DATA PROTECTION
Managing Hybrid
Backup and Recovery
in a Data-Driven World
nesses surveyed had confidence in their
ability to backup and recover their data.
Furthermore, half of the 6,000 IT professionals surveyed across 18 countries said
they were concerned that their backup and
recovery programs would fail in the event
of a disaster. Clearly, organizations are
struggling to protect data when faced with
new technological realities.
By SETH GOODLING
Data will never stop growing, and the amount produced has already exceeded everyone’s expecta- tions. In 2011, there were about 1. 8 trillion gigabytes of data in the
world, which IDC expects to more than
double every two years moving forward.
As an example of this rapid data growth,
in January 2012, the
Library of Congress Web
archive contained more
than 285 terabytes of
data. That’s almost three
times the total data traffic on the entire Internet
in 1993, but still less than
one and a half ten millionths of a percent of all
data worldwide today!
Once primarily a concern for financial firms,
technology companies
and other traditionally
information-driven businesses, data volume now
presents a problem for
companies of many sizes
in every industry. Even if
you’re a small, regional
eCommerce business,
there’s no way you can
operate if you don’t have access to the
many electronic files you need to process
orders.
Because we can only expect the data
growth trend to increase exponentially,
companies need to ensure their infrastruc-
tures are prepared to deal with this data
onslaught. And, just as important as stor-
age and processing systems are an orga-
nization’s backup and disaster recovery
capabilities. Data is the lifeblood of a
company, and lost data means lost time,
productivity, and ultimately lost revenue.
The tricky thing is, with the rapid rise of
virtualization and cloud adoption, infra-
structures are getting more and more com-
plex. In these hybrid IT environments,
which can include physical, virtual, and
Disaster Consequences and
Recovery Capabilities
These days, the threats to server and
infrastructure stability – and, therefore,
data – are growing more severe every
year. According to Munich Re, one of the
world’s leading insurance providers, 2011
was the costliest year on record for natural
disasters, resulting in about $380 billion
in economic losses. The climate in 2012
is not faring much better, with 11 named
storms and six hurri-
canes poised to strike
over the course of the
year. Amazon’s recent
cloud outages, caused
by thunderstorms on
the U.S. East Coast,
are just one example of
how crippling a disas-
ter can be to business
continuity.
Cyber attacks are
no joke, either. The
National Security
Agency announced that
cyber attacks increased
by 44 percent in 2011,
malware rose by 60
percent, and attacks on
critical U.S. infrastructure rose to 160, as
compared to just nine
in 2009. And beyond
natural disasters and
cyber attacks, perhaps the greatest risk to a
company’s IT operations is simply human
error. In fact, the 2012 Disaster Recovery
Index found that, for more than 60 percent of companies surveyed, human error
was the single biggest cause of downtime.
Imagine that, with just the flip of a wrong
switch, your entire bottom line is compromised.
cloud components, backup and disaster
recovery operations aren’t as straightforward as they used to be.
Because of this new complexity in IT
environments, many businesses are now
finding themselves unprepared to protect their vast quantities of vital data. The
2012 Disaster Recovery Index, conducted
by the Ponemon Institute, discovered
that only slightly more than half of busi-
