Wednesday, 20 May 2015 00:00

Poll among IT directors showed data protection soft spots in virtual environments

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b2ap3_thumbnail_iStock_000019221219XSmall.jpgVeeam survey “Report on data protection in virtual environments, 2013” considering the complexities and cost-related issues faced by IT departments that pursue data protection.

New York, March 11, 2013 — Veeam Software enterprise, a supplier of innovative solutions in data protection, recovery and management of VMware vSphere® and Microsoft Hyper-V, announced the results of its annual data protection report.
It is already the third survey of Veeam and it is devoted to impact of virtualization on data protection, backup and recovery trends. According to an independent poll of 500 IT directors (CIO) of the USA and Europe, companies continue not using all advantages of data protection offered by virtualization, and they do not take into account all difficulties and additional costs using it. In a number of industries the performance of data protection systems has even reduced since the last survey conducted in 2011.

Main conclusions:

• 68% of IT directors think that backup and recovery tools that they use will become less effective in the future as the amount of data and servers in their organization grows.
• Recovery of virtual server is not faster that of the physical one: 5 and 6 hours, respectively. There is a tendency towards decrease of recovery speed: in 2011 the recovery took 4 and 5 hours.
• Every downtime hour costs $324,793 on average. It means that downtime per incident costs $1,6 mln. on average.
• Recovery of separate files and enclosures can take even more time. For example, the recovery of emails takes 14 hours on average.
• Regardless of time consumed, companies have problems with data recovery in more than 1 out of 6 cases.
• 88% of IT directors face difficulties with backup and recovery. For 84% the system is complicated, and 87% of respondents think that the system they use is too expensive. This points to the fact that data protection and recovery remain a challenging endeavour.
• 58% of IT directors are planning to replace virtual environment backup tools by 2014.

“Fears of IT directors seem to be justified at first sight: despite a possibility of a faster and more effective data protection process offered by virtualization as well as advantages available owing to modern tools, the recovery time has increased as compared with 2011. This clear loss happens for two reasons. Firstly, virtual infrastructure constantly expands: nowadays a virtual environment became the basis of the majority of IT infrastructures and it tends to grow. Secondly, enterprises don’t update their data protection systems to the necessary level. For example, the majority of enterprises still use special agents for backup and recovery. Such solution fits physical environment but is not at all necessary and justified for virtual infrastructure. As long as enterprises will look at virtualization only from the perspective of physical environment, they will not be able to utilize its full potential”— thinks Ratmir Timashev, President and executive director Veeam.

At present, number of virtual servers in enterprises is 51%, at the same time it is expected that by 2014 then umber would reach 63%. IT directors are not blind, and they see problems posed by growing virtual infrastructure.

88% of CIOs experience capability-related challenges with backup and recovery, 84% related with complexity and 87% with cost. 77% of enterprises that use special agents for backup, experience difficulties in using data backup and recovery technology. It refers to: too complicated management (43%), frequent backup errors (32%), recovery (28%), technology costs (20%) and agents that slowdown server’s performance (18%).

One of the signs that companies begin to realize problems is the fact that 58% of respondents are planning to replace their virtual server backup tools by 2014. The driving force of this was the financial implication. 51% of respondents will replace tools with purpose of reducing TCO (total cost for organization) and 42% want to reduce their software and hardware costs. Main reasons behind the replacement are complexity (47%), inability to ensure high RTO (32%) and RPO (24%) indicators.

“Virtualization technology reaches its turning point – says Ratmit Timashev. – Companies have now realized the advantages this technology can bring along. And now they begin to realize the real capacity of the technology, if managed properly. Modern data protection tools designed specifically to suit virtualization purposes, can uncover this potential as well as eliminate many existing problems, complexities and cost-related issues faced by IT departments. For example, reduction of cost of processes like replication, allows companies to protect vital infrastructure objects even more against server downtime and ultimately save millions of dollars. Data recovery virtualization will allow companies to test more backups, whereas today only 7% are tested. The most important thing is that using appropriate tools will help IT directors to recover a separate file or full server for less than 5 hours,” — explains Ratmir Timashev.

About the survey:

Vanson Bourne, an independent marketing agency specializing on market research, conducted an internet poll during November-December 2012 of 500 IT directors from the USA, Great Britain, Germany and France with total employed staff exceeding 1000. You can download full text from www.veeam.com/survey.

Last modified on Wednesday, 20 May 2015 14:37
Data Recovery Expert

Viktor S., Ph.D. (Electrical/Computer Engineering), was hired by DataRecoup, the international data recovery corporation, in 2012. Promoted to Engineering Senior Manager in 2010 and then to his current position, as C.I.O. of DataRecoup, in 2014. Responsible for the management of critical, high-priority RAID data recovery cases and the application of his expert, comprehensive knowledge in database data retrieval. He is also responsible for planning and implementing SEO/SEM and other internet-based marketing strategies. Currently, Viktor S., Ph.D., is focusing on the further development and expansion of DataRecoup’s major internet marketing campaign for their already successful proprietary software application “Data Recovery for Windows” (an application which he developed).

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