Windows 365 Disaster Recovery Plus Promises Cloud PC Comebacks In 30 Minutes

Microsoft has launched Windows 365 Disaster Recovery Plus, a service designed to rapidly bring Cloud PCs back online in the event of an outage.

The preview is currently available as a licensed add-on for Windows 365 Enterprise, and goes GA in the spring.

It's pitched at users in desperate need of higher disaster recovery performance in the case of unplanned downtme, as can occasionally happen to victims customers of Microsoft's online services.

Microsoft launched Windows 365 cross-region disaster recovery in July 2024. That service created snapshots of Cloud PCs, which were placed in customer-defined locations. When a disaster recovery event was triggered, temporary copies of the Cloud PCs could be accessed in the back region.

There were some limitations. Although a user will have access to all installed applications and settings based on the latest restore point, no work is saved; Microsoft advises customers to use a service like OneDrive or SharePoint. In addition, the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) can be as long as four hours for Cloud PC tenants with up to 50,000 Cloud PCs in a region.

The inability to save work remains unchanged, however, selecting the Disaster Recovery Plus option shaves off some recovery time, bringing RTO down to 30 minutes for Cloud PC tenants with up to 50,000 Cloud PCs in a region.

Typically previews are for admins to try out the service free of charge, we've asked Microsoft to confirm this. We've also how much more customers can expect to pay for the Plus version.

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The timing of the announcement is unfortunate. Microsoft 365 had a major outage in January, and the company's Outlook email service was degraded just this past weekend following what the Windows giant delicately referred to as "a problematic code change."

Microsoft has plenty of experience in disaster recovery, as do its customers.

Disaster recovery planning is a standard part of the enterprise administrator's job description. Microsoft also has plenty of competition when it comes to maintaining productivity if something bad happens. Citrix, for example, would point to its managed Desktop as a service product as being useful both in day-to-day and disaster recovery scenarios.

Administrators charged with running a Windows 365 estate will welcome the addition of a licensed add-on that will get Cloud PCs up and running in 30 minutes rather than potentially four hours.

Everyone else, however, has already defined and recently tested their disaster recovery plans. Right? ®