Veeam: channel missing data protection trick

Vendor survey hints at data protection challenges in virtual environments

User experience: Data protection problems can put companies off virtualising more of their estate

VARs could be missing out on additional revenue by failing to bundle disaster recovery tools with virtual datacentre deployments, warns Veeam.

The virtualisation vendor claims that many firms are using the wrong tools to protect data stored in virtual environments.

Therefore, the channel could be missing out on up-selling opportunities and indirectly contributing to the poor user experiences that lead many virtualisation projects to stall.

Ian Wells, director for Northern EMEA at Veeam, explained: “This issue provides the channel with a great opportunity to show some real thought leadership and educate their customers about the importance of protecting their data in a virtual environment.”

According to a recent Veeam survey examining the impact virtualisation has had on the data protection strategies employed by 500 chief information officers, 61 per cent said they used physical server backup tools in virtual environments.

Ratmir Timashev, software president and chief executive of Veeam, said: “With this approach, organisations are still treating virtual machines as physical servers.

“Consequently, enterprises do not have the optimum level of protection needed for virtualised mission-critical workloads.”

Timashev claims that using the wrong type of backup tools can cause operational difficulties, which put end users off virtualising more of their IT infrastructure.

“In some cases, it can take hours to recover a virtual machine, which is annoying for end users because they only take minutes to deploy,” he adds.