For the most part, database administrators overall are meeting current SLAs, the survey finds. However, they believe that increases in data volume, servers, and infrastructure are eroding the effectiveness of their back up and recovery tools and methodologies.
Expect Backup and Recovery Tools to Become Less Effective as Amount of Data and Servers Continue to Grow
Hardware/software bug - 34%
User error - 32%
Backup tools are complex, too hard to use, and require
continuous management - 17%
Multiple personnel involved in the process - 16%
Nonintegrated solution with too many different vendors -13%
The survey found that current backups are too slow, need constant management, and recovery is too complex. One out of five respondents report that a significant amount of their backups—more than 10%—were not successful over the past year. Reasons cited include hardware and software bugs, user errors, and tool complexity as the primary reasons of failure.
Main Reasons for Database Backup Failures
User error - 34%
Corrupt backups - 26%
Hardware/software bugs - 26%
Multiple personnel involved in the process - 13%
Application failed to come up with the restored copy - 12%
Likewise, 18% report that a significant portion of their restores and recoveries (again, 10% or more) were unsuccessful over the past year. At this stage, user error, corrupt backups, and hardware and software bugs were the root causes.
Main Reasons for Restore/Recovery Failures?
Yes - 37%
Maybe - 32%
No - 24%
Don’t know/unsure - 7%
While the rise of analytics-driven cultures within enterprises demands more real-time capabilities in the delivery and availability of data, few organizations have reached this point, the survey also finds. Organizations are not backing up all their data in real time, and one-third of the sample base indicated that less than 5% of their databases were backed up in real time.
A majority of organizations, 51%, have a formal strategy in place for the backing up and testing of databases. However, these strategies will continually be tested in the near future, as increasingly large volumes of data, funding issues, network bandwidth, and meeting RTOs will continue to be major challenges facing database administrators.