Virtual headaches aren’t getting any better
Recently hVault announced they may be able to help Princess Leia: They’ve invented holographic data storage. That may be good news for Obi Wan Kenobi, but for the IT professionals still trying to wrap their heads around virtualization, it may be too much and too quickly.
A 2012 IT Manager Survey found that 90 percent of respondents were still having a hard time figuring out how to perform backups in their new virtualized data management systems. The study noted that this is a five percent increase from last year’s figure, meaning the problem is just getting worse as time passes. Almost half said they were experiencing more expenses due to trying to meet the challenge of data storage they didn’t understand, and a quarter were banging their heads against making their different kinds of storage and software work in the new virtualized server environment.
“The survey shows that while organizations are adopting virtualization as part of their data center, they often run into unforeseen challenges with data protection,” said Quantum’s Robert Clark.
Tape management software doesn’t really run into that problem. While it also won’t project a tiny woman out of an astromech droid, half of businesses think it’s still the most reliable form of storage, according to an IT Web survey. Backup tape keeps archives nice and secure outside of the range of online attackers or confusing infrastructure.
More concerning really is another part of the IT Web survey that says about half of all businesses aren’t partnering their backup solutions with other kinds of business continuity protection, meaning those 90 percent of virtualized companies already with headaches over how to use their servers may start having heart attacks if any sort of web-based attack were to come in and steal their data or just put them offline. The 25 percent in the IT Manager Survey struggling to make their systems work together seem to be the ones already popping aspirin and considering the implications of not getting their backup tape to work with the virtualized systems.
Regardless of the kind of storage your business utilizes, it’s important that your IT team can actually implement it in a way that makes it worth the time and money.