Contingency Planning

Survey: Virtualization Can Play Major Role In Disaster Recovery, But Not Provide Complete Solution

July 1, 2009

A large majority of IT executives say virtualization technologies can play a major role in a disaster recovery plan -- but these technologies are not a complete solution, according to the results of the State of Disaster Recovery survey conducted by Harris Interactive. While many IT decision-makers say they have deployed virtualization, survey data show most had not yet utilized the technology in a disaster recovery situation.

In the survey, commissioned by SunGard Availability Services, 74 percent of IT respondents indicate virtualization can play a major role but is not a total solution for disaster recovery plans. One-quarter of IT respondents say they would never include virtualization technologies in their disaster recovery plans.

Sixty percent of IT respondents say they have virtualization in place now as a recovery tool from unplanned outages -- but only 29 percent have used it successfully with eight percent saying they used virtualization but unsuccessfully. Another 29 percent of IT decision-makers say they have deployed virtualization but not yet used it as a tool for disaster recovery.

"Virtualization technologies are changing the way disaster recovery solutions are developed and deployed -- for both end-user organizations and third-party service providers," said Don Norbeck, technology officer, virtualization and product strategy at SunGard Availability Services. "The survey reveals companies see virtualization as part of their disaster recovery strategy, but most recognize they also need more. The Achilles heel of many virtualized IT environments is they depend on a single data center to execute system failover should an outage occur. A recovery strategy with no off-site data center can result in no recovery."

Over the next two years, half of IT decision-makers indicate their companies will be looking into virtualization as an option for managing unplanned outages and disaster recovery. About a quarter of IT executives say they will be looking into cloud computing and grid networking as potential options.

"The technology landscape for disaster recovery is changing quickly -- presenting challenges for end-user organizations to stay current. These changes demonstrate the value in teaming with a third-party vendor with core competencies in data centers and recoverability to help navigate through information availability issues in virtual, cloud and grid environments," Norbeck said.