How to shortlist cloud disaster recovery tools by category

What are the six categories?

1. Infrastructure recovery platform. Captures cloud configuration, networking, identity and DNS and rebuilds them, in Firefly's case as Terraform. Data is left to a backup product.
2. Cloud DR orchestration. Keeps a recovery environment in sync and runs failover and failback. Arpio is the example in this ranking, on AWS and Azure.
3. Cloud application recovery. Captures an application's data and configuration together and recovers the stack in one step. Commvault Cloud Rewind is the example.
4. Configuration backup and recovery. Takes regular snapshots of cloud and SaaS configuration and restores a known-good state. ControlMonkey is the example.
5. Data backup and data security platforms. Protect volumes, databases and object storage with immutable copies. Veeam and Cohesity are the examples; Cohesity adds Cloud Rebuild for select AWS workloads.
6. Infrastructure-as-code tooling. Runs or generates code but has no recovery workflow. HCP Terraform and StackGuardian are ranked as the baseline; Spacelift and env zero are listed as considered but not ranked.

How do you find the layer you cannot recover?

Take one important application and walk the five layers from the first lesson: data, configuration, network, identity and DNS. For each, write down how it would come back today and how long that would take. Most teams find the data is covered by a backup product and one or more of the other layers depends on people rebuilding by hand. That layer decides the category.

How many vendors belong on a shortlist?

Two or three. Fewer gives you nothing to compare; more turns the trial into a project of its own. If the gap spans two categories, for example configuration and data, shortlist within each category separately rather than looking for one product that claims both.

How do you compare the shortlist?

Use the same criteria for every product and the same application in every trial. The multi-compare page puts two to five vendors side by side on all seven criteria of this site's ranking, with the reason for every score, and the alternatives pages show where each vendor scores higher or lower than the others. Then send the buyer's checklist to each vendor and run the trial described in the briefing on testing cloud disaster recovery.

What should you take from this lesson?

Choose the category before the vendor. Products in different categories are not substitutes, and comparing a data backup platform with a configuration recovery tool on price alone compares two different jobs.