Despite the virtualisation hype, the full potential if a virtual machine (VM) is yet to be realised, and failed recoveries cost financial services organisations almost £260,000 every year, reports Veeam Software.

Research on the impact of virtualisation on data protection strategies shows that performing a full recovery of a backed-up VM takes almost five hours – the old, slow physical machine took just one hour more.

Almost half (49 per cent) of all recoveries of a whole machine are being performed to recover a single file or application item – which Veeam said is a waste of time and resources, indicating that the effort put in does not equal the result.

Furthermore, recovery is far from guaranteed, with 69 per cent of financial services organisations experiencing problems every month when attempting to recover a server. More so, only three per cent of all server and VM backups are tested for recoverability each year.

Finally, on average, these tests are performed every two months, meaning a business could have 60 days of useless backup machines. An average test takes around 16 hours – and 65 per cent of IT departments said they do not have the human resources available for this.

“Traditionally one of the first sectors to embrace new ways of using IT, it is clear that the financial sector is keen to exploit the full potential of virtualisation,” commented Ian Wells, director of Northern EMEA at Veeam Software. “Financial institutions have some of the toughest demands on their data protection and backup and recovery tools known, yet virtualisation’s ability to improve data protection in ways that simply aren’t possible in the real world has not yet been tapped. For example, backups can be recovered in minutes instead of hours; individual files and application items can be recovered without needing to restore the entire machine; and organisations can reduce the risk of failed backups by automatically testing the recovery of every single backup, something next to impossible with traditional tools. The financial sector shouldn’t settle for anything less.

“With IT directors reporting that they plan to expand the use of virtualisation in their server infrastructure from 41 per cent to 63 per cent during the next two years, now is a perfect time for the financial sector to address these issues. By making sure their virtual infrastructure is as faithful as it is efficient, the sector will be able to take much greater advantage of the potential of virtualisation,” he concluded.

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