Disaster recovery on Replic8
Standby recovery capacity in-region: when a server or site is lost, workloads spin up on Replic8 Cloud instead of waiting on replacement hardware.
Backup answers "can we get the data back." Disaster recovery answers "can we keep working while the server or the site is gone" — and those are genuinely different problems with different solutions. Restoring a large backup onto replacement hardware you still have to source, ship and configure can take days, which is fine for a deleted folder and unacceptable when the file server or the accounting system is down. Replic8 Cloud keeps standby recovery capacity ready in-region, so instead of waiting on hardware you don't have, affected workloads spin up on that capacity and your team keeps working while the underlying problem gets fixed.
This is where recovery time objective and recovery point objective become concrete rather than theoretical: RTO is how long you can tolerate being down, RPO is how much recent data you can afford to lose, and a DR plan built on Replic8 is what lets us commit to defined numbers for both instead of an open-ended "we'll get you back as soon as we can." Because the standby capacity sits in-region, recovery doesn't depend on international bandwidth or an overseas provider's own incident queue.
Hardware fails, ransomware happens, people delete things. What separates an incident from a crisis is whether your data comes back — quickly, completely and provably. We build backup and disaster recovery on Acronis Cyber Protect, with recovery capacity on Replic8's primary and secondary Gaborone data centres, and we rehearse the restore so the first real test isn't the day you need it.
Acronis Cyber Protect
One agent for backup, anti-malware and patch awareness across servers, workstations and Microsoft 365 — managed centrally by our support desk.
The Acronis product line, by business size
Acronis Cyber Protect scales from a single small business to multi-site enterprises and industrial plant — we match the edition to the client, not the other way round.
Off-site & immutable copies
Backup copies replicated off your premises to our local Acronis storage cluster in Botswana by default — keeping regulated data in-country — with immutability so ransomware can't encrypt its own escape route. Acronis's EU cloud storage is available instead when a client specifically requests it.
Recovery rehearsals
Scheduled restore tests with timed results — because a backup that has never been restored is a hope, not a plan.
Aren't backup and disaster recovery the same thing?
No — and the difference is measured in days of downtime. Backup answers "can we get the files back?"; disaster recovery answers "how fast is the business running again?". A company with perfect backups but no rehearsed recovery plan can still be down for a week waiting on hardware and guesswork. Backup is a component of DR, never a substitute.
What do RTO and RPO actually mean?
RPO is how much data you can afford to lose, counted backwards from the incident — it decides backup frequency. RTO is how long you can afford to be down, counted forwards — it decides the recovery architecture. There is no universal number: a nightly backup means up to a full day of invoices re-keyed. If that is unacceptable, the targets tighten and the design changes.
Microsoft 365 is in the cloud — isn't it already backed up?
No. Microsoft guarantees the service stays up; your data remains your responsibility — their own service agreement recommends third-party backup. Replication is not backup: a deleted or ransomware-encrypted file replicates as deleted or encrypted, and retention windows lapse. Independent Microsoft 365 backup is one of the cheapest risks to close.
How often should we test that backups actually restore?
Monthly spot restores, quarterly full-system restores, and at least one full disaster-recovery rehearsal a year — more for critical systems. Ransomware raises the bar: the test must prove your immutable copies survive and restore into a clean environment. A backup that has never been restored is a hope, not a plan — so we rehearse on schedule and keep the evidence.
Can we recover from ransomware without paying?
Yes — if immutable, off-site backup copies exist, your recovery point is recent enough, and the restore has been rehearsed in isolation. Paying is no guarantee: decryptors fail and the data has often already been stolen. Recovery-readiness is also now a cyber-insurance precondition, so the same work protects you twice.
Platforms: Acronis Cyber Protect · Replic8 Cloud · Microsoft 365 · Azure