Using multiple BDR products doesn't always translate into faster data recovery

Companies spend a lot of money on disaster recovery solutions but that doesn’t translate into faster data recovery, according to a survey conducted by Quorum titled the “State of Disaster Recovery.”

The report, which surveyed 250 CIOs, CTO and IT vice presidents, found that 80% of the companies surveyed claimed it takes more than an hour to recover from a server failure and 26% said it takes more than two hours for data recovery. Only 19% said it took less than an hour to recover. Seventy-two percent consider the speed of backup and data recovery as “critical.”

“All those backup and disaster recovery (BDR) products aren’t making their recovery any faster,” the report claimed. “While speed is essential for continuity and security… a staggering 80 percent of respondents need more than an hour to recover from a server failure. And its gets worse: more than a quarter need more than two hours.”

Sixty-four percent use more than three different disaster recovery solutions, with 26% using more than five and less than 40% using between one and three different disaster recovery products.

Moreover, a majority of the respondents said they wanted a method to simplify the management of all the BDR products they are using. Ninety percent of the respondents want to consolidate their disaster recovery solutions into one dashboard.

The report shows that the movement to the cloud has grown. Seventy-five percent of the survey respondents are using cloud-based disaster recovery solutions, while 36% use a hybrid model mixing on-premises and cloud DR. Thirty-nine percent use on Disaster Recovery as a Service (DraaS).

Eighty-nine percent have plans for more cloud-based disaster recovery solutions, with five percent stating they have no further plans and six percent stating they “don’t know.”

Disaster recovery products are growing in importance as as concerns about security increase. Seventy-seven percent said they have used their disaster recovery solutions after a security threat event occurred. Fifty-three percent respondents are worried about security threats compared to concerns about hardware failure, backup disk corruption or a natural disaster.

“Natural disasters crashing in on a data center, an employee error or a hardware failure can all pose immense problems for an organization,” the report stated. “But a skilled and willful attack can cripple a brand for years and could cost a literal fortune. Ransomware attacks particularly depend on a team’s inability to recover quickly.”

Companies are diligent about testing the production level with their current disaster recovery products. Eighty-eight percent of the respondents said they can achieve production-level testing with their current DR.