14 November 2011

Recent Kroll Ontrack survey reveals an inverse relationship between data loss risk perception and reality for one of the world’s most prominent business systems

Six in 10 organisations reported experiencing at least one data loss from its Oracle® business system, and 18 percent have had more than five losses in the past two years. These are key findings from a recent Oracle OpenWorld database recovery survey conducted by Kroll Ontrack, the leading provider of data recovery, information management and legal technologies products and services.

This survey yielded feedback from 733 IT professionals on Oracle system data loss frequency and remediation practices. Data loss can occur in any and every business system as a result of corruption, human error, or hardware or software failure. However, when estimating the risk level associated with an inability to retain data from a lost Oracle database, 79 percent of organisations report “no risk or fair risk.”

This inevitably leads to an increased tendency to neglect data loss risk from Oracle database, log or backup corruption; Oracle ASM corruption; deleted Oracle databases, logs or backups; file system corruption; and RAID and other storage/server hardware failures. Further, 58 percent of organisations reported taking more than a business day of downtime to recover from their data loss.

“From critical customer database information to entire virtual environments, Oracle solutions store valuable business data,” said Robert Winter, data recovery engineering manager, Kroll Ontrack UK. “Given their pervasiveness among the world’s largest companies, it is imperative that downtime is minimal. Kroll Ontrack has proprietary techniques and the industry-leading Oracle recovery toolset designed to retrieve data from both hardware and virtual platforms.”

Specifically, Kroll Ontrack has tools and experience to address loss from:

• Oracle Databases: Kroll Ontrack has tools and techniques designed to retrieve the row data contained within missing or damaged database files. These techniques and toolsets address Oracle database, log or backup corruption; Oracle ASM corruption; deleted Oracle databases, logs or backups; file system corruption; and RAID and other storage/server hardware failures.
• Oracle Linux: With its data recovery repair and recovery tools for Linux file systems including EXT3, EXT4, XFS, Reiser, JFS and GFS, Kroll Ontrack is unique in its abilities to recover data from systems running Oracle Linux. These solutions address file system or data corruption, LVM corruption, deleted or partially overwritten data and RAID and other storage/server hardware failures.
• Oracle VM: Kroll Ontrack supports file formats including VHD, VDI and VMDK, which can be used by Oracle VM and Oracle VM VirtualBox, and has solutions to address guest and host file system corruption, deleted virtual machines and snapshots, internal virtual disk corruption, RAID and other storage/server hardware failures and deleted or corrupt files contained within the virtual disk.

“Our commitment to successfully addressing any and every type of data loss scenario, which is predominantly caused by human error or natural disasters, is evident in our extensive research and development with respect to this technology,” said Pederson. “As a result, we’ve recently and successfully addressed Oracle situations with complex failed media, including SAN environments and all RAID types, Oracle row data from corrupt databases and remote data recovery of a virtual server containing an Oracle database.”

Through its Ontrack Data Recovery products and services, Kroll Ontrack is the largest, most experienced and technologically advanced provider of data recovery products and services worldwide. Using its hundreds of proprietary tools and techniques, Ontrack Data Recovery solutions help businesses and consumers recover lost or corrupted data from all types of operating systems and media and storage devices through its do-it-yourself, remote and in-lab capabilities. Kroll Ontrack offers a free initial consultation for customers experiencing a data loss.