Aberdeen calls this a tipping point where IT executives must reevaluate their data center environment as it moves toward being 100 percent virtualized. The shift toward virtualization impacts all supporting IT processes, including data backup and recovery.
Business-oriented applications such as CRM for sales have reached high levels of virtualization. Aberdeen classifies these as “light” apps. Web applications are the most virtualized applications today, with more than 50 percent of companies reporting they already are deployed on hypervisors. Aberdeen defines hypervisor mananagement software as offering the application monitoring and programming interfaces. These tools allow IT to spend less time, effort and financial investment required by more complex tools.
Larger applications such as databases are virtualized at lower rates. Email and databases are the least virtualized as respondents reported only 34 percent of both applications are installed on top of virtualization software.
When asked about planned strategies for dealing with complexity, 32 percent of companies report they are deploying a tiered backup and recovery program. A tiered strategy, according to Aberdeen, means using the proper backup and recovery tools for a specific environment.
"All the data center support tools and practices need to be refocused, as supporting the virtualized environment becomes primary,” says Dick Csaplar, senior research analyst, virtualization and storage at Aberdeen. “This is true for backup and recovery tools as highly virtualized environments introduce challenges that the former physical-only infrastructure did not.”
The study “The Rising Impact of Virtualization on Data Backup and Recovery” is available free from Aberdeen for a limited time.
More recent Information Management coverage of virtualization can be viewed in our virtualization channel.
Valerie Valentine is senior editor for Information Management. You can follow her on Twitter @ValValentineIM.
