Acronis DRaaS: Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery Guide (2026)

Acronis DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service) is a cloud-based disaster recovery service that keeps ready-to-run copies of your production servers in the Acronis cloud, springing into action within minutes when a disaster strikes. Thanks to the RunVM engine, it offers RPO and RTO targets under 15 minutes, runbook-based automation, and failover to a clean recovery point against ransomware.

What is Acronis DRaaS?

Acronis DRaaS is a service that not only stores backups of your critical workloads but keeps them ready as runnable virtual machines in the Acronis cloud. In the event of a hardware failure, ransomware, or natural disaster, the production environment fails over to the cloud and operations continue with minimal downtime.

Even when your data is safe in classic backup, rebuilding your physical servers and restoring the data after they crash can take hours or even days. DRaaS closes this gap: instead of restoring from backup, you switch instantly to a copy waiting ready in the cloud. This difference is critical for business continuity.

Sora Yazılım determines which systems should fall under DRaaS scope based on business impact analysis and integrates them into your Acronis Cyber Protect environment. Disaster recovery is a natural extension of the backup strategy.

Another advantage of the DRaaS model is that it brings disaster recovery within reach of small and medium-sized organizations. The secondary data center investment that in the past only large organizations could afford turns into a monthly subscription cost thanks to the cloud-based model. As a result, even an SMB gains enterprise-class business continuity assurance. This democratization is a critical opportunity, especially for SMBs going digital in Turkey.

DRaaS versus traditional DR

Traditional disaster recovery is a capital-intensive investment requiring a second data center and continuous maintenance. DRaaS, on the other hand, works on a cloud-based, pay-as-you-go model; it delivers fast failover and low RTO without requiring separate hardware.

For disaster recovery to be effective, threat detection must also be strong. When Acronis Advanced Security + EDR is positioned together with DRaaS for early detection of attacks, the attack is both stopped and, if necessary, a return to a clean state is possible.

How does it work?

Acronis DRaaS creates recovery servers in the cloud from backups of production servers. At the moment of an incident, failover is performed to these servers; a site-to-site VPN establishes a secure connection between the local network and the cloud, and runbooks automate the startup sequence.

The RunVM engine converts backup images directly into runnable virtual machines, delivering the fastest failover times. Runbooks are sets of instructions that define a dependency sequence such as "database server first, then application server, then web tier"; this brings up complex environments consistently.

In partial failover scenarios, servers that remain on the local site continue to communicate with servers moved to the cloud over a site-to-site VPN. This makes it possible to migrate tightly coupled systems piece by piece. On the management side, consolidating backup and DR in a single console increases operational visibility together with Acronis Advanced Management.

Failback after failover is also part of the plan. Once the incident is resolved, the systems running in the cloud are migrated back to the local environment consistently; the data changes that occur during this process are synchronized. A well-designed runbook includes both failover and failback steps, so the organization returns to its normal state in a controlled way and without data loss.

RPO, RTO, and performance

With flexible backup frequency policies, Acronis DRaaS offers an RPO (data loss tolerance) under 15 minutes and, thanks to the RunVM engine, an RTO (recovery time) target under 15 minutes. These values are decisive for organizations with SLA requirements.

RPO expresses the maximum acceptable data loss in an incident; RTO expresses the time it takes for systems to become operational again. These two metrics measure how well the disaster recovery plan meets business requirements. Acronis lowers RPO by increasing backup frequency and lowers RTO through fast startup with RunVM.

What matters is that these targets are tiered according to system criticality. While minutes matter for systems such as core banking or a hospital information system, looser targets for secondary systems optimize cost. Sora Yazılım designs this tiering according to business impact.

RPO and RTO targets are not only technical but financial decisions. Lower targets require more frequent backups and more cloud resources, and therefore increase cost. The right balance is found by expressing each system's business impact in monetary terms: if the cost of a one-hour outage is higher than the DR premium to be paid for that system, the investment proves itself. For this reason, DRaaS design is a process carried out jointly by the technical team and the business units.

Ransomware and test failover

In a ransomware attack, Acronis DRaaS prevents reinfection by failing over to an unencrypted, clean recovery point. The test failover feature, in turn, makes it possible to regularly validate the disaster recovery plan without affecting the production environment.

Ransomware is one of the biggest causes of downtime for modern organizations. DRaaS offers fast switching to a clean point taken before the attack, making it possible to return to operations without paying a ransom. This also requires that backups be protected against attack; Acronis's immutable backup options come into play at this point.

A disaster recovery plan is reliable only when it is tested regularly. The principle "an untested backup is not a backup" applies to DR as well. Test failover proves the plan works without experiencing a real incident and strengthens teams' response reflexes.

The foundation of resilience against ransomware is that the backups themselves are also protected. Attackers now target backups first, because a clean backup removes the pressure to pay a ransom. Acronis's immutable backup options prevent backups from being deleted or modified for a defined period. When used together with DRaaS, this provides the assurance of "being able to return from a clean point within minutes even if an attack occurs" and makes business continuity independent of the attacker.

Enterprise scenarios and industries

Acronis DRaaS plays a decisive role in industries with low tolerance for downtime: finance, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and the public sector. In these industries, outages measured in minutes lead to losses of both revenue and reputation, and in some cases to regulatory penalties.

In healthcare and hospital environments, patient information systems (HIS) must run without interruption; in a hardware failure or ransomware attack, DRaaS moves systems to the cloud within minutes, allowing patient care to continue. In finance and banking, regulatory compliance requires a provable disaster recovery plan; the test failover and reporting capabilities of DRaaS produce this evidence. In manufacturing and industry, a halt in ERP and MES systems stops the production line; DRaaS places these critical systems in the priority recovery tier.

In retail and e-commerce, an outage during peak seasons is a direct loss of sales; DRaaS safeguards business continuity during campaign periods. In public-sector institutions, uninterrupted service to citizens and data sovereignty are priorities. The common denominator in all these scenarios is that acceptable downtime is defined according to the business requirement and DRaaS targets are tiered accordingly.

How is a DRaaS plan built?

An effective DRaaS plan consists of business impact analysis, tiering of systems by criticality, defining RPO/RTO targets, runbook design, and regular test failover steps. The plan is not a one-time setup but a continuously managed process.

The first step is business impact analysis: how much does the business suffer if a given system goes down? This analysis separates critical systems from secondary ones and ensures the investment is made in the right place. In the second step, measurable RPO and RTO targets are set for each system tier. In the third step, runbooks defining the failover sequence and dependencies are designed; for example, authentication and database servers must come up before the application tier.

The fourth step is regular testing of the plan. Test failover validates that the plan truly works without affecting production and strengthens teams' response reflexes. The final step is continuous improvement: as the infrastructure changes, runbooks are updated and new systems are brought into scope. Sora Yazılım runs these five steps end to end and keeps the plan alive with regular DR drills.

Licensing and the Sora approach

Acronis DRaaS is an Advanced pack added on top of Cyber Protect Cloud and is licensed on a pay-as-you-go model. It can be configured with Acronis Cloud, Microsoft Azure, or hybrid targets; cost is sized according to the number of protected servers and resources.

DRaaS is generally 3-5 times more costly than standard backup; however, for workloads where RTO/RPO are critical, this investment quickly pays off when compared with the cost of an outage. In modern infrastructures that also cover AI and GPU workloads, DR planning should be considered together with NVIDIA DGX alternative server decisions for business continuity.

Sora Yazılım determines which systems should fall under DRaaS scope based on business impact, designs the runbooks, and runs regular test failover processes. For details, you can take a look at our Acronis DRaaS product page.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Acronis DRaaS?

It is a cloud-based disaster recovery service that keeps ready-to-run copies of your production servers in the Acronis cloud and provides failover within minutes at the moment of an incident.

Are DRaaS and backup the same thing?

No. Backup protects data; DRaaS quickly brings systems back up in a running state. DRaaS is a business continuity layer added on top of backup.

How low can RPO and RTO be?

Thanks to flexible backup policies and the RunVM engine, Acronis offers RPO and RTO targets under 15 minutes. Actual values depend on the configuration of the environment.

How does it protect against ransomware?

It prevents reinfection by failing over to a clean recovery point taken before the attack. Protection is strengthened when used together with immutable backups.

Does test failover affect the production environment?

No. Test failover runs in an isolated environment and validates the DR plan without affecting production systems.

Which clouds does DRaaS run on?

Acronis Cloud, Microsoft Azure, or a hybrid setup are supported, and all are managed from a single console.

Conclusion

Acronis DRaaS turns backup into a true business continuity solution: with RTO/RPO targets under 15 minutes, runbook-based automation, clean recovery against ransomware, and tests that do not affect production, it minimizes downtime risk. For critical systems, this is not insurance but a necessity.

To assess your organization's disaster recovery maturity and define measurable RTO/RPO targets, you can schedule a free discovery call with the Sora Yazılım team.