Data loss in a cloud environment is a major issue for CIOs
IT professionals surveyed reported that 65 percent of organizations
frequently experienced data loss from a virtual environment. This represents a
140 percent increase in virtual data loss when compared to a similar survey last
year.
alt="IT Infrastructure Strategy Charter ISO" vspace=3 align=right
src="http://www.it-toolkits.com/images/IT_Infrastructure_Strategy_Charter.gif"
width=91 height=117>Other key findings indicate that 53 percent of those
surveyed experienced five virtual data loss incidents in the past year and 12
percent of respondents experienced data loss more than five times in the past
twelve months.
Common causes of data loss from virtualized environments include file system
corruption, deleted virtual machines, internal virtual disk corruption, RAID and
other storage/server hardware failures and deleted or corrupt files contained
within virtualized storage systems.
A virtualization data loss can be catastrophic for an organization.
Determining the financial impact of a business disruption is difficult because
there are both tangible factors, including productivity loss, missed sales
opportunities and staff’s hourly time, but also less tangible factors such as
potential non-compliance penalties, damage to corporate image and weakened
customer confidence.
“Successful organizations realize that any disruption within the virtual
infrastructure, regardless of how small, will have an amplified impact on the
business as a whole,” said a manager of data recovery operations.
“Virtualization contracts often claim no liability for data corruption,
deletion, destruction or loss. As a result, it is critical for IT leaders and
business continuity planners to proactively include a data recovery service
provider in their contingency plans.”
In addition to implementing virtual data centers onsite, organizations are
increasingly turning to third-party cloud providers as a means of data storage.
When asked about their cloud providers ability to properly handle data loss
incidents, 55 percent revealed a lack of confidence. In fact, only 39 percent of
respondents said their cloud provider educated their organization on how they
would approach a data disaster/data recovery situation from the
cloud.
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