Data recovery complexities increase

Kroll Ontrack has announced three data trends impacting how data recovery is performed. Specifically, OntrackData Recovery engineering reported that data recovery requests have increased in capacity seven-fold since 2005. This, coupled with significant storage architecture developments and faster turn-time requests, requires significant innovation beyond standard disk failure recoveries.

• Data recovery from the cloud is a reality and a business necessity. In 2009, the cloud became a viable storage option for corporations’ business-critical data. Users of internet-based services benefit from world-class technology services without being tied to dedicated computing infrastructure. While new technologies such as the cloud can provide ultimate storage optimisation, hardware is still at the root of the technology, making these alternative information solutions still exempt from data loss. As a result, one of Kroll Ontrack’s first cloud recoveries resulted from a company using the cloud to host a development and testing environment.

“We accidentally detached one of the ‘virtual’ storage volumes while in the cloud environment - similar to pulling a cable from an operational volume. When it was reconnected, the Windows host reported the volume as unallocated space, so we could not mount the volume,” said Accius President Douglas Moore. “After contacting our cloud vendor to see what could be done, they said the only way to recover the data was to use a data recovery company and recommended services by Kroll Ontrack. Time was business critical and re-creating/re-building the data would have added significant time to the project … time we did not have. Leveraging Kroll Ontrack’s proprietary Ontrack Data Recovery Remote Services, the damaged cloud storage volume was repaired and back up and running within four hours.”

• Data recovery requests from virtual environments are dramatically increasing and human error is the primary cause.Virtualisation software enables organisations to consolidate operating systems and increase productivity for computer hardware, offering significant benefits and cost savings. However, given the increased consolidation of valuable data on one system, data loss is more destructive, making efficient and effective data recovery more critical. As a result, data recovery requests from virtual environments rose 58% in 2009 over 2008. Of the data recoveries Ontrack Data Recovery engineers performed on virtual environments in 2009, 87% were the result of human error, reinforcing the intricacy associated with implementing, managing and/or migrating to a virtual environment.

“Virtual storage is a complex world. Consequently, human error is often the culprit of data loss from a virtual environment,” said Adrian Briscoe, General Manager - APAC, Kroll Ontrack. “Critical to our customers is not only our ability to perform these recoveries successfully, but also our ability to do so remotely; we are able to perform damaged volume recoveries while other volumes on the same system remain operating without impact.”

• Small offices are the biggest drivers of data capacity growth. From 2005 to 2009, the worldwide Ontrack Data Recovery team increased the total amount of data recovered from 3.2 petabytes in 2005 to 14 petabytes in 2009. The SOHO market segment was the biggest driver of the increase in data capacity.  “Corporations in contrast to SOHO’s are typically more selective regarding what to dispose of and what to archive. Storage capacity, efficiency, cost, in addition to legal risk and regulations, are common factors that drive what a corporation maintains and for how long,” added Pederson. “On the other hand, it is more common for SOHOs to co-mingle personal, large data files such as pictures, videos and music with business information, driving up the size of their data recovery requests.