Virtualization can transform data protection

According to a Vanson Bourne survey of 500 CIOs virtualization has the potential to transform data protection. In order to achieve this, greater strides need to be made in server replication; particularly in support of disaster recovery, an area where IT risk is escalating.

Key findings:

• 94% of CIOs say virtualization can transform data protection strategies
• Top three barriers preventing increased server replication include cost of hardware (given by 60% of respondents), cost of replication software (52%) and complexity (42%)
• For enterprises that deploy server replication, in the event of outages CIOs estimate cost savings on average of $417,391 per hour
• 87% of CIOs say that recovery times from large-scale disaster are growing as the number of business critical servers within the enterprise increases.

Server replication, unlike general backup, is a process of copying data to production standard hardware that can be brought quickly online in the event of an outage.

The top reasons for server replication include: protection from data loss (given by 85% of respondents), protection from hardware failure (70%), protection from regular human error (49%) and protection from data centre failure (49%).

Currently 22% of enterprises do not use such an approach. However, in those enterprises that do use server replication it only protects on average 26% of business critical servers.

Worryingly, CIOs estimate the cost of outage to the remaining 74% of the business critical server estate that is not replicated at $436,189 per hour. With the average server recovery time at 4 hours, this means that each major outage of business-critical data costs an enterprise over $1.7 million.