Virtualization Technology Addresses Potential Data Loss

MBA (4/3/2008 ) Palaparty, Vijay
Data loss, which disrupts business continuity, should be a higher priority for businesses but isn't, according to a recent report from Osterman Research.

“We were quite surprised to find so many businesses relying on luck and still thinking about next steps when considering business continuity for their important applications,” said Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research, Black Diamond, Wash., and author of the report, Messaging Virtualization Market Trends 2008-2011. “More than half of respondents are planning to put together a virtual environment to address the problem. Where a company is building out their business continuity plans there is a need for better integration and understanding of virtualization to deliver continuous availability to prevent any type of business interruption.”

The report said increased adoption of virtualization technology, however, could change business attitudes toward data loss prevention. Virtualization, at a basic level, is separating an application from the physical infrastructure required for its operation, the report said.

Nearly three out of five organizations consider enabling continuous operations as an important or critical driver for adopting virtualization, but most non-IT decision makers—83 percent—have no more than a modest knowledge of it to make decisions for its adoption, the report added.

In the mortgage lending space, business continuity is necessary to support the numerous transactions for both lenders and borrowers throughout the loan cycle. “Customers take it for granted that banks for instantaneously access all the information necessary to complete important transactions,” said Andrew Barnes, senior vice president of corporate development at NeverFail Inc., Austin, Texas, which sponsored the report.
Customer service heavily relies on technology and requires continuity of data regardless of planned or unplanned disruptions in data. “Real estate transactions require immediate access to funds and quick turnarounds,” Barnes said. “Couple that with the real estate buyer who is anxious to place an offer or nervous about closing on time. You have the potential for disasters if all does not run as planned.”

Equitable Bank adopted NeverFail technology to prevent downtime scenarios. “Prior to using NeverFail, and during a disaster recovery drill, we attempted to bring our Exchange server back online,” said Michael Block, IT officer at Equitable Bank, Wauwatosa, Wis. “We spent an entire business week trying to restore Exchange from tape to dissimilar hardware. We succeeded, but the time needed to recover was totally unacceptable."

The bank’s 12 locations require access to its Microsoft Exchange Server and SQL for banking information contained in the database. Losing SQL would impair the bank’s ability to generate loan documents and loss of Exchange could mean inability to access closing calendars. NeverFail replicated Equitable Bank’s data and applications to a secondary system which provides information during instances of primary server downtime. The secondary server is located 20 miles away from the headquarters and failover is provided over a wide area network (WAN).

“An inability to access the database could bring a lending operation to a halt, affecting the bank’s reputation as well as the customer’ ability to purchase real estate and obtain funding for other needs via loan closing,” Barnes said. “The greatest impact to any disruption of the lending process is the direct effect on the customer—customers need immediate access to their funds and account information for offers, closings and other transactions. The loan business operates on a tight schedule and profits are directly tied to the number of loans closed. Server downtime means less productivity and revenue.”

In addition to providing backup, virtualization could significantly reduce hardware and related costs by allowing multiple servers to run on the same hardware platform—one of two main reasons organizations cited for deploying virtualization technology, the report said. For example, an email or unified communications server, a security server and a mobile messaging server could all run on the same physical server, reducing hardware requirements.

“While virtualization has been in use for more than 40 years, starting first in mainframe environments, it has found renewed interest because of its many advantages,” Osterman said. “Because of newer offerings that make virtualization easier and more reliable, and because in many organizations there is sufficient excess computing capacity in many platforms that can permit the application of virtual servers for a variety of server functions, many decision makers are seriously considering virtualization for a variety of applications.”