SMEs are experiencing significant issues with the cost, complexity and lack of capabilities of their data protection for virtual environments.
In particular, 85% of SMBs are experiencing cost-related challenges with backup and recovery, 83% with lack of capabilities and 80% with complexity. This means there is a maximum of 15% of SMBs that currently have no issues with data protection.
This is according to Veeam Software’s SMB Virtualisation Data Protection Report, polling 500 SMEs in the US and Europe, and designed to explore the impact of virtualisation on SMBs’ data protection, backup and recovery strategies.
Other key findings include:
* Recovery of SMBs’ virtual servers is only a little faster than physical servers, at 4 hours 21 minutes and 4 hours 51 minutes respectively;
* Recovery of individual files such as emails, takes up to 12 hours eight minutes. This may be because 62% of SMBs often have to recover more than needed to retrieve a single file or application item;
* 67% of SMBs’ backup tools use agents, which can add to complexity: 76% of those SMBs encounter problems such as difficulty managing agents, slow performance and both backup and recovery failing too often;
* 63% of SMBs believe their backup and recovery tools will become less effective as the amount of data and servers in their organisation grows;
* 41% of SMBs stated that downtime in the event of an IT failure costs $150 000 or more per hour: meaning that outages can cost these organisations $600 000 or more based on the recovery times given;
* More than one in six (17%) recoveries of backed-up machines cause SMBs problems, increasing recovery times and the cost of downtime. This is not surprising considering only 8% are tested;
* Currently, an average of 33% of SMBs’ virtual infrastructure is not backed-up; and
* 55% of SMBs are planning to change their backup tool for virtual servers by 2014.
“More and more, SMBs are being subjected to the same IT challenges and business pressures as large enterprises,” says Ratmir Timashev, president and CEO of Veeam.
“As such, any disruption to their IT infrastructure can have severe consequences. This is why it’s particularly worrying that the vast majority of SMBs reported cost, complexity and capability challenges with backup and recovery. When you also consider that one in six recoveries simply don’t work, it’s clear that the issue of data protection is a ticking time bomb in the SMB community.”
Eighty five percent of SMBs identified cost-related challenges with their backup and recovery of virtual environments, including: high ongoing management costs (51%), expensive licensing models (48%) and backups either requiring or using too much storage (44%).
Meanwhile, 83% reported capability-based challenges, including backups taking too long (40%), recovery taking too long (34%, suggesting that the majority are happy with 4 hours’ recovery time), difficulty recovering virtual servers (25%) and file- and application-level recovery being too difficult (22%).
Lastly, 80% of SMBs are facing complexity-related challenges with their data protection, including: backups needing ongoing management (52%), too many virtual servers to backup (35%) and backup tools being difficult to configure and use (32%).
At the same time, SMBs are looking to solve these issues: 55% are planning to change their backup tool for virtual serves in this period, with the average time to change being only 10 months. The reasons given to replace their current tools include total cost of ownership (46%), complexity (44%), and lack of capabilities such as failure to meet recovery time objectives (30%) and recovery point objectives (21%).
This is in tandem with a growth in virtualisation. While they currently form 52% of the IT infrastructure, virtual servers are expected to form 63% within two years. This may also increase the amount of servers that are protected. Currently, 67% of the virtual environment is backed-up, meaning that almost a third of SMBs’ virtual infrastructure is unprotected.
“Virtualisation has been crucial in giving SMBs IT capabilities that can transform their business,” says Timashev.
“However, virtualisation is capable of much more than simply increasing the scale of IT infrastructures. If SMBs can recognise and address the issues they face with data protection there are a whole host of more advanced techniques to take advantage of, thanks to the scalability and speed virtualisation offers.
“For example, previously unattainable techniques such as replication are now within the reach of SMBs, allowing them to significantly reduce downtime and the associated costs in the event of a disaster.
“E-discovery, currently too expensive for 65% of SMBs, is another task that can be made more affordable and accessible by allowing faster, simpler and more reliable recovery of individual emails or other files. We have only begun to scratch the surface of virtualisation: adapting their data protection strategies to reflect this will allow SMBs to reap all the benefits it can provide.”