Replication Rates High

The latest Byte and Switch reader poll shows 97 percent of respondents are busy replicating data -- or planning to.

Nearly two thirds (64 percent) of 81 respondents to this month's poll say they are already using data replication -- the act of duplicating data from one disk to another. Of course, thats not great news for the vendors that rolled out replication products in the last couple of months, since it shows some users' decisions have already been made (see Replication's All the Rage and Data Replication).

Still, there's room for replication growth. A full third of respondents -- 33 percent -- say they plan to institute replication. Only 3 percent aren’t replicating and don’t intend to. Looks as if there's still hope for the rash of recent replication products aimed at midrange and SMB customers.

Disaster recovery and business continuity are the main drivers of replication: 45 percent of this month's respondents say they use or plan to use replication for disaster recovery; 41 percent want it for more than one business continuity application; and 11 percent see it as a way to enhance backup.

With business continuity the most popular application, it should be no surprise that nearly all replication fans favor remote, asynchronous replication. More than 80 percent of respondens say they want some form of remote replication, with 32 percent looking for remote only and 50 percent favoring a combination of remote and local replication. Only 18 percent want to replicate locally only.Asynchronous replication was favored by 80 percent of respondents who are looking for remote replication, which is understandable since it allows users to access applications while data is still being written to both sites (see EMC Ratchets Up Replication). Synchronous replication, favored by 11 percent of those polled, is slower because it freezes the application at the primary location until the read is completed at the secondary location, making it less preferable for distances.

Respondents varied in the quality of replication they're seeking. Nearly a quarter (24 percent) want the most exact duplication of the data possible. That means the recovery point objective (RPO), or the gap between the last replication and the recovery of data after a failure, should be zero or close to it. But 26 percent say a few minutes RPO is acceptable, and 24 percent are OK with a half hour.

Recent news involving replication includes:

— The Editors, Byte and Switch