Data loss can happen in any environment and on any device. When some companies choose virtualization, they fail to make proper data recovery plans, assuming the virtualized environment assure data safety through redundancy. Some businesses have discovered the hard way that data loss can impact businesses in any setting.
Kroll Ontrack and VMware recently released survey findings indicating that over one-third of the companies they surveyed believed that virtualization reduced the potential for data loss.[1] Virtualization does not change the need for backups and data recovery solutions. Kroll Ontrack highlighted several companies that experienced significant data loss problems in virtualized settings:
Server Access Loss and Reformatting Problems
An Italian firm suffered a data loss crisis when the 4TB virtual host lost access to the storage system. Business application servers, web servers and database servers were all impacted in the disruption. In the midst of the disruption, a secondary problem occurred when the servers where reformatted. Data loss and the company had to turn to professional data recovery services for support.
Data Merge Sabotage
Two companies were merging virtual environments. During the merge, an employee with administrative privileges deleted 440 virtual disk files and thousands of snapshot files. The companies had to engage extensive recovery engineering efforts to recover impacted data.
False Sense of Security with Off Site SAN
A Luxemborg business was doing routine maintenance on the SAN storage housing their virtual machines. Accidentally the SAN server was presented to a different physical server, and the volume was automatically reformatted. They accessed the remote SAN but discovered the off site SAN had been automatically reformatted as well. They didn’t have backups because they assumed that their architecture and redundancy provided adequate protection against data loss. They were wrong. [2]
Whether you in a data loss crisis or a simply need a better data recovery plan, Integracon can help your business limit data loss disruptions. Call us 865-330-2323 or chat online via Integracon.com.
Image by Patrick Brosset (flickr). Used via Creative Commons Permission.
[1] Adrian Briscoe. “A data loss reality check.” Technology Spectator, May 2013.<http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/5/9/technology/data-loss-reality-check>
[2] Case studies comes from a report by Kroll Ontrack. “Data Loss in a Virtual Environment—
An Emerging Problem.” <http://www.krollontrack.com/library/odrdataloss_krollontrack2011.pdf>
