What has come to be referred to as Cloud Analytics is quickly becoming a crucial investment.

One company, Sentilla is currently leading the way and has patented technology allowing the ability to monitor the resource consumption of virtual machines. Monitoring a non-physical asset has proven to be relatively difficult making such technology extremely valuable.

Although Sentilla are in front at the moment other players are also looking for a piece of the action including VMWare, Power Assure, Synapsense, HP and Modius.

“Sentilla is the only company that can provide the diagnostic insight to drastically reduce data centre costs and increase company revenue as well as profitability” According to Mike Kaul, CEO of Sentilla.

The other reason why the timing is good for this form of service is that new business initiatives are constantly looking to achieve more on smaller budgets, making such detailed management crucial.

Cloud Analytics: Delivering More Using Less is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

A recent survey conducted by Applied Research, on the state of backup and recovery capabilities in virtual environments, showed that nearly half of enterprise data stored on virtual platforms is rarely backed up and that over 60 percent of virtualised servers are not incorporated into disaster recovery plans. Considering disaster recovery now comprises of more than a quarter of annual IT budgets this is a worrying sign.

As the market highlights there is certainly no shortage of disaster recovery solutions designed to protect virtual environments. The fact of the matter is that virtualisation actually makes recovery of servers and infrastructures that much easier by increasing performance and flexibility. In today’s world we are seeing organisations host infrastructures in the cloud, so it is strange why there is still this inability or unwillingness to ensure successful backup of virtual environments. As many solution providers demonstrate the cloud provides a much more flexible backup and disaster recovery framework then traditional solutions and often at lower prices.

Reliability has often been an area of concern for organisations looking to implement virtual environments especially with mission critical systems and data. The fact of the matter is that virtual environments performance and resilience is excellent, although however good a solution is one still can’t stress the importance of data backup and disaster recovery. The variety and expertise of backup and recovery providers’ worldwide means no data or systems should ever be excluded. Such features as CDP and ‘hot’ database backups mean that not only recovery time objectives are met but recovery point objectives are achieved.

Data is the lifeblood of any organisation, so every measure should be taken to protect it. Virtual infrastructures are playing an increasingly vital role in enterprise data infrastructure, but to leave it out of the DR equation is surely a step too far.

Disaster Recovery is lacking in Virtualised Environments is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

According to research tech firm IDC, 2010 has been was the first year whereby over half of all applications were installed on a virtual machine. Despite this 2010 is seen by many as the pilot period, while 2011 is predicted to be the year of mass implementation. By 2014 it is thought that 23% of all servers shipped worldwide will support Virtualisation upon installation.

All in all Virtualisation applications will amount to a $19.3 billion industry by 2014.  Despite the global economic down turn creating havoc within the majority of IT markets, demand continues to rise for Virtualisation technologies. Desktop virtualisation is becoming increasingly recognised as a superb way to reduce IT cost, empower employees and increase enterprise productivity. With few servers requiring maintenance IT teams can now concentrate on innovation rather then maintenance.

The advantages of Virtualisation are clear and as Microsoft emphasise adopters in the mid-market can benefit from the same economies of scale that the big players can. An added benefit is that Data centre and storage Virtualisation allows clients to take advantage of geographical variations in energy pricing.

Soaring VMware profits are testament to the uptake of Virtualisation and in their last quarter report the company claimed a 46% increase in revenue. Furthermore VMware is making additional revenue from rising sales in areas such as Cloud Computing

When considering the future of Desktop virtualisation it is crucial to consider the impact that personalised devices such as the Ipad are having. IT service providers are increasingly being forced to cater for such devices, providing a huge boost to the Desktop Virtualisation market. It is now becoming a reality to manage a secure corporate environment on a personal device and this is a trend we continue to observe in the New Year.

Adoption of virtualisation is set to increase in 2011 is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

Speaking at the 2010 EMC World conference in Boston, Mr Coviello said that building cloud platforms from the ground up meant that professionals could integrate security measures into the foundations of the new systems, resulting in a more stable, trusted environment and a reduction in the likelihood of data loss or theft.

Mr Coviello sees the rise of cloud computing as a chance for firms to go back and start from the very beginning, by which he means that proper data protection needs to be considered and included in the core functions of any cloud-based system. He believes this to be something of a once in a generation opportunity that should not be missed.

There is still some apprehension surrounding cloud solutions, with even the vendors questioning whether they can offer adequate security and build confidence in the client base. Mr Coviello gave the example of a recent report which found that over 50 per cent of IT managers are still mistrusting of the security offered by cloud computing.

Experts are attempting to push for the creation of a platform which will have multiple layers of security to be harnessed by businesses from day one of its adoption. The intention is to make the monitoring of each system as simple as possible, whilst the protective layers are there to make it difficult to attack or misuse data.

The EMC’s Pat Gellsinger concurred with Mr Coviello, adding that a significant security benefit of cloud computing was its ability to implement protective measures in a granular form.

Both Mr Coviello and Mr Gellsinger offer warnings as well as positive messages in relation to the cloud, with the general assumption that cyber criminals will pounce on any cloud system which is not adequately protected. Cloud security is seen as a somewhat black and white environment, guaranteeing either complete protection or a data loss nightmare.

Expert praises security potential of cloud computing is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

The Interactive Data Corp (IDC) has published this information in a report that asks whether firms are ready to face what it is calling the Digital Universe Decade.

A Zettabyte is the equivalent of a trillion gigabytes, or in current pop culture terms, the same volume of data that could be stored on about 75 billion Apple iPads with 16GB of capacity.

Between 2008 and 2009 the annual global data output grew by 62 per cent, according to IDC. This rate of growth shows no signs of slowing, and to give some perspective, the figures have also been translated into terms that will be comprehensible to social networking fans. 1.2 Zettabytes is equivalent to the volume of data that the entire global population would produce if everyone used Twitter non-stop for a century.

The boom in data storage requirements that will be seen as a result of increased data volumes is believed to mean that in ten years time there will be many more professionals working in the IT industry than there are today. However, this will be a relatively small increase compared to the capacity of the data storage solutions that will exist in a decade, with at least a 62 per cent increase predicted.

The most telling fact noted by IDC is that the global community is already producing 35 per cent more data than there is available storage. This discrepancy is only set to grow, with a 60 per cent overflow rate being predicted within the next few years.

Experts believe that this seemingly insurmountable growth in the data storage requirements of businesses will mean that switching to cloud-based solutions will be the only viable option to maintain effective operation.

IDC says that 80 per cent of the world’s data output is stored by businesses, despite the fact that the creation of 70 per cent of the total annual data can be attributed to individuals. It also says that firms that adopt social media tools for internal use will also bear a greater proportion of this growth as a result.

Global data usage figures predicted to soar in 2010 is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

It has long been recognised that this ‘divide’ creates more problems than it solves, after all most businesses could not continue to operate successfully if their IT services were unavailable for a period of time. Depending on the nature of your business this may well range from a few hours to several days.

Talking from experience as the UK’s Leading Online Backup & Disaster Recovery Provider a disaster recovery plan should interface with the overall business continuity management plan, be clear and concise, focus on the key activities required to recover the critical IT services, be tested reviewed and updated on a regular basis, have an owner, whilst enabling the recovery objectives to be met.

Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) do differ for organisations but there are common aims that apply to all. The two key elements which many organisations adhere to are how long can the business continue to function without the critical IT services and how quickly can all systems be recovered from the time DR is invoked.

With the economic climate as it is today it’s no surprise to hear that IT departments are often asked to do more with less. Although this can result in DR testing falling by the wayside a recent survey actually shows that DR testing is on the up as organisations understand the importance of data to operations. It was shown that 35% of organisations worldwide with a DR plan do not test it more than once a year and although that number is actually a 12% improvement from 2008, it is still poor.

A lack of IT staff time was the top reason given for not testing more, with 48% pointing to that. Disruption to employees, budget restraints, and disruption to customers were all mentioned by at least 40% of respondents.

The report also indicates that 59% of respondents said they test disaster recovery plans regularly but 28% test once a year or less. Most of the blame for not testing went to lack of a DR site, inadequate staffing and money. The introduction of Virtualised DR environments should eliminate the restriction of DR testing. Please visit the following link to find out more about Virtual Disaster Recovery and how full system restores can be attained without disruption to live environments.

Statistics aside it is best practice to conduct DR testing to ensure business continuity whilst identifying deficiencies that need to be addressed. DR plan testing also helps evaluate the ability of the IT staff to implement the plan quickly and effectively. Each IT contingency plan element should be tested to confirm the accuracy of individual recovery procedures and the overall effectiveness of the plan.

The following areas to be covered in a DR test should include:
Full System Recovery from the backup media to an alternate platform
Coordination among recovery teams
Internal and external connectivity
System performance using alternate equipment
Restoration of normal operations
Notification procedures

Experts advise to test DR plans at all costs despite the hardships. Independent backup consultants suggest that companies do a large scale disaster recovery test once a year, with smaller, alternating tests throughout the rest of the year. While experts acknowledge that testing isn’t easy and does involve resource, refusing to test is putting an entire organisation at risk.

So if you haven’t scheduled a full Disaster Recovery test book one today to ensure your organisation can resume operations should disaster strike.

The Risks of Failing to Perform Disaster Recovery Tests is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

These savings can be found in a number of different areas, the main one being server consolidation, taking the 5 servers your company is currently running, and turning them into one box, running the 5 servers. This can cut the costs of operating the environments through savings on:

- Power usage, because there are fewer boxes
- Cooling, because there is less heat produced
- Racking space, because we now only have 1 box not 5
- Hardware maintenance costs
- Hardware replacement costs

However there are many more advantages to a virtual environment, some more obvious than others

- Fast server deployment – using a standard server image, the deployment of extra servers can be accelerated
- Multiple Operating Systems – You can run a variety of operating systems from a single platform
- Real-time fail over – You can run replicated systems so that if your main system went down, a switch could be made in real time reducing the amount of downtime.
- Easy failback – You can maintain images from your previous environments, making it easier to return to earlier system states
- Intelligent resource allocation – the central servers resources, such as the CPU, hard disks and RAM can be allocated to different OS’s at different times, depending on which server needs them, at that particular time.

Although there are some downsides to this new and exciting technology:

- Central point of failure – With all your severs now consolidated into one box, should the hardware on that box then fail, all of your servers will go down, causing more disruption to your systems than if one server were to fail.
- Extra software – To set up a virtual environment you will need to buy, install and configure a piece of 3rd party software such a VMWare or Microsoft’s Hyper-V technology, which is expensive in terms of both procurement of the software and training of your I.T. staff to be able to deal with the new environment

Properly deployed, a virtual I.T. infrastructure can save your company a lot of money in both maintenance and running cost, as discussed previously.

They can also incorporate our backup solution, which fully supports VMWare and Hyper-V enabling companies to securely and efficiently protect their virtual environment, and their data in the same manor our traditional customers. This ensures that all their stored data and virtual servers can be protected and restored in the event of a disaster.

Server Virtualisation is more than just Server Consolidation is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.