Modern Data Requires New Generation Data Protection: 8 Noble Truths

To help organizations better understand the challenges of backup, disaster recovery and secure access, Acronis has created the 8 noble truths of data protection. This is the fourth post in an eight-part series to help you optimally protect your data.

IT environments are becoming more complex every day due to a mix of on-premise, cloud, virtual and mobile technologies. These technologies promise to increase productivity and performance, while lowering operational costs. But the mix of new technologies, combined with the legacy services that businesses still rely on, has significantly increased the data protection challenges that IT professionals face every day.

Modern IT is no longer nestled behind the firewall. Its footprint spans traditional data centers, physical and virtual servers, cloud computing services and mobile devices. And the complexity shows no signs of slowing. IDC predicts businesses’ cloud investments alone to jump 25 percent in 2014.

Increased adoption of virtualization technologies is another challenge affecting IT departments. According to Gartner estimates, 60 to 70 percent of all Windows servers are virtualized, while Linux is 35 to 45 percent virtualized. IT departments that manage virtual servers must back up the data in those virtual environments, but many details go unnoticed. One challenge is how to handle data migration and compatibility issues in a multi-hypervisor, multi-location environment.

“Many IT people understand that it’s inevitable that they will use multiple hypervisors. Companies need software that will handle migration from existing environments into virtualized environments, migration between hypervisors and hypervisor backups," says Sam Roguine, director of product marketing at Acronis. “If disaster strikes, IT will need to rebuild the entire ecosystem. That’s why it’s important to back up everything, including the hypervisor. If you don’t, your risk and downtime will be higher."

The multi-hypervisor trend is just one indication of how quickly things change in business technology, and how onerous it is to predict where technology is headed. “It’s difficult — and disastrous — to chase the latest technology craze, or to purchase specialized products for every environment,” says Joel Berman, an Acronis fellow and longtime IT professional.

Yesterday's backup methods are no longer sufficient for today’s environments. Modern IT professionals contend with more data, from more sources and across more environments than ever before. Securing and protecting that data is difficult enough, and IT can’t do it alone. Given the complexity and variety of this data deluge, those responsible for a company’s data protection strategy need to be sure their tools can protect and recover that data, no matter where it’s located — now or in the future.

Read more:

•       Data is Everything (Noble Truth #1)
•       Data is Increasingly Difficult to Back Up (Noble Truth #2)
•       Disasters Are Inevitable; Data Loss Doesn’t Have to Be (Noble Truth #3)

[Image via Can Stock Photo]