Efficiency, savings drive server virtualization

MUMBAI, INDIA:Major factors which are driving factors for server virtualization decisions are the need for improved business cost savings and efficiencies, customer responsiveness and improved service levels.

The above findings were released by CommVault in its Virtualization Survey, which polled Simpana software customers worldwide to determine the key factors driving adoption of server virtualization and the major challenges associated with managing these environments.

The opportunity to leverage virtualization as an alternative disaster recovery strategy was also cited as the key driver.

A total of 479 respondents underscored the continued rise in server virtualization, with 46 per cent of those polled citing that between 51- and 85-per cent of their total servers were virtualized while 21 per cent reported successful virtualization of all or nearly all servers. VMware was listed as the virtualization platform of choice by 83 per cent of those polled, said a press release.

The majority of CommVault customers polled for this survey were running mission-critical applications on VMs in their production environment.   Some industry commentary has suggested that many organizations are reluctant to deploy vital applications on virtualized infrastructures because of data protection concerns.

According to those polled, the top three challenges relative to managing virtualized server environments include the inability to backup all virtual machines (VMs) reliably and in a timely manner, additional resource costs and administrative time due to lack of data management automation and the increased demand for corporate-wide virtualization.

77 per cent of the respondents were running mission-critical applications on VMs in their production environments and nearly 50 per cent were running between 50-250 Vms. According to the survey, ongoing virtualization projects are generating increasingly larger amounts of data, with 36 per cent of those polled creating between 1-5 TBs of data and another 23 per cent generating between 6-10 TBs of data through VMs or VM-based applications.

To protect this ongoing surge in virtualized data, more than half of the survey participants rely only on backup copies as their disaster recovery strategy while 18 per cent utilize software replication and 16 per cent use hardware replication.

David West, vice president of marketing and business development for CommVault, “The results of CommVault’s virtualization survey reinforce what we’ve been hearing from our customers–embracing virtualization can dramatically reduce costs and increase operational efficiencies as long as you can easily and reliably manage the massive volume of data produced by hundreds of Vms.”

“With our unifying code base and singular platform, Simpana software is uniquely equipped to bridge the gap between the physical and virtual worlds of computing while ensuring the highest levels of data management and protection,” he added.

According to CommVault, legacy data management tools lack the intelligence, automation and scalability required to seamlessly move data between physical and virtual IT infrastructures.

The Simpana software leverages a singular platform, centralized management and advanced functionality to easily and cost-effectively manage modern data centers with large populations of virtual machines, added the press release.