Symantec research reveals IT spending more on Disaster Recovery
recovery testing will impact their organizations’ customers and nearly one third (27 percent) reported that such testing could impact their organization’s sales and revenue. Symantec recommends that organizations implement disaster recovery testing methods that can be run frequently and without disruption to business operations. Symantec believes that people and processes are the main reason tests fail, pointing to the need for more automation.
Virtualization still a major challenge
Sixty-four percent of worldwide respondents reported that virtualization is causing them to reevaluate their disaster recovery plans. This is up from 55 percent in 2008. Still, nearly a third (27 percent) of organizations do not test virtual environments as part of their disaster recovery initiatives. This number has improved in the past year, lowering from more than one-third (35 percent) of organizations who did not test in 2008. Additionally, more than one-third (36 percent) of data on virtualized systems is not regularly backed up, showing no improvement in the past year (37 percent in 2008). Over half of the respondents cited lack of backup storage capacity and automated recovery tools as top challenges to protecting data in virtual environments.
In addition, the study found that globally, more than half of respondents cited: Lack of storage management tools as the top challenge in protecting mission critical data and applications in virtual environments (53 percent)
Resource constraints such as people, budget, and space as the top challenges to backing up virtual machines suggesting a need for greater automation and the ability to leverage existing IT investments in order to lower costs (51 percent)
Recommendations
As demonstrated over multiple years of this study, lack of resources continues to be an issue, yet the costs of downtime are staggering. Organizations can also do a better job at curbing the costs of downtime by implementing more automation tools that minimize human involvement and address other weaknesses in their disaster recovery plans.
Because disaster recovery testing is invaluable, but can significantly impact business – including customers and revenue – organizations should seek to improve the success of testing by evaluating and implementing testing methods which are non-disruptive.
Finally, organizations should include those responsible for virtualization into disaster recovery plans, especially testing and backup initiatives. Virtual environments should be treated the same as a physical server, showing the need for organizations to adopt more cross-platform and cross-environment tools, or standardizing on fewer platforms.
“This year’s Symantec-sponsored research clearly identifies key issues, hidden risks and best practices in implementing DR. While some aspects are trending well, the impact of downtime is greater than ever before,” said Rob Soderbery, senior vice president of Symantec’s Storage and Availability Management Group. “The surging cost of downtime places greater emphasis on business – which means more pressure on IT. If organizations are not protecting virtual environments, not testing their DR plans and seeing one out every four tests fail then something needs to change to better manage risk to the business. Organizations should implement solutions that address these needs while allowing them to leverage existing assets.”
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