Backup & Disaster Recovery Services (DRaaS)

We check this during discovery. If the initial full backup will not complete over your available bandwidth in time, we agree a controlled seeding approach before go-live, such as moving the first full backup offline.

We design to your recovery targets, which depend on your workloads, bandwidth, change rate and dependencies. Firm commitments apply only when they are explicitly contracted after scoping and testing.

Not by default. Secure access, such as a hosted firewall VDOM, VPN termination and firewall rules, is scoped and included in your proposal when you need it.

Managed DR includes quarterly test restores from replicas to prove recoverability. A full failover test, where systems run from the DR site as production, is scoped separately and planned with your change control and stakeholders.

Backup as a Service is a managed offsite backup service that keeps an independent copy of your servers in a secure cloud repository, so you can restore after deletion, corruption, ransomware or a site outage. FirstNet BaaS is built on the Veeam Data Platform and delivered and supported by FirstNet, a Platinum Veeam Cloud & Service Provider with Veeam-certified engineers and architects. You decide what gets protected and how long it is kept, without building or running a second site.

FirstNet BaaS protects VMware and Hyper-V virtual machines and physical servers, which are backed up using agents. Workloads can be on-premises or in a private or public cloud. You can restore individual files, application items or a full virtual machine or server, depending on the workload and how the backup is configured. Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and laptop data are covered by a separate cloud backup service, so the two are often used together in mixed environments.

Foundation and Advanced are two editions of the Veeam Data Cloud Vault that stores your offsite backups. Foundation uses locally redundant storage in a single region and is the cost-optimised choice where single-region resilience is acceptable. Advanced typically uses zone-redundant storage across multiple availability zones for higher durability, includes more inclusive data retrieval and offers a broader choice of regions. Both editions are encrypted and support immutability. Regions are offered as 'core' or 'non-core' catalogues, and the extended non-core list can include South Africa, subject to availability.

With self-managed BaaS, your IT team runs the backups day to day using the Veeam tools provided, including monitoring jobs, fixing failures and performing restores, while FirstNet manages the cloud repository and infrastructure. With fully managed BaaS, FirstNet designs and sets up the backup jobs, monitors them and vault capacity, remediates failures within the agreed scope, assists with or performs restores, runs periodic test restores and delivers backup health reports. In both models FirstNet runs the cloud backup infrastructure.

Disaster Recovery as a Service keeps a ready-to-run copy of your critical servers in a second site, so you can start them and keep operating if your primary site goes down. FirstNet DRaaS replicates your virtual machines into a FirstNet data centre in South Africa using Veeam Cloud Connect Replication, with compute, memory and replica storage reserved for you in advance. Backup gets your data back; DRaaS keeps your systems running during an outage. Many organisations need both.

Not through replication. Physical-to-virtual and physical-to-physical replication are not supported, so DRaaS replication is for VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines. Physical servers are protected with Backup as a Service instead, and in a disaster their backup data can be restored into new virtual machines in the FirstNet DR environment. This still makes physical workloads recoverable, but you should expect a longer recovery time than with VM-based replication.

With Platform-Only DRaaS, FirstNet provides the DR infrastructure, reserved capacity, replication tenancy and platform support, while your team configures the replication jobs from your own Veeam console, starts failover and failback, and plans DR tests. Managed DR is an optional add-on where FirstNet performs defined operational work: monitoring replica jobs, quarterly test restores by default, reporting and, depending on tier, runbooks and assisted failover and failback. Support hours and the exact managed scope depend on the service tier you contract.

No. Managed DR can only be added when Veeam Backup & Replication is licensed and provided by FirstNet under the Veeam Cloud & Service Provider (VCSP) programme. If you use Veeam licences you bought elsewhere, you can still take Platform-Only DRaaS and run replication and failover yourself. Managed DR becomes available if you move to FirstNet-provided VCSP licensing through an approved migration. FirstNet does not sell standalone Veeam licences.

First, you declare the incident and confirm which systems need to be recovered. Next, the replicas are started in the FirstNet DR site; on Platform-Only DRaaS you start the failover, and on Managed DR FirstNet assists as contracted. Users and administrators then reach the recovered systems through the agreed network model and secure access. Your systems run from the DR site while the primary site is repaired. Finally, services are moved back in a controlled failback using a planned runbook and change control.

It is reserved. FirstNet DRaaS sets aside virtual CPU, memory and replica storage for each protected workload in advance, rather than relying on capacity becoming available when a disaster happens. This keeps recovery planned and predictable, even during events that affect several customers at once. Your reserved capacity is reviewed as your workloads change, and it is resized when servers are added or grow so that it stays sufficient for the systems in scope.