Virtualization Data Protection Report2013

Enterprise edition
Virtualization
Data Protection
Report 2013
www.veeam.com/survey
Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 1
Executive Summary
The Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 builds upon the key findings from previous years to track the progress of
enterprise-level organizations data protection strategies for their virtual environments. Where previous reports looked at
broad trends around data protection before focusing more closely on specific techniques such as server replication, this years
report investigates whether organizations are confident in data protection for their virtual environments. It identifies specific
issues CIOs are having with their virtual environments and suggests some of the underlying causes behind this. In particular it
highlights how capabilities, complexity and cost are still the key challenges for organizations wishing to consistently protect
their most critical servers and the data they manage. Currently, 88% of CIOs are experiencing issues around capability, 84%
around complexity and 87% around cost.
This report shows how attempts to retrofit data protection by applying physical world tools and techniques to the virtual
environment continue to hold back the technologys true potential.
Chart A:
Types of organizations surveyed (%)
The concluding sections of the report outline some of the actions organizations are taking to deal with the challenges they
face in implementing data protection in their virtual environments. For example, 58% of CIOs plan to change their tools for
backing up virtual environments in the next 2 years.
The report is based on an online survey conducted in November and December 2012 by Vanson Bourne, an independent
market research organization, of 500 CIOs from organizations across the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France
that employ more than 1,000 people. The report is sponsored by Veeam Software.
22
23
20
26
Survey Background
As with previous surveys, respondents came from a cross-section of industries. While Manufacturing was the most well
represented field (26% of respondents), it was closely followed by Retail, Distribution & Transport (23%); Financial Services
(22%) and Business & Professional Services (20%). Other commercial sectors were responsible for 9% of the survey sample. This
ensured that the responses gathered came from a wide range of enterprises across different sectors.
Manufacturing
Retail, Distribution & Transport
Financial Services
Business & Professional Services
Other
Part I
Capability
Challenges for
Organizations
1. Capability Challenges for Organizations

88% of CIOs identified capability-related challenges that are impacting their ability to backup and recover their virtual infrastructures.
These challenges represent a failure to realize the full potential of virtualization-based data protection. If used correctly, virtualization
enables much higher data protection capabilities than a traditionally managed physical environment. With the right tools, entire
virtual servers or individual files and application items can be recovered in a matter of minutes, allowing IT departments to recover
quickly from disasters both large and small. This rise in efficiency, coupled with the use of modern approaches to backup, means that
organizations can further enhance data protection: for example, testing backups to ensure that they can be recovered when needed.
By taking this approach, CIOs should be able to set and keep much more rigorous Recovery Point Objectives and Recovery Time
Objectives, and therefore be better placed to meet SLAs for their organizations.
However, currently organizations are not taking full advantage of these benefits. While recovery of physical servers takes, on average,
6 hours, recovery of virtual servers is not significantly faster, at 5 hours (Chart 1). Worse still, this is no better than in the previous survey:
while the difference of 1 hour was the same, recovery as a whole was faster at 5 hours for physical servers and 4 hours for virtual.
Chart 1: Time taken to recover backed up
servers (hours)
3,85
4,51
4,79
2011
Time to recover virtual servers
Time to recover physical servers
2013
Time to recover virtual servers
Time to recover physical servers
5,58
3,01
3,46
5,2
5,83
4,02
4,23
4,09
4,6
4,02
5,51
3,97
7,62
3,85
4,51
4,79
5,84
This would seem to reinforce the concerns of 68% of organizations, who feel that their backup and recovery tools will become
less effective as the amount of data and servers in their infrastructure continues to grow (Chart 2). With recovery times already
increasing, it seems that this assertion is already coming true.
Chart 2: Organizations feeling backup
and recovery will become less effective
(%)
67,6
56
46
66
85
Financially, CIO respondents stated the cost per hour of downtime for their business critical servers that are not been protected
by replication as $324793 (Chart 3). Coupled with a recovery time of 5 hours or more this means that, on average, each outage
is costing organizations at least $1.6 million. Unless data protection improves, these costs will remain high.
Chart 3: Cost-per-hour of critical

servers being down (USD)
$324 793
$417 434
$316 071
$214 285
$317 647
CIOs are also struggling with granular recovery from virtual servers, even though virtualization can make such recovery more
straightforward. On average, recovering individual file or application items from virtual servers takes 3 hours (Chart 4): while
faster than recovering a whole server, this is still a significant wait. Certain items can be even slower: recovering individual emails
takes an average of 14 hours (Chart 4). These slow times are partly due to the fact that not all organizations have the capability
for granular recovery despite their virtual environment: 71% often have to recover more than they need in order to reach
specific files or application items (Chart 5).
Chart 4: Time to recover individual
file, application items and
individual emails (hours)
3,18
13,9
2,56
Time to recover individual file
9,22
Time to recover application item

and individual emails
2,26
6,09
3,4
21,87
3,84
15,88
71
29
62
38
51
49
67
33
88
12
Chart 5: Organizations needing to

recover more than desired to reach
specific items (%)
Organizations that often have
to recover more than needed
to reach specific items
Organizations that can
consistently recover
individual items directly
Furthermore, CIOs show a lack of confidence in their ability to consistently recover from backups. On average, organizations
experience problems when attempting to recover from backups 9 times per year (Chart 6). To place it in context, this accounts
for 17,48% of all recoveries, meaning that the chances of an unsuccessful recovery are more than 1 in 6 (Chart 7).
Chart 6: Number of times per year
organizations experience problems
attempting to recover from
backups
9
7
8
7
10
17
Chart 7: Percentage of recoveries

that present problems (%)
16
3
2
17
12
21
Chart 8: Frequency of backup

testing (months)
One reason for this relatively high failure rate may be a lack of opportunities to test backups. Currently, organizations test their
backups for recoverability every 3 months (Chart 8). However, on these occasions they only test on average 7,43% of all backups
(Chart 9). As a result, the vast majority of backups remain untested. While organizations can concentrate on the most critical
areas, there is still a large proportion that must essentially be left to chance. In turn this makes it harder for CIOs to guarantee
their availability SLAs.
Chart 9: Percentage of server
backups tested when testing for
recoverability (%)
7
6
4
5
10
As shown, there are significant capability-based challenges facing CIOs. However, another important question is whether CIOs
recognize all of the challenges they face. While 88% admitted to facing capability-based issues, 45% stated that backup takes
too long, while recovery taking too long was an issue for 38%. This suggests that 62% do not believe they have an issue with
their recovery times. Given the average recovery time of 5 hours, it may be that CIOs do not recognize that backup and recovery
capabilities should be better. Alternatively, they may have come to accept this level of performance as the norm thanks to using
tools poorly suited to the virtual environment. Similarly, 26% stated that file- and application-level recovery was too difficult, 23%
said that SLAs were missed and 16% that backup or recovery often fails (Chart 10). This again suggests either that CIOs may not
be aware that they even have an issue with these tasks or that they have become used to the relatively poor performance of their
existing backup and recovery tools, given the recovery times and frequency of backup and recovery failure referenced above.
Chart 10: Capability-related
challenges identified (%)
16,4
22,67
25,51
38,06
Backup or recovery often fails
44,94
SLAs missed
15
File- and application-level recovery

too difficult
20
21
Recovery takes too long
43
Backup takes too long
39
13,27
21,43
25,51
37,76
42,86
13,27
17,35
27,55
37,76
41,84
20,02
27,27
26,77
35,86
50,51
Part II Complexity
Challenges for
Organizations
2. Complexity Challenges for Organizations

While capability provides the most obvious issues for organizations, 84% of CIOs said that they are experiencing complexityrelated challenges with backup and recovery of virtual environments. Among these are backups needing ongoing
management (experienced by 57% of CIOs); backup tools being difficult to configure (33%); too many virtual servers to
backup (32%); and difficulty backing up to tape (23%) (Chart 11). Modern data protection tools that can simplify management,
configuration and scheduling of backups can be a huge help with these issues.
Chart 11: Complexity-related
challenges identified (%)
22,87
32,19
32,79
56,88
13
Backing up to tape is difficult

Too many virtual servers to backup
28
31
Backup tools difficult toconfigure

and use
53
21,43
Backups need ongoing

management
35,71
26,53
56,12
30,61
28,57
27,55
54,08
24,74
34,34
39,39
60,61
A significant difference between physical backup tools and more modern approaches is the use of software agents on
protected machines. By requiring agents to be installed, monitored and updated, agent-based backup addd an extra layer of
complexity to data protection: in turn making it easier to miss SLAs. While this is the way data protection has traditionally been
performed, agents can be done away with in a virtualized environment. This in turn removes the extra layer of management,
making the process faster and less complex for the IT department.
Currently, 76% of CIOs surveyed say that their backup tool requires agents inside virtual servers (Chart 12). In turn, 77% of
these experience problems or management issues due to agents: this represents 58% of all organizations surveyed.
17,64
57,87
24,49
Chart 12: Organizations

experiencing issues with agentbased backup (%)
Organizations experiencing issues
with agent-based backup
14,28
23,64
53,07
49
27
27,55
53,06
32,65
Organizatons with no issues around

agent-based backup
68,18
15,15
27
16,67
Organizations not using agentbased backup
Common problems and challenges for CIOs using agent-based backup and recovery include: agent management, for
example installation, upgrading, updating and managing conflicts, which affects 43% of those CIOs; backups failing far too
often (32%); restores failing too often (28%); the expense of agent-based backup (20%); and agents slowing down system
performance (14%) (Chart 13). Based on these statistics there will be a large number of organizations that are experiencing
multiple issues with agent-based data protection, in turn increasing the cost and complexity and reducing the capability
oftheir backup and recovery strategy while increasing the chances of missing SLAs.
Chart 13: Agent-based backup
issues identified (%)
13,94
20,11
27,88
Agents slowing down system

performance
32,17
42,63
Expense of agent-based backup
15,49
14,08
Restores failing too often

Backups failing too often
29,58
28,17
29,58
Agent management
16,67
25,76
24,24
31,82
33,33
12,68
23,94
18,31
22,54
50,07
12,73
18,79
33,73
38,18
48,48
The survey also suggests that many organizations are unaware that agent-based backup tools have been superseded by more
modern alternatives. While the majority of CIOs surveyed are experiencing issues that can significantly affect performance,
53% believe that it is better if a backup tool uses agents to aid backup and recovery. A further 19% believe that there is no
difference between agent-based and agentless tools (Chart 14). As organizations become more familiar with the potential that
modern data protection presents, we would expect this to change: essentially, organizations will recognize the issues that are
caused by agent-based data protection and instead begin to favour modern, agentless data protection tools that enable far
more rigorous SLAs to be met.
25,51
52,63
19,23
2,63
Chart 14: Opinions on use of agents

in backup (%)
It is better to use agent-based
backup
23
46
Dont know
25,51
30,61
18,2
20,41
8,16
Either way will work
70,7
44,9
28
It is better to use agentless backup
35,71
32,65
2,04
11,1
Part III Cost Challenges

for Organizations
3. Cost Challenges for Organizations

Finally, 87% of CIOs are also facing cost-related challenges with backup and recovery of virtual servers beyond those costs
already incurred by lengthy downtime. These cover three distinct areas: high ongoing management costs, affecting 53% of
CIOs; expensive licensing models (50%); and backups either requiring or using too much storage (42%) (Chart 15). Reducing
management costs; easy-to-understand and low-cost licensing; and making backups as storage-friendly as possible will be
vital to addressing these challenges.
Chart 15: Cost-related challenges
identified (%)
41,9
49,6
53,24
Backups require too much storage

Expensive licensing models
46
High ongoing management costs
42
49
38,78
44,9
52,02
43,88
49,98
53,06
40,4
56,06
56,07
Part IV Potential Upheaval

in the Data
Protection
4. Potential Upheaval in the Data Protection Market

As we have seen, there are still issues with data protection in the virtual environment. The capabilities offered by many backup
and recovery tools, especially physical tools retrofitted to work with virtual infrastructures, are still not at the level that should
be expected of the technology, resulting in missed or unambitious SLAs. Cost and complexity challenges are further adding to
the difficulty of implementing a suitable data protection strategy. At the same time agent-based tools are presenting a range
of issues that make it harder for CIOs to do their jobs: while this is not fully recognized, retro-fitting physical tools onto new
virtual environments does not look like solving organizations problems. These issues can be clearly seen with techniques such
as replication: while virtualization has minimized hardware-based barriers, uptake has not greatly increased since 2011.
However, there are signs that organizations are recognizing this and planning to change the way in which they work.
Currently, 58% of organizations are planning to change their backup tool for virtual servers in the next 24 months (Chart16):
on average, the expected time until a change is in fact only 10 months (Chart 17). This suggests that by 2014 a large
proportion of organizations will have fresh backup and recovery tools in place that may improve on a number of the issues
above.
33
42
20
Chart 16: Organizations plans to

change backup & recovery tools (%)
No plans to change
43
33
21
23
40
20
13
Planning to change within 12

months
24
56
49

months
32
23
3

months
Chart 17: Average timescale for

changing backup tool (months)
10
11
10
11
9
Those CIOs planning to change their current tools cite a number of reasons around cost, complexity and capability. The top
reason given is Total Cost of Ownership, including management and maintenance (51%). Also popular is complexity (47%),
while 42% are planning to change due to the hardware and software costs of their current tool. Lack of capability provides
other reasons for changing: failure to meet Recovery Time Objectives (32%) and Recovery Point Objectives (24%) are both
given (Chart 18).
Chart 18: Reasons for changing

current backup tool (%)
24
32
42
Failure to meet Recovery Point

Objectives
47
51
Failure to meet Recovery Time

Objectives
27
18
Software and hardware costs
53
61
63
18
25
27
40
47
18
25
27
40
47
27
43
43
44
52
As we can see, cost, complexity and capability challenges are becoming increasingly important to organizations: so important
that they are driving their data protection strategies for the next 2 years.
Complexity
Total Cost of Ownership
Appendix
Appendix 1: The State of Virtualization Data Protection

As server virtualization continues to grow in popularity, it is becoming an ever-more important part of the IT infrastructure.
Indeed, virtualization is now the dominant means of providing IT services . This in turn provides new opportunities and
challenges for enterprises. To begin, there is still the decision of what infrastructure to protect, and to what extent. A virtual
environment is potentially much easier to backup and recover than a physical one: as a result, organizations have the
capability to protect more of their infrastructure than ever before, while using fewer resources and at an ultimately lower cost.
At the same time, since IT infrastructure is far less limited by physical constraints, enterprises can make greater use of more
advanced techniques such as replication.
Currently, on average 51,42% of the production server estate is virtualized in organizations: virtualization has to some extent
already proved itself as the primary IT infrastructure. Within the next 2 years, this proportion is expected to grow steadily to
63,48% (Chart 19).
63,48
51,42
59
57,3
Chart 19: Current and predicted

virtual estates (%)
Percentage of production server
estate predicted to be virtualized
in 2 years
59
46,5
66,8
49,9
66,3
51,7
When backing up their virtual environments, IT departments generally use one of three approaches. The first is to use native
tools that are part of their applications or operating system: these have the advantage of no additional licensing costs beyond
the application or OS itself, but tend to have limited awareness of virtualization compared to specialist data protection tools.
Second, organizations use a single third-party tool to backup both their physical and virtual environments: this allows an
organization to continue using their legacy backup solution. However, those legacy solutions have not been designed to
backup and recover virtual environments; meaning the cost-saving will be offset by a lack of performance. Last, organizations
can use separate specialist tools to backup their virtual environments. While such tools are relatively new, they can exploit the
nature of virtualization to provide the best possible performance and capabilities.
Percentage of production server

estate currently virtualized
While virtualization is growing in popularity, the majority of organizations are not backing up every virtual server. 74% of
organizations do not backup all of their virtual servers (Chart 20): on average, all organizations surveyed backup 68,28% of
their virtual environment (Chart 21).
74,4
25,6
Chart 20: Percentage of

Organizations protecting 100% of
virtual servers (%)
Protect 100% of virtual servers
81
68
81,5
60
Do not protect 100% of virtual

servers
40
32
19
18,5
31,72
68,28
Chart 21: Percentage of virtual

infrastructure protected (%)
Percentage of virtual infrastructure
protected
71
59
29
77
41
Percentage of virtual infrastructure

unprotected
68
23
32
Organizations are divided on the tools they use to backup their virtual environments: 7% use native tools to backup their
virtual servers, 54% use a single third-party tool to backup both physical and virtual servers, and 38% use a specialized tool
for their virtual environments. Less than 1% of respondents use another method to protect their data, such as SAN replication
(Chart 22). This suggests that organizations are still most comfortable using legacy tools to protect their virtual environments,
rather than investigating more modern solutions.
7,1 0,2
38,3
54,5
Chart 22: Tools used to protect

virtual servers (%)
Organizations using a single tool for

physical and virtual backup
Organizations using separate tools
for physical and virtual backup
60
31
59,18
30,61
55,1
38,78
49,99
45,45
Organizations using native tools for

virtual backup
Organizations using another
method
10,2
1,02
5,1
5,56
Appendix 2: The Evolution of Replication

One data protection technique that has been greatly improved by the use of virtualization is replication. Replication is typically
a process of copying data to production standard hardware that can be quickly brought back online in the event of a server
or site failure. This differs from the process of backup, whereby data is basically compressed and then stored on relatively
inexpensive hardware. In the event of data loss or a server or site failure, the backup must first be restored before the data can
be brought back online.
Server replication has traditionally been a cost- and resource-intensive process, especially as most replication solutions must
be purchased separately to backup tools. While virtualization can help make replication less costly, for example by enabling
more efficient creation of the required infrastructure, its use is not yet universal. Currently, 76% of organizations replicate at
least a few servers: 51% using hardware-based replication and 25% using software-based replication (Chart 23).
51
24,8
24,2
Chart 23: Use of replication

by organizations (%)
Organizations using hardwarebased replication
20
Organizations using software-based

replication
27
46
45
34
29
50
28
24
57
21
19
Organizations not using replication
However, replication has a clear cost benefit for those organizations that use it. Replicated servers would cost $409 531 per
hour of downtime if they were not so protected (Chart 24). Given the average time to recover a server of at least 5 hours, we
can see that those organizations using replication are essentially saving themselves over $2 million each time they need to
make use of their replicated servers.
$409 531
$328 409
$419 270
$393 038
$446 296
Organizations are also experiencing almost the exact same barriers to increased use of server replication as they did in 2011
(Chart 25). The top 3 barriers are, again, the cost of replication software (53%), cost of hardware (51%) and complexity (44%).
Interestingly, the positions of hardware and software costs have swapped since 2011, indicating that hardware costs may
be becoming less of an issue as virtualization grows in use. For those organizations that do not use replication at all, the top
barriers have changed a little since 2011, with 53% citing the cost of replication software, 45% the cost of hardware, 36% a
lack of disk space and 35% the complexity (Chart 26). Again, the barriers presented by hardware and software have swapped
importance while a lack of disk space is now held to be almost exactly as much of an issue as complexity, whereas in 2011 it
was some way behind.
Chart 24: Cost-per-hour of

replicated servers being down
(USD)
Chart 25: Issues presenting greater

use of replication, 2013 & 2011 (%)
41,7
43,8
59,8
50,9
52,2
52,5
Complexity 2011
Complexity 2013
45,6
48,5
46,8
51,5
Cost of hardware 2011

Cost of replication software 2011
40,5
54,5
40
40,3
62,5
29,2
55
51,4
41,5
39,2
60,6
64,6
39,4
50,6
39,1
45,7
64,6
53,7
62,1
53,1
Chart 26: Issues preventing adoption

of replication, 2013 & 2011 (%)
38,5
34,7
22,6
35,5
Complexity 2011
55
Complexity 2013
45,5
44
Lack of disk space 2011
52,9
Lack of disk space 2013
47,6
35,3
23,8
14,7
52,4
52,9
52,4
44
30
39,3
20
42,9
70
46,453,1
15
46,2
41,4
33,3
20,7
33,3
55,2
42,9
44,8
61,9
35,9
31,6
35,9
50
48,7
39,5
53,8
60,5
About Veeam Software

Veeam Software develops innovative solutions for VMware backup, Hyper-V backup, and virtualization management.
Veeam Backup & Replication is the#1VMBackup solution. Veeam ONE is asingle solution for realtime monitoring, resource
optimization, documentation and management reporting for VMware and Hyper-V. Veeam extends deep VMware monitoring to
Microsoft SystemCenter with VeeamManagement Pack (MP), and to HPOperationsManager with Veeam Smart Plug-In (SPI).
Veeam also provides free virtualizationtools. Learnmore byvisiting www.veeam.com.
Virtualization changes everything especially backup. If youve virtualized on VMware or Hyper-V, now is the time to move up
to the backup solution Built for Virtualization: Veeam.
Unlike traditional backup that suffers from the 3C problem (missing capabilities, complexity and cost), Veeam is:
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VM replication, Microsoft Exchange recovery, and more
Join the 60,000 organizations who have already modernized their data protection with Veeam.
Download Veeam Backup&Replication today! To learn more visit our website.
2013
Veeam Software
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Enterprise edition

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 1

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 2

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 3

1. Capability Challenges for Organizations

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 4

Chart 3: Cost-per-hour of critical

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 5

Time to recover individual file

Time to recover application item

Chart 5: Organizations needing to

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 6

Chart 7: Percentage of recoveries

Chart 8: Frequency of backup

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 7

Backup or recovery often fails

File- and application-level recovery

Recovery takes too long

Backup takes too long

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 8

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 9

2. Complexity Challenges for Organizations

Backing up to tape is difficult

Backup tools difficult toconfigure

Backups need ongoing

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 10

Chart 12: Organizations

Organizatons with no issues around

Organizations not using agentbased backup

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 11

Agents slowing down system

Expense of agent-based backup

Restores failing too often

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 12

Chart 14: Opinions on use of agents

Either way will work

It is better to use agentless backup

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 13

Part III Cost Challenges

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 14

3. Cost Challenges for Organizations

Backups require too much storage

High ongoing management costs

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 15

Part IV Potential Upheaval

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 16

4. Potential Upheaval in the Data Protection Market

Chart 16: Organizations plans to

Planning to change within 12

Planning to change within 6

Planning to change within 24

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 17

Chart 17: Average timescale for

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 18

Chart 18: Reasons for changing

Failure to meet Recovery Point

Failure to meet Recovery Time

Software and hardware costs

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 19

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 20

Appendix 1: The State of Virtualization Data Protection

Chart 19: Current and predicted

Percentage of production server

Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 | Enterprise Edition | 21