the highest score at the end of the week being 1,050. We saw an average quiz score of 610, higher than the required 600 score to receive our Serverless Smarts credential badge. And even though we had a handful of quiz-takers score 0, everyone who took the quiz got to play our claw machine, so it was a win all around! 
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• Speed Matters: We saw quiz-takers soar above the pressure of answering our quiz questions quickly, knowing answers were scored on speed as well as accuracy. The average amount of time it took to complete the quiz was 1-2 minutes. We saw this time speed up as quiz-takers were working hard and fast to make it to the leaderboard, too. 
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• AWS Proved their Serverless Chops: As leaders in serverless computing and data management, AWS team members showed up in a big way. We had 118 people from AWS take our quiz, with an average score of 636 - 26 points above the average - truly showcasing their knowledge and expertise for their customers. 
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• We Made A Lot of New Friends: We had quiz-takers representing 794 businesses and organizations - a truly wide-ranging activity connecting with so many re:Invent attendees. Deloitte and IBM showed the most participation outside of AWS - I sure hope you all went back home and compared scores to showcase who reigns serverless supreme in your organizations! 

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Please see our Serverless Smarts Leaderboard below

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What We Learned 

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Over the course of re:Invent, and our four days at our booth in the expo hall, our team gathered a variety of learnings. We proved (to ourselves) that we can create engaging and fun applications to give customers an experience they want to take with them. 

We also learned that challenging our technology team to work together and injecting some fun and creativity into their building process combined with the power of AWS serverless products can deliver results for our customers.  

Finally, we learned the value of thinking outside the box to deliver for customers is the key to long term success.

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Conclusion

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re:Invent 2023 was a success, not only in connecting directly with AWS customers, but also in learning how others in the industry are leveraging serverless technologies. All of this information helps Cloudtech solidify its approach as an exclusive AWS Partner and serverless implementation provider. 

If you want to hear more about how Cloudtech helps businesses solve data problems with AWS serverless technologies, please connect with us - we would love to talk with you!

And we can’t wait until re:Invent 2024. See you there!

Introduction

In today's fast-paced, high-tech landscape, the way businesses handle the discovery and utilization of their digital media assets can have a huge impact on their advertising, e-commerce, and content creation. The importance and demand for intelligent and accurate digital media asset searches is essential and has fueled businesses to be more innovative in how those assets are stored and searched, to meet the needs of their customers. Addressing both customers’ needs, and overall business needs of efficient asset search can be met by leveraging cloud computing and the cutting-edge prowess of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

Use Case Scenario

Now, let's dive right into a real-life scenario. An asset management company has an extensive library of digital image assets. Currently, their clients have no easy way to search for images based on embedded objects and content in the images. The company’s main objective is to provide an intelligent and accurate retrieval solution which will allow their clients to search based on embedded objects and content. So, to satisfy this objective, we introduce a formidable duo: the vector engine for Amazon OpenSearch Serverless, along with Amazon Rekognition. The combined strengths of Amazon Rekognition and OpenSearch Serverless will provide intelligent and accurate digital image search capabilities that will meet the company’s objective.

Architecture

Architecture Overview

The architecture for this intelligent image search system consists of several key components that work together to deliver a smooth and responsive user experience. Let's take a closer look:

Vector engine for Amazon OpenSearch Serverless:‍

1. The vector engine for OpenSearch Serverless serves as the core component for vector data storage and retrieval, allowing for highly efficient and scalable search operations.

Vector Data Generation:

1. When a user uploads a new image to the application, the image is stored in an Amazon S3 Bucket.
2. S3 event notifications are used to send events to an SQS Queue, which acts as a message processing system.
3. The SQS Queue triggers a Lambda Function, which handles further processing. This approach ensures system resilience during traffic spikes by moderating the traffic to the Lambda function.
4. The Lambda Function performs the following operations:

               - Extracts metadata from images using Amazon Rekognition's `detect_labels` API call.

               - Creates vector embeddings for the labels extracted from the image.

               - Stores the vector data embeddings into the OpenSearch Vector Search Collection in a serverless manner.

                - Labels are identified and marked as tags, which are then assigned to .jpeg formatted images.

Query the Search Engine:

1. Users search for digital images within the application by specifying query parameters.
2. The application queries the OpenSearch Vector Search Collection with these parameters.
3. The Lambda Function then performs the search operation within the OpenSearch Vector Search Collection, retrieving images based on the entities used as metadata.

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Advantages of Using the Vector Engine for Amazon OpenSearch Serverless

The choice to utilize the OpenSearch Vector Search Collection as a vector database for this use case offers significant advantages:

1. Usability: Amazon OpenSearch Service provides a user-friendly experience, making it easier to set up and manage the vector search system.
2. Scalability: The serverless architecture allows the system to scale automatically based on demand. This means that during high-traffic periods, the system can seamlessly handle increased loads without manual intervention.
3. Availability: The managed AI/ML services provided by AWS ensure high availability, reducing the risk of service interruptions.
4. Interoperability: OpenSearch's search features enhance the overall search experience by providing flexible query capabilities.
5. Security: Leveraging AWS services ensures robust security protocols, helping protect sensitive data.
6. Operational Efficiency: The serverless approach eliminates the need for manual provisioning, configuration, and tuning of clusters, streamlining operations.
7. Flexible Pricing: The pay-as-you-go pricing model is cost-effective, as you only pay for the resources you consume, making it an economical choice for businesses.

Conclusion

The combined strengths of the vector engine for Amazon OpenSearch Serverless and Amazon Rekognition mark a new era of efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and heightened user satisfaction in intelligent and accurate digital media asset searches. This solution equips businesses with the tools to explore new possibilities, establishing itself as a vital asset for industries reliant on robust image management systems.

The benefits of this solution have been measured in these key areas:

• First, search efficiency has seen a remarkable 60% improvement. This translates into significantly enhanced user experiences, with clients and staff gaining swift and accurate access to the right images.
• Furthermore, the automated image metadata generation feature has slashed manual tagging efforts by a staggering 75%, resulting in substantial cost savings and freeing up valuable human resources. This not only guarantees data identification accuracy but also fosters consistency in asset management.
• In addition, the solution’s scalability has led to a 40% reduction in infrastructure costs. The serverless architecture permits cost-effective, on-demand scaling without the need for hefty hardware investments.

In summary, the fusion of the vector engine for Amazon OpenSearch Serverless and Amazon Rekognition for intelligent and accurate digital image search capabilities has proven to be a game-changer for businesses, especially for businesses seeking to leverage this type of solution to streamline and improve the utilization of their image repository for advertising, e-commerce, and content creation.

If you’re looking to modernize your cloud journey with AWS, and want to learn more about the serverless capabilities of Amazon OpenSearch Service, the vector engine, and other technologies, please contact us.

Cloudtech, an Advanced Tier AWS consulting partner today announced that it has signed a Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as part of the newly launched Small Business Acceleration Initiative (SBAI). This initiative, introduced at AWS re:Invent 2024, is designed to drive cloud adoption among small businesses by leveraging AWS Partner-led solutions and resources.

Cloudtech is one of the first 26 partners selected globally to participate in SBAI, reinforcing its commitment to empowering small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with cutting-edge cloud solutions. Through this agreement, Cloudtech will work closely with AWS to simplify cloud adoption for SMBs, providing them with tailored cloud migration strategies, cost optimization frameworks, and industry-specific solutions.Empowering Small Businesses with AWS Cloud

The AWS Small and Medium Business (SMB) Competency, launched in January 2024, has already demonstrated strong growth, with participating AWS Partners achieving 35% higher YoY SMB business growth compared to non-certified partners. Building on this success, AWS has introduced SBAI to create a Partner-led channel sales motion, offering:

• Dedicated AWS supportthrough AWS Partner Territory Managers.
• SMB-focused marketing & sales enablement via AWS demand generation programs.
• Access to AWS Small Business Acceleration Package,a comprehensive resource hub for go-to-market strategies, sales plays, and packaged cloud solutions.

Cloudtech’s Role in AWS SBAIUnder the new SCA, Cloudtech will leverage its deep expertise in cloud transformation to accelerate AWS adoption among small businesses by:

• Offering tailored AWS solutions to simplify cloud migration and modernization.
• Providing strategic guidance
  to SMBs on optimizing cloud costs, performance, and security.

• Leveraging AWS co-marketing programs to educate and enable small businesses on cloud best practices.

“Small businesses are the backbone of innovation and economic growth. By joining forces with AWS under the SBAI, Cloudtech is committed to making cloud transformation more accessible, efficient, and scalable for SMBs in the USA,” said Kamran Adil, CEO of Cloudtech.

‍“This collaboration allows us to extend AWS’s world-class cloud capabilities to small businesses, helping them unlock new opportunities for growth and digital transformation.”Looking Ahead

With the AWS Small Business Acceleration Initiative launching on January 1, 2025, Cloudtech will actively engage with SMB customers, AWS Partner Territory Managers, and ecosystem partners to drive cloud adoption and business success.For more information on how Cloudtech helps small businesses accelerate their AWS journey, visit https://www.cloudtech.com/cloudtech-for-smb

‍About Cloudtech

Cloudtech is a boutique professional services firm that accelerates businesses on their cloud transformation journey by delivering curated modernization solutions. As an exclusive AWS partner, we specialize in helping businesses migrate and modernize their applications, optimize cost, security, and compliance across cloud infrastructures, and monetize data by building solutions that enable advanced analytics, ML, and GenAI applications.

For media inquiries, please contact:

‍Prerna Yadav

‍prerna@cloudtech.com

We are thrilled to announce that Cloudtech, a leading provider of cloud-based serverless solutions, has achieved the prestigious AWS OpenSearch Service Delivery Program. This notable accomplishment showcases our expertise in delivering cutting-edge search and analytics solutions using the AWS OpenSearch service.

The AWS OpenSearch Service Delivery Program

The AWS OpenSearch Service Delivery Program recognizes AWS Partners who possess technical proficiency, architectural expertise, and a successful track record of delivering projects utilizing the AWS OpenSearch service. Cloudtech’s achievement in this program underscores our commitment to delivering high-quality serverless cloud solutions to our valued clients.

What is AWS OpenSearch Service?

Formerly known as Amazon Elasticsearch Service, AWS OpenSearch Service is a managed, highly available, and fully compatible search service that simplifies the deployment, scaling, and management of the OpenSearch engine. Built on the popular Elasticsearch open-source project, AWS OpenSearch Service provides a seamless and feature-rich search experience, enabling businesses to index, search, and analyze vast amounts of data with ease.

Scalability and High Availability

AWS OpenSearch Service offers unmatched scalability, allowing businesses to handle any volume of data without worrying about infrastructure provisioning or performance bottlenecks. With the ability to horizontally scale clusters, organizations can effortlessly accommodate growing workloads, ensuring uninterrupted search functionality even during peak usage. Additionally, AWS OpenSearch Service ensures high availability by automatically replicating data across multiple Availability Zones, minimizing downtime and improving system resilience.

Robust Search and Analytics Capabilities

One of the primary advantages of AWS OpenSearch Service is its powerful search and analytics features. The service supports full-text search, enabling businesses to perform complex queries across large datasets and retrieve relevant results with lightning speed. With support for advanced search capabilities like fuzzy matching, faceted search, and geospatial queries, organizations can unlock valuable insights hidden within their data. Moreover, AWS OpenSearch Service seamlessly integrates with popular analytics tools like Kibana, empowering users to visualize and explore data through rich dashboards and visualizations.

Easy Integration and Data Ingestion

AWS OpenSearch Service simplifies the process of ingesting data from various sources into the search engine. It supports numerous data ingestion mechanisms, including bulk indexing, real-time streaming, and integrations with other AWS services like AWS Lambda and Amazon Kinesis. This flexibility allows businesses to ingest data in real-time, ensuring that the search index remains up-to-date and aligned with the latest information.

Security and Compliance

AWS OpenSearch Service places a strong emphasis on data security and compliance. It integrates seamlessly with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), enabling granular access control and ensuring that only authorized users can interact with the search infrastructure. Additionally, the service provides encryption at rest and in transit, ensuring that data remains protected throughout its lifecycle. AWS OpenSearch Service is also compliant with various industry standards and regulations, making it suitable for organizations with strict compliance requirements.

Cost-Effectiveness and Pay-as-You-Go Model

AWS OpenSearch Service follows a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where organizations are billed only for the resources they consume. This approach eliminates the need for upfront investments in hardware or infrastructure, making it a cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes. Furthermore, the managed nature of the service reduces the operational overhead associated with self-hosted search deployments, enabling teams to focus on leveraging search capabilities rather than managing infrastructure.

At Cloudtech, we pride ourselves on our dedicated team of cloud architects and engineers who possess extensive knowledge of the AWS platform. Their expertise, combined with our successful implementations of AWS OpenSearch solutions across diverse industries, allows us to optimize your search capabilities, improve data exploration and analysis, and drive better decision-making for your organization.

As an AWS Consulting Partner, Cloudtech has a strong foundation in delivering cloud-based solutions that drive digital transformation. Our achievement in the AWS OpenSearch Service Delivery Program further solidifies our position as a trusted provider of serverless cloud solutions.

We extend our gratitude to our valued customers and partners for their ongoing support and trust in our capabilities. Cloudtech remains committed to empowering your organization with cutting-edge cloud technologies and delivering exceptional results.

Let’s Connect

To learn more about how Cloudtech can help optimize your search and analytics capabilities using the AWS OpenSearch service, please contact our team of experts at opensearch@cloudtech.com. Visit our website cloudtech.com to explore our comprehensive range of cloud-based solutions.

Thank you for being a part of Cloudtech’s journey to excellence

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We are pleased to announce that we have achieved Amazon Service Delivery designation for AWS API Gateway Service, recognizing that Cloudtech Inc follows best practices and has proven success delivering AWS services to end customers.

This is a small achievement in a long list of goals for Cloudtech Inc as it differentiates Cloudtech Inc as an AWS Partner Network (APN) member that provides specialized demonstrated technical proficiency and proven customer success in delivering API Gateway Services. To achieve this designation, Cloudtech Inc passed a rigorous technical validation performed by AWS Partner Solutions Architects who are experts in this service. They review prior case studies and architecture to ensure all the best practices are implemented in the project. Earlier We earned AWS Service Delivery Designation for Lambda Delivery. As an AWS Lambda Service Delivery Partner, Cloudtech Inc provides services and tools to help customers build or migrate their solutions to a microservices architecture running on serverless computing, allowing them to build services and applications without the need for provisioning or managing servers.

AWS is enabling scalable, flexible, and cost-effective solutions for startups to global enterprises. To support these solutions’ seamless integration and deployment, AWS established the AWS Service Delivery Program to help customers identify APN Consulting Partners with deep experience in delivering specific AWS services.

As an AWS API Gateway Service Delivery Partner, Cloudtech Inc will provide tools and services to help customers build, secure, and manage APIs, and API-driven architectures, at any scale.

Cloudtech Inc is always happy to help you at any time,  if you have any queries or questions, you can schedule a free call with our representatives and they will guide you further.

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Did you know the disaster recovery solution market is projected to reach USD 115.36 Billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 34.5%, according to this research report conducted by market intelligence company, StraitsResearch?

What do you think is causing it to rise?

Because disasters can strike anywhere and anytime, regardless of their type (natural, artificial, or technical failures). Experiencing losses due to unexpected disasters can be challenging for your business. That’s why most organizations, from SMEs to large corporations, are considering developing a cloud-based IT Disaster Recovery Plan to ensure their business runs smoothly in the event of a catastrophe. Rather than turning to traditional disaster recovery methods, these businesses prefer to use cloud-based solutions. Many market players offer cloud-based disaster recovery strategies, but AWS cloud is one of the top cloud service platforms. Because it provides various disaster recovery strategy options for small to large business organizations, you can select strategies according to your business industry, requirements, and budget.

In this article, you will get information about disaster recovery plans & strategies, and checklists available on the AWS cloud.

Why do you need cloud-based disaster recovery strategies?

Disaster recovery refers to the process of preparing and recovering from a disaster. You must always be ready to manage unplanned adverse events to run your business smoothly. That’s why you need to plan, strategies, and test cloud-based disaster recovery strategies. Cloud-based disaster recovery strategies provide solutions implemented in the cloud with the help of a specific cloud service provider. Read below 3 points to know its importance more precisely:

• You can save your security budget by investing in an entire disaster recovery site and paying as per use.
• You can access and recover any on-premises and cloud-based software and applications in case of a disaster in seconds from the cloud.
• You can minimize downtime and data loss along with on-time recovery.

These reasons would help you to know the rising demands of cloud-based disaster recovery strategies among business industries.

Develop a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)

Implementation of any strategy requires a plan and checklist. You must also make a disaster recovery plan and tick mark the essential checklist to implement any cloud-based disaster cloud strategy. Generally, this plan must be part of a Business Continuity Plan (BCP), which ensures business continuity during and after disasters.

The following 3 tasks will make things easy for you regarding adopting the cloud-based DRP.

Task 1: Know your infrastructure

Your first job is to understand your existing IT environment and assess the data, assets, and other resources. You must know everything, like where data has been stored, the cost of these data, and possible risks. Evaluation of the risks and threats can help you understand the possible types of disasters that might happen.

Task 2: Conduct a business impact analysis and risk assessment

Your next job is to do business impact analysis to measure the business impacts of disruptions to your workloads. Simply put, find out the business operations constraints once disaster strikes. Additionally, do a risk assessment to learn the possibility of disaster occurrence and its geographical impact by understanding the technical infrastructure of the workloads. Don’t forget to consider these two essential factors:

• Recovery Time Objective (RTO) – It refers to the maximum time (acceptable delay), an application can stay offline after the disaster to its recovery.
• Recovery Point Objective (RPO) – It refers to the maximum time (adequate time) for which you can bear data loss from your application. In other words, find the lost time between service interruption and the last recovery point.

Look at the below image to understand these factors more easily:

Image credit: Amazon AWS

Task 3: Know your workloads to implement disaster recovery in the cloud

Implementing disaster recovery on on-premise is different from implementing it in the cloud. To execute cloud-based disaster recovery effectively, you need to analyze your workloads. You must check your data centre connectivity if you have already deployed the workload on the cloud.

But, deploying your workloads on the AWS cloud would benefit disaster recovery implementation. AWS will take of everything from data center connectivity to providing fault-isolated Availability Zones ( an area to support physical redundancy), and regions.

• Go for a single AWS Region if you have high workloads, as you will get different availability zones.
• Go for multiple AWS Regions if there is a possibility of losing various data centers far from each other.

Disaster recovery strategy options in AWS Cloud

The rising popularity of AWS is happening because of more than 20 AWS services available for disaster recovery. But every business has its objective, background, and technical infrastructure. Thus, you should know all options. AWS Cloud offers four major approaches for disaster recovery, shown in the following image:

Image: Disaster Recovery Approaches

Let’s understand each approach and all available AWS services within each approach.

(1) Backup & Restore

Backup & Restore is a common approach for disaster recovery. Check the following table to learn more about it:

What it does

• Mitigate data loss and corrupted data
• Replicate data to AWS regions
• Mitigate lack of redundancy for workload deployed to a single Availability Zone

What you need to consider

• Use Infrastructure as code (IaC) for deployment, and for this, consider AWS CloudFormation or AWS Cloud Development Kit.
• Develop a Backup strategy using AWS Backup
• Create Amazon Ec2 instances using Amazon Machine Images
• Automate redeployment using AWS CodePipeline

Available AWS Services

• Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) Snapshot
• Amazon DynomoDB backup
• Amazon RDS snapshot
• Amazon EFS backup
• Amazon Redshift snapshot
• Amazon Neptune snapshot
• Amazon DocumentDB

Check the following image to understand the backup and restore architecture on the AWS cloud.

Image: Backup and restore architecture

(2) Pilot Light

Pilot light is a second approach for disaster recovery through replication (continuous, cross-region, asynchronous). Check the following table to learn more about it:

What it does

• Helps you to replicate data from one Region to another region
• Allows you to work on your core infrastructure and quickly provision a full-scale production environment through scaling servers and switching on

What you need to consider

• Automate IaC and deployments to deploy core infrastructure at one place and across multiple accounts and Regions
• Use different accounts per Region to offer the highest level of security isolation and resources

Available AWS Services

• Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) Replication
• Amazon Aurora global database
• Amazon RDS read replicas
• Amazon DynamoDB global tables
• Amazon DocumentDB global clusters
• Global Datastore for Amazon ElastiCache for Redis
• AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery
• For Traffic Management
• Amazon Route 53
• AWS Global Accelerator

Check the following image to understand the Pilot Light architecture on the AWS cloud.

Image: Pilot Light architecture

(3) Warm Standby

The warm Standby approach focuses on scaling. Check the following table to learn more about it:

What it does

• Ensure the scaling and fully functional copy of the production environment in another Region
• Offers quick and continuous testing

What you need to consider

• Scaleup everything which needs to be deployed and running
• Since it is similar to the Pilot Light approach, consider factors, RTO & RPO for selecting one from these.

Available AWS Services

• You can use all AWS services mentioned in the above two approaches for data backup, data replication, infrastructure deployment, and traffic management.
• Use AWS Auto Scaling for scaling resources

Check the following image to understand the Warm Standby architecture on the AWS cloud.

Image: Warm Standby architecture

(4) Multi-site active/active

Multi-site active/active approach offers disaster recovery in multiple regions. Check the following table to learn more about it:

What it does

• Helps you to recover data in various regions
• Reduce recovery time but also offer a complex and expensive approach

What you need to consider

• Don’t forget to test the disaster recovery to know how the workload responds to the loss of a Region
• You need to work more on maintaining security and avoiding human errors

Available AWS Services

• Like Warmup Standby, you can use all AWS services mentioned in the above three approaches for data backup, data replication, infrastructure deployment, and traffic management.

Check the following image to understand the Multi-site active/active architecture on the AWS cloud.

Image: Multi-site active/active architecture

How to choose a suitable strategy

It would be best if you made the right decision by selecting the appropriate strategy according to the business requirements. Still, consider the following points and check to decide the best one:

Points to consider

• AWS divides services into two categories – the data plane to offer real-time services and the control plane to configure the environment. It is suggested that you should go with data plane services to get maximum resiliency.
• Choose the Backup & Restore strategy options if you need only backup of workloads and restorage with the single physical data center. Besides this requirement, you can choose from rest 3 strategies.
• The first 3 approaches are active/passive strategies which use an active site like AWS Region for hosting and serving and a passive site (another AWS Region) for recovery.
• Regular testing and updating of your disaster recovery strategies are vital. You can take the help of AWS Resilience Hub to track your AWS workload.
• Use AWS Health Dashboard to get up-to-date information about the AWS service status. It provides a summary like the below image:

Image: Dummy data on AWS Health Dashboard

Tick-make this checklist for your DRP and strategies implementation

Here is a checklist that can help you to effectively design, develop, and implement disaster recovery plans and strategies. Consider it like a questionnaire for successful implementation:

Have you figured out recovery objective (RTO / RPO)?Have to found the stakeholder lists which needs to update once disaster strike?Have you established the essential communication channels during and after disaster events?Have you collected all business operations and IT infrastructure documents?Have you defined any procedure to manage incidents or actions?Have you performed testing of your strategies? Use AWS Config for monitoring the configurations.Does your documentation are up-to-date?

Case study – How Thomson Reuters got benefits after implementing AWS cloud-based disaster recovery approach

In 2020, Thomson Reuter, a Global news and information provider, depended on the traditional Disaster recovery process, which was time-consuming and expensive. The company realized the need for modern cloud-based disaster recovery to improve data security and recover applications for one of its business units. They connected with Amazon AWS and AWS partner Capgemini and decided to implement AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery to minimize data loss, downtime, fast recovery, and on-premises recovery. In 10 months, the company implemented this strategy on 300 servers. The automation of the cloud-based DR process provided them with the following outcomes:

• Replicated over 120 TB of data from 300 servers
• Setup a recovery site in the cloud
• Eliminate its manual DR process
• Optimized spending on its DR process
• Enhanced security and data protection

See the below image to understand how AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery works. It is visible that it follows the simple process of recovering and replicating any data. In this case, the company also leveraged this work, but before that, they built an AWS Landing Zone to set up a secure and multi-account AWS environment to meet the security requirements. Afterward, they set up a recovery site in the cloud using the AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery service. This new solution has started offering continuous data replication at minimum costs.

Image: Working of AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery

Closing Thought

AWS cloud is not only used by this company but by many other companies as well for disaster recovery. With AWS cloud disaster recovery, you can make a quick recovery with minimal complexity, lower management overheads, and simple or repeatable testing. Analyze your requirements, and decide what disaster recovery strategy is best for you. With the right decisions, you can get these benefits for your business’s growth and smooth operation

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