Virtualization Projects Generating Larger Amounts of Data

CommVault Systems, Inc. has released the results of its Virtualization Survey, which polled Simpana software customers worldwide to determine the key factors driving adoption of server virtualization and the major challenges associated with managing these environments.

A total of 479 respondents underscored the continued rise in server virtualization, with 46 percent of those polled citing that between 51- and 85-percent of their total servers were virtualized while 21 percent reported successful virtualization of all or nearly all servers. VMware was listed as the virtualization platform of choice by 83 percent of those polled.

The survey revealed that the top three factors driving server virtualization decisions among the respondents are: the need for improved business cost savings and efficiencies, customer responsiveness and improved service levels. The opportunity to leverage virtualization as an alternative disaster recovery strategy was also cited.

The majority of CommVault customers polled for this survey are running mission-critical applications on VMs in their production environment. Some industry commentary has suggested that many organizations are reluctant to deploy vital applications on virtualized infrastructures because of data protection concerns. With Simpana software, CommVault continues to address these concerns, effectively alleviating data management difficulties in virtualized environments.

According to those polled, the top three challenges relative to managing virtualized server environments include the inability to backup all virtual machines (VMs) reliably and in a timely manner, additional resource costs and administrative time due to lack of data management automation and the increased demand for corporate-wide virtualization.

Survey respondents are embracing Simpana software to overcome these data management challenges and increase their IT agility. In choosing Simpana software, they cited features/functionality, performance, simplicity and scalability as major decision drivers.

Surge in Mission-Critical Applications
Running on Virtual Machines
According to the survey results, 77 percent of the respondents are running mission-critical applications on VMs in their production environments and nearly 50 percent are running between 50-250 VMs.

According to the CommVault survey, ongoing virtualization projects are generating increasingly larger amounts of data, with 36 percent of those polled creating between 1-5 TBs of data and another 23 percent generating between 6-10 TBs of data through VMs or VM-based applications.

To protect this ongoing surge in virtualized data, more than half of the CommVault survey participants rely only on backup copies as their disaster recovery strategy while 18 percent utilize software replication and 16 percent use hardware replication.

Industry research firm Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) reinforces this growing trend, identifying increased use of server virtualization as the No. 1 IT priority over the next 12-18 months.

Simpana Software Simplifies
Virtualized Data Management, Reduces Time and Costs
ESG also reports that more than half of the organizations it has researched are using separate backup applications for virtual and physical server environments, yet three out of four organizations would prefer a single application to protect all servers.

Respondents to CommVault’s survey cite as the top three operational benefits from using Simpana software:

• ease of management due to its single software platform,
• time and resource savings, and
• overall reductions in hardware licensing costs.

According to CommVault, legacy data management tools lack the intelligence, automation and scalability required to seamlessly move data between physical and virtual IT infrastructures.

In contrast, CommVault Simpana software leverages a singular platform, centralized management and advanced functionality to easily and cost-effectively manage modern data centers with large populations of virtual machines. With Simpana software, customers can protect both physical and virtual servers in minutes while scaling to accommodate thousands of VMs across global enterprises.

Methodology
CommVault distributed its virtualization survey via email to 10,076 Simpana software customers worldwide over an eight-day period starting on August 12, 2010 and received 479 responses. Nearly 60 percent of the survey participants reported they had responsibility for the organization’s entire data management strategy, encompassing backup, virtualization, archive, recovery, etc.

Of the survey respondents, 30 percent are employed at organizations with more than 2,000 personnel while 35 percent work for companies employing between 500 and 1,999 people.

David West, vice president of marketing and business development for CommVault said: "The results of CommVault’s virtualization survey reinforce what we’ve been hearing from our customers-embracing virtualization can dramatically reduce costs and increase operational efficiencies as long as you can easily and reliably manage the massive volume of data produced by hundreds of VMs. With our unifying code base and singular platform, Simpana software is uniquely equipped to bridge the gap between the physical and virtual worlds of computing while ensuring the highest levels of data management and protection."

Lauren Whitehouse, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group said: "Using separate solutions to back up and recover physical and virtual systems can be inefficient and lead to additional management overhead while introducing complexity into the recovery process. ESG research respondents are aware of this trade-off, which is why the overwhelming majority cite a preferred approach of using a single backup application for both virtual and physical environments."