Backup & Disaster Recovery

Backup and disaster recovery for enterprise cloud

Designed for resilience, governed by clear recovery objectives

Backup and disaster recovery are core elements of enterprise risk management. Effective strategies are defined by explicit recovery objectives, architectural decisions, and operational discipline — not by default platform promises.

whitesky provides the building blocks to design and operate enterprise-grade backup and disaster recovery architectures while keeping control with the organization.

Backup and disaster recovery as architectural decisions

Enterprises approach data protection differently depending on:

  • business criticality
  • regulatory requirements
  • acceptable recovery time (RTO)
  • acceptable data loss (RPO)

whitesky does not impose a single model. Instead, it enables enterprises to design backup and recovery strategies that align with their risk profile.

Built-in backup capabilities

whitesky provides integrated mechanisms to protect workloads at platform level, including:

  • snapshot-based backups of virtual machines
  • storage-level consistency where applicable
  • retention policies aligned with enterprise requirements
  • backup data stored separately from primary workloads

These capabilities provide a foundation for operational backup without requiring external tooling.

Separation of failure domains

Effective recovery requires separation.

whitesky supports separation across:

  • compute and storage resources
  • availability zones or server blocks
  • physical locations
  • administrative and operational access

This reduces correlated failures and supports resilient designs.

Disaster recovery across locations

For enterprises requiring higher resilience, whitesky supports multi-location recovery architectures:

  • secondary sites for disaster recovery
  • controlled replication strategies
  • planned failover and failback procedures
  • alignment with defined RPO and RTO targets

Location selection and topology remain enterprise decisions.

Virtual machine replication across sites

Disaster recovery designs often require replicating virtual machines between sites to reduce recovery time and operational complexity. whitesky supports replication-based approaches that align with enterprise RPO/RTO objectives and multi-location architectures.

Supported options today (third-party replication)

Today, the most supported approach for virtual machine replication uses third-party replication tooling such as Mobiti and RackWare.

These tools can be used to replicate virtual machines:

  • between whitesky cloud locations, and/or
  • between whitesky and other virtualization platforms

This enables controlled cutover and failover strategies where workloads can be brought online in a secondary site with minimal downtime, depending on application coordination and replication policy.

Roadmap: native asynchronous VM replication

whitesky is planning to add native asynchronous virtual machine replication across sites. The intent is to provide a platform-level replication capability that reduces external dependencies while keeping replication policy and governance under enterprise control.

Roadmap: geo-redundant cloud locations

In addition to asynchronous replication, whitesky is planning geo-redundant cloud locations designed to span multiple datacenters.

The goal is a deployment model similar to “regions” in hyperscaler terminology, where:

  • a single cloud location spans multiple datacenters, and
  • data is synchronously replicated between those datacenters

This includes synchronous replication of both:

  • block data, and
  • object data

This model is intended to reduce correlated failure risk and simplify high-availability designs for enterprise workloads, while preserving locality and operational control.

Integration with enterprise backup strategies

whitesky does not expose the hypervisor layer to third-party agentless backup software. This is a deliberate architectural choice to maintain strong isolation, predictable operations, and platform integrity.

Enterprises can integrate backup strategies in the following supported ways:

Built-in platform backups

whitesky provides platform-level backup mechanisms, including snapshot-based protection of virtual machines and storage-level separation between primary workloads and backup data.

These capabilities form the baseline for operational backup and recovery.

Agent-based backups inside the workload

Enterprises can deploy backup agents inside virtual machines where required by policy or tooling standards.

This approach:

  • keeps backup logic within the workload security boundary
  • avoids privileged access to the virtualization layer
  • aligns with strict isolation and compliance requirements

Recovery media-based restore workflows

Existing enterprise backup solutions that support recovery media (for example bootable restore environments) can be used to restore systems into whitesky-managed virtual machines.

This enables:

  • reuse of existing backup repositories
  • controlled restore procedures
  • gradual migration or coexistence strategies

This model avoids hidden dependencies between the cloud platform and external backup software, and ensures that backup and recovery processes remain explainable, testable, and auditable.

Testing, validation, and auditability

Backup strategies are only effective if they are tested.

whitesky enables:

  • controlled restore testing
  • validation of recovery procedures
  • documentation of backup and recovery workflows
  • auditability for internal and external reviews

Recovery processes remain observable and verifiable.

Operational clarity and responsibility

As with other aspects of the platform, responsibilities are explicit:

  • whitesky

    • provides and operates platform-level backup capabilities
    • maintains infrastructure reliability
    • ensures platform lifecycle consistency

  • Enterprise IT

    • defines backup policies and retention
    • selects recovery architectures
    • validates recovery procedures
    • governs compliance and risk acceptance

This clarity is essential for governance and audits.

Avoiding false assurances

Enterprise resilience is not achieved through abstract guarantees.

whitesky avoids:

  • opaque “always-on” claims
  • hidden dependencies
  • recovery models that cannot be explained or tested

Instead, resilience is designed, documented, and operated consciously.

Delivery model: managed today, software tomorrow

whitesky is delivered as a managed platform today, ensuring consistent operation of backup and recovery capabilities.

A software edition is rolling out in 2026, allowing enterprises or trusted partners to operate the same platform independently if required.

Backup and disaster recovery architectures remain consistent across both delivery models.

Why enterprises use whitesky for backup and recovery

  • explicit control over recovery objectives
  • separation of failure domains
  • multi-location recovery support
  • replication options across sites (third-party today, native roadmap)
  • compatibility with existing backup strategies
  • audit-friendly and explainable designs

Next steps

  • Define or review your RPO and RTO requirements
  • Identify candidate workloads for multi-location protection
  • Design a backup and disaster recovery blueprint with whitesky