When it comes to backup and recovery (B/R) processes, never-ending data growth is wreaking havoc in the storage environment, according to Storage magazine's latest survey. Seventy-one percent of respondents indicate that "Managing rapidly growing capacity requirements" is their biggest problem; coming in a very distant second and third were "Meeting multiple application and/or business requirements" (44%) and "Performing backups for remote or branch offices" (43%). Data growth also seems to be leading to the two most challenging process issues for storage managers: It takes too long to back up data and they're backing up a lot of redundant data (see below). These issues may be why 50% of respondents are currently evaluating data deduplication technologies, while only 37% are considering adding more tape capacity.

--Trina MacDonald