When it comes to picking a cloud disaster recovery service provider, you can make an easy choice by simply picking the one with the lowest rates per GB, right? Not so fast. Even if a cloud disaster recovery provider quotes you mere cents on the dollar per GB, the provider may have a costly lineup of hidden fees that aren’t obvious until you get the bill. A few key questions can help you avoid these fees by choosing a provider that includes them.
Top 4 Questions to Uncover Hidden Fees
Are there additional fees for a recovery environment? A recovery environment is essential when your network goes down and you have no access to the usual resources that keep your business’s computers up and running. These include computing power, memory, storage and bandwidth, all things that are part of a virtual data center your cloud disaster recovery plan can provide. Your question is, however, does the provider include access to this virtual data center in the base cost or will you be charged an additional monthly fee and/or a per-use as the need arises?
Are there additional fees for your retention? Service providers can offer a fixed monthly price based on how long you need to retain your data, while others may adjust your rates and fees based on your data’s daily change rate. The daily change rate refers to the percentage of your data that’s expected to change on a daily basis, a rate that varies by industry, nature of the data and other factors.
If loads of data change on a regular basis, you may end up paying loads of extra fees to keep your backup up to date. This holds true even though it’s rare for businesses to need to recover its entire cache of backup data when recovery services are required.
Will you be charged additional fees for a failover event? In theory, cloud disaster recovery services were created to give you support, backup and access to resources you need in the event of a total disaster. In reality, service providers may charge additional fees if you ever need to take them up on those services.
Is the cost of local protection for fast, local restores included? Even if you’re paying a big-time monthly rate for big-time cloud disaster recovery services, you may be subjected to additional costs related to the local data storage or “repository” or “appliance” required to support fast local restores.
Suddenly the low cost per GB can add up to an astronomical amount of money if these four services aren’t included in your cloud disaster recovery plan.
A Global Data Vault plan includes all of these services – and more. With no hidden costs, no vacillating calculations and no surprises if you actually need to use the services your plan was created to provide.
Read more about our Global Data Vault pricing and billing policies before you make your mind up.
Global Data Vault makes it easy to pick a cloud disaster recovery provider by offering one lower monthly fee for everything. It doesn’t get much easier than that. Contact us today.
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