Microsoft has brought disaster recover as a service (DRaaS) to its Azure cloud under the name Azure Site Recovery. All communication to the disaster recovery service is encrypted, in response to fears about NSA surveillance.

The Microsoft Azure Site Recovery service automates the replication of VMs based on policies set and controlled by the user. It can coordinate and manage the replication of data by integrating with existing technologies including Hyper-V Replica, System Center and SQL Server AlwaysOn. Any data replicated to Azure as the secondary site is encrypted and can also be encrypted when data is at-rest.

Automatic backup
According to Microsoft one of the primary roadblocks to the protection of applications is the expense of establishing and maintaining a secondary site for disaster recovery. The Azure Site Recovery platform can monitor the state of System Center Virtual Machine Manager clouds continuously and remotely from the platform.

In the event of an outage in the primary data center Azure Site Recovery can automate the orderly recovery of services. VMs can be brought up in an orchestrated fashion to help restore service quickly.

Azure expansion
Microsoft has been focusing on its Azure services recently with the opening of Azure facilities in Brazil, Iowa and Japan.

The company most recently announced an expansion into the Indian market during a visit from CEO Satya Nadella. Nadella did not state how many data centers would be built in the country or where they would be located but did confirm they would be available by the end of 2015.