Veeam is proud to release the findings of yet another research project, the 2023 Data Protection Trends Report, which is the industry’s largest independent research on backup and data protection. The research in this report is fully independent and represents the whole market — not only Veeam customers. It was conducted by a third-party research organization, with all respondents having no knowledge of Veeam’s involvement.
The Vice President of Product Management for Kasten K10, Veeam’s container backup solution, likes to say, “Containers are either eight years old or eight years young, depending on your point view.” For many in infrastructure and operations, containers may seem like something that needs to be managed and protected in the future. However, nearly 2,100 respondents from several independent data centers report that containers have already become a reality for most organizations.
Looking at the left side of the graphic below, you’ll see that over half of respondents (52%) reported already using containers in production, while another 40% intend on using containers in the future. Conversely, 8% indicate that they are interested in production container usage, while merely 1% having no plans to run containers in the future.
To the right, we see the same data shown in bands representing the size of the respondents’ organizations. Not surprisingly, container usage is further developed in the enterprise segment. Small- and medium-sized businesses, however, report strong adoption and even greater interest, meaning there is momentum for containers in production deployment across all segments of companies in 2023.
Let’s delve into container backup. Below, on the left-hand side, we can see that many different teams are currently involved in container protection. In fact, it is a four-way tie (between 23% to 26% for each group) between those backing up containers in infrastructure and application teams:
- Infrastructure teams
- Storage administrators
- Backup administrators
- Platform teams
- Kubernetes administrators
- Application administrators
On the right-hand, regarding how containers are backed up, we also see diversity:
- Storage snapshots are used by almost half (47%) today, which is reminiscent of VMware vSphere protection around 15 years ago. Copying raw storage blocks is easy, but it may not fully protect data. Snapshots are not backups, and crash-consistent protection is not the same application-consistent protection.
- Third party tools specializing in container backups are in use by 26%.
- Database-level backup is in use by 22%, which may indicate that infrastructure teams are not currently aware of production usage, or that application teams believe that other teams are not able to properly protect containers.
- No need or no data to protect is reported by 5%, with 4% indicating that there is no stateful data in their container usage (a view which is often proving to be inaccurate). Only 1% state that containers are natively durable and do not require backup (another assumption which is often proving to be inaccurate). While low at 5% in total, we expect to see these responses decline over time.
We hope to connect with you on our LinkedIn Live sessions where we will discuss this and other fascinating results from this research. Remember to download the full report at 2023 Data Protection Trends Report.
If you have questions about this or any of Veeam’s many other research projects, feel free to contact us at StrategicResearch@veeam.com.
About the 2023 Data Protection Report: Veeam’s Data Protection Report is the latest and largest research report on data protection ever in the history of backup and availability, as surveyed by an independent research firm with 4,200 responses from 28 countries. Download the full 2023 Data Protection Trends Report to get access to all the latest data protection insights. Want to learn more about enterprise backup solutions at Veeam? Visit the Veeam Enterprise Backup Solutions Page.