In this configuration, the cloud services provider hosts its customer’s primary environment in one data center and protects its VMs and their data by continuously replicating to an object store or Blob Storage in another one of its cloud data centers. In the event of an incident, VMs and data are recovered from the object store located in the second data center and can be recovered to either data center via rehydration (DR). This protection can be bi-directional, with data center “A” protecting data center “B”, and vice-versa.