Venyu Blog

We’re all familiar with the phrase “Divide and Conquer.” It’s been applied to everything from articulating nationalistic tendencies to drawing political lines. In exceptional cases (like backup and disaster recovery, that is), it turns out divide and conquer is actually a good idea. Now there’s even proof.

The Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company that provides fact-based research and market intelligence, has found in its recent research companies that backup critical data and systems at remote locations have a faster recovery time. The research is based on a survey of the disaster recovery practices of over 100 worldwide companies.

Aberdeen’s Research Found:

• Ninety-five percent (95%) of leading companies utilize off-site storage of critical data.
• Fifty-seven percent (57%) report replication of critical computing systems to remote locations.
• One third of highly performing organizations (33%) employ simultaneous backup to remote locations. This ensures that little, if any, data is lost with a system interruption as all data is being replicated remotely as it is created.

As detailed in its press release, “Preventing and recovering from computer-generated business interruptions continues to be a focus in the IT industry,” says Dick Csaplar, Senior Research Analyst and author of the study.

In its report Aberdeen also calls out the growing number of companies backing up real time data to remote locations or servers as well as the benefits in doing so:

The ease with which virtual servers can be imaged and replicated to servers at remote locations provides an additional level of security for companies worried about business disruption at a specific location. Virtual snapshots of servers also enable bare metal recovery, where a “snapshot” or image of server’s entire contents is quickly overlaid on a bare server. This new server, which may even be a completely different make, model and configuration than the original server, can easily be brought online to make the backup data readily available once again.

Significantly, in its summary and recommendations section, the analyst concludes that companies that wish to see improvements in the safety of their backed up data, the resiliency of their datacenters, and the time and cost of disaster recovery should consider moving their critical data and redundant computing resources to an off-site location.  And then, to put a fine point on it, “How a company plans for, manages and executes their disaster recovery plan will directly determine how long the disruption will last, and may be the key factor in determining how well – or if – the company survives.”

Access a complimentary copy of the report from the Aberdeen Group’s website or here.