DRaaS Explained: What Disaster Recovery as a Service Should Cost

By Connor Fitzgerald

Most companies discover the true state of their disaster recovery at the worst possible moment — during an actual disaster. The backups were running, everyone assumed they were fine, and then a ransomware attack or a failed server revealed that "we have backups" and "we can be back online quickly" are two very different sentences. DRaaS exists to close that gap.

Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) is a cloud-based service that replicates your servers and data to a provider's environment and stands ready to fail them over — bringing your systems back online in minutes or hours — when your primary environment goes down. It's not just a copy of your data; it's a standing, tested ability to *run* your business somewhere else when your main location can't.

This guide explains what DRaaS actually does, how it differs from backup (they are not the same), what drives the cost, and how to compare providers on the only metric that matters: whether you actually recover.

Backup is not disaster recovery

This is the misunderstanding that hurts companies most, so let's be blunt about it. Backup is a copy of your data you can restore from. Disaster recovery is the ability to get your systems running again after an outage. Backup answers "do we still have the data?" Disaster recovery answers "how fast can we operate again?"

A backup might let you restore files — but if the restore takes three days on borrowed hardware while your business sits idle, you have backup without recovery. DRaaS provides the second thing: a replicated, ready-to-run environment you can switch to quickly, not just a data set you eventually restore.

Two numbers define the difference, and every DR conversation should start with them: RTO (Recovery Time Objective) — how quickly you need to be back online — and RPO (Recovery Point Objective) — how much data, measured in time, you can afford to lose. We unpack both in RTO vs. RPO: The Two Numbers That Define Your Disaster Recovery, and they drive nearly every cost decision below.

How DRaaS works

The mechanics are straightforward in concept. DRaaS continuously (or on a schedule) replicates your servers, applications, and data to the provider's cloud environment. Your production systems keep running normally; a synchronized standby copy sits in the provider's infrastructure.

When disaster strikes — hardware failure, ransomware, fire, flood, or extended power loss — you (or the provider) initiate a failover: the standby environment spins up and takes over, and your team works from it while the primary site is repaired or rebuilt. When the primary is ready, you fail back to it. The whole value is that this is pre-built and rehearsed, so recovery is a procedure rather than an improvisation.

The three common models: self-service (the provider supplies the platform; you manage failover), assisted (shared responsibility), and fully managed (the provider handles the entire recovery for you, often as part of a broader managed IT relationship). Smaller teams without deep IT benches usually value managed or assisted models, because a recovery plan you can't execute under pressure isn't a plan.

What DRaaS should cost — and what drives the price

There's no single sticker price, because DRaaS is priced to *your* recovery requirements. The main cost drivers:

• Your RTO and RPO. This is the biggest lever. Near-instant failover with near-zero data loss requires continuous replication and always-on standby capacity — expensive. If you can tolerate a few hours of RTO and some data loss, the cost drops substantially. Don't buy a tighter RTO than the business actually needs.

• How much you protect. Costs scale with the number of servers/workloads, the volume of data, and how often it changes. Protecting only business-critical systems (rather than everything) is a legitimate way to control spend.

• Compute on failover. You're reserving the ability to run in the provider's cloud. Some models charge modestly to keep standby capacity ready and more when you actually spin it up during a test or a real event — and if recovery runs in public cloud, watch for the data-transfer and egress fees that can surface during a failback.

• Managed vs. self-service. Handing the provider responsibility for executing recovery costs more than doing it yourself — and is often worth it.

Pricing is usually a recurring monthly fee based on protected capacity and your recovery targets. The trap is paying for aggressive recovery objectives on non-critical systems. Tiering your workloads — tight RTO/RPO for the crown jewels, relaxed for the rest — is where the money is saved.

How to compare DRaaS providers (the metric most people skip)

Feature lists won't tell you what you need to know. The question that matters is: when we test a real failover, do we actually meet our RTO and RPO? Everything else is secondary.

• Do they test recoveries — and can you? A provider that supports regular, non-disruptive DR testing is worth more than one with a longer feature list. Untested DR is a hope, not a plan. Industry guidance like NIST's contingency planning framework (SP 800-34) is built around exactly this principle: plans must be exercised.

• What are the real, contractual RTO/RPO commitments? Get them in writing with SLAs, not as marketing adjectives like "rapid."

• Ransomware readiness. Modern DR must assume ransomware. Look for immutable (unchangeable) recovery points and clean-recovery capabilities, because attackers now target backups first.

• Where does your data live, and does that meet compliance? Data residency and regulatory requirements shape which providers qualify before price ever enters the picture.

• Failover *and* failback. Some providers make failover smooth and failback painful. You need both to work.

  
  

DRaaS and the bigger continuity picture

DRaaS is a critical piece, but it isn't your whole resilience story. It sits inside broader business continuity — the plan for keeping the organization running, including people, communications, and processes, not just IT systems. It also connects to your infrastructure choices: some companies use colocation as a recovery site, and the hybrid cloud model gives useful flexibility in where recovered workloads run. DR is one layer of a larger design.

Frequently asked questions

Isn't my cloud backup already disaster recovery? No. Backup gives you a copy of your data; DRaaS gives you a ready-to-run environment to operate from while your primary is down. Restoring a backup onto borrowed hardware can take days — that's backup without recovery.

What's a realistic RTO with DRaaS? Depending on what you buy, from minutes to a few hours. Tighter recovery times cost more because they require continuous replication and standby capacity. The right target is the business's actual tolerance, not the tightest number available.

Does DRaaS protect against ransomware? It can, and increasingly must. Look specifically for immutable recovery points and clean-recovery features, since modern ransomware deliberately targets backups and recovery systems.

How much does DRaaS cost? It's a recurring fee driven mainly by your RTO/RPO targets, how much you protect, and whether it's managed or self-service. Tiering workloads by criticality is the main way to keep it affordable.

How often should we test our DR? At least annually, and after any significant change to your environment — more often for critical systems. Untested disaster recovery routinely fails when it's finally needed. A provider that makes testing easy is worth prioritizing.

The bottom line

DRaaS turns "we have backups" into "we can keep operating," which is the promise that actually protects a business. It replicates your environment to the cloud and stands ready to fail over fast when something goes wrong. The cost is driven by how quickly you need to recover and how much you protect — so the smart move is tiering workloads and buying tight recovery only where the business truly needs it. And the only proof that matters is a tested failover that hits your targets.

Because AGI Beacon is vendor-neutral across DRaaS, colocation, and cloud providers, we can right-size your recovery objectives, tier your workloads so you're not overpaying, and compare providers on tested recovery rather than feature sheets. If you're not certain your disaster recovery would actually work under pressure, let's pressure-test it before an incident does.