52% Success Rate for Attempted Bare Metal Restores

Cloud backup and DR provider Zetta.net announced the results of a survey on bare metal recovery (BMR) usage in modern IT.
 
“Anecdotally, BMR has a reputation for being unreliable,” commented Gary Sevounts, CMO, Zetta.net. “But it was difficult to find any numbers related to success. We conducted this survey to learn more about how our customers use this technology, and how successful it’s been for them.”
 
The company heard from more than 200 IT professionals on their experiences with BMR, including usage rates, success rates and the most frequent causes of failure.

 
The company released several statistics from their findings:

• 34% of respondents had used BMR at some point in their career – slightly more than one third.
• 23% of respondents were currently using BMR. Zetta.net noted that several respondents cited increased virtualization as eliminating their need for BMR.
• 48% of BMR users reported that they had experienced problems trying to perform a restore.
• 52% of BMR users reported experiencing no problems attempting restores.

Among users who reported problems, the primary cause varied:

• 24% reported driver failure
• 35% reported corrupt backup
• 36% reported dissimilar hardware
• 3% reported other difficulties. According to Zetta.net, the comments referenced tape drive problems and related issues.