Backing up Windows workloads can be a challenge, and cumbersome for many companies. Backup and recovery for Windows workloads on AWS, however, can be easy. This session will cover best practices for backup and recovery, how to configure Windows workloads to back up to AWS; pitfalls to look out for; and recommended reference architectures.

1. © 2015, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Drew Dennis, Solutions Architect
drewdenn@amazon.com
Best practices for backup
and recovery: Windows
Workloads onto AWS

2. Backup and Recovery Solution Space
On Prem Backup and Recovery
Process to protect data in the event of accidental deletion, corruption or failure with the ability to
restore data to given point in time.
Disaster Recovery
Ability to restore service in the event of failure.
Storage
Snapshots
Storage ISV Hypervisor Tape Storage
Off-site Tape
Vault
Archiving
Long term retention of data, generally for
compliance requirements.

3. Common Backup and Recovery Concerns
Data growth spiraling out of control
• Challenging to meet backup windows
Traditional technologies and processes don’t scale
Try to accurately predict storage needs
Bandwidth / WAN constraints for remote office / branch office (ROBO)
RPOs / RTOs can be difficult to achieve
• Recovery Point Objective
• Recovery Time Objective
Backup and Archive HW + SW is expensive
Tape is unreliable, cumbersome, error prone, with low durability
Off-site vaulting is cumbersome
Days or Weeks

4. Operating
System
Backup
Agent
Data
Backup
Master
Backup
Database
Media
Server
Media
Hypervisor
Backup
Agent
Guest Guest Guest
Network
Off Site
Configuration
& Metadata
Data
Data
Data
Data Center Backup Software Platform

5. Backup and Recovery Partners
Backup software platform
• Clients and server
Networks
Libraries and Media
Off-site storage
+
+
100’s – 1000’s

6. Why AWS for backup?
Metered usage:
Pay as you go
No capital investment
No commitment
No risky capacity planning
Avoid Opex and risks of
physical media
handling
Control your
geographic locality for
performance and
compliance

7. AWS Global Infrastructure
11 Regions
30 Availability Zones
53 Edge locations

8. AWS Storage and Archive Options
Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)
Highly scalable object storage
1 byte to 5 TB in size
99.999999999% durability
Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)
High-performance block storage device
1 GB to 16 TB in size
Mount as drives to instances with
snapshot/cloning functionalities
Amazon Glacier
Long-term object archive
Extremely low cost per gigabyte
99.999999999% durability

9. Built-in redundancy
Designed for
99.999999999%
durability
Store backups in Amazon S3
Internet-scale storage
Grow without limits
Benefit from AWS’s
massive security
investments
Low price
per GB per month
No commitment
No up-front cost

10. Amazon S3 Enterprise Features
Parallel I/O for max speed (Multipart Upload, Ranged GETs)
Resource-level IAM permissions
Bucket Policies & ACLs
Direct access through APIs
Private Endpoints
Server Side Encryption
Static Website Hosting
Data Lifecycle Rules
Logging and Event Notifications

11. Long term backup retention in Amazon Glacier
Stop managing
physical media
Amazon Glacier has
lower cost than
Amazon S3 with the
same durability
Amazon Glacier is
optimized for infrequent
retrieval

12. Amazon Glacier
Low-Cost Archival Storage
Secure
• SSL & AES-256
Durable
• Designed for 99.999999999% durability
Optimized for data archiving and backup
• Suitable for RTO measured in hours
• Includes storage costs and retrieval costs
$0.007 per GB/Month
Integrated with S3

13. Selecting the right Object Storage for your
needs
S3
S3-IA
Glacier
L
i
f
e
c
y
c
l
e
Available
S3: 99.99%
S3-IA: 99.9%
Performant
Low Latency
High Throughput
≥ 30 Days≥ 128K
≥ 90 Days
Durable
99.999999999%
Scalable
Elastic capacity
No preset limits
> 0K$0.007/GB per month
$0.0125/GB per month
“Hot” Data
Active and/or
Temporary Data
“Warm” Data
Infrequently
Accessed Data
“Cold” Data
Archive and
Compliance Data
≥ 0 Days> 0K$0.03/GB per month
3 – 5 Hrs
$0.01/GB retrieval
$0.01/GB retrieval < 5%

14. Where AWS fits natively: S3 & Glacier
Backup
Master
Backup
Database
Media
Server
Media
Amazon S3
WANBoundary
Amazon Glacier
or
Client
Client
HTTPS
HTTPS
HTTPS

15. Easy ways to transfer data
AWS Direct Connect
Dedicated connectivity
to AWS Edge Locations
AWS Import/Export
Data transfer using
portable disk drives
Transfer data in a
secure SSL tunnel over
the public Internet

16. AWS Storage Gateway
VM Appliance run on-premise
Creates iSCSI volume mount points
Directly interfaces with S3 or Glacier
Gateway-Stored Volumes
Gateway-Cached Volumes
Virtual Tape Library

17. Where AWS fits natively: AWS Storage Gateway
Backup
Master
Backup
Database
Media
Server
Media
Amazon S3
AWS Storage
Gateway
cached
volume
virtual tape
library
WANBoundary
Caching
disk
Amazon Glacier
iSCSI

18. AWS Import/Export
Uses portable storage volumes
Economic and fast
Faster than Internet for significant data sets
Import into S3, EBS, or Glacier
• Dependent upon region support
Snowball
50TB Storage
10Gb Network
8.5G Impact
Encryption with KMS
Schedule via AWS Console

19. Operating
System
Backup
Agent
Data
Hypervisor
Backup
Agent
Guest Guest Guest
Network
Configuration
& Metadata
Data
Data
Data
Our Demo Today
AWS Storage Gateway Amazon Simple
Storage
Service (S3)

20. Recovery Solutions

21. Backup and restore (into AWS)
On-site infrastructure
S3 Bucket
Over the
Internet
AWS Import/Export
or
AWS Storage Gateway
AWS region
Corporate
data center
Using
AWS Direct Connect
Availability Zone
Amazon
Elastic
Compute
Cloud (EC2)
Amazon
S3 bucket
Backup
and
restore

22. Pilot light architecture
Pilot
light
www.example.com
Data
Mirroring/
Replication
Not Running
Database
Server
Data
Volume
Corporate data center
Web
Application
Server
Master
Database
Server

23. Pilot light architecture – Failover
Pilot
light
Running
Database
Server
Data
Volume
Corporate data center
Web
Application
Server
Master
Database
Server
www.example.com
Application
Server
Web Server
Server

24. Warm standby architecture
Warm
standby
Data
Mirroring/
Replication
Application
Data Source
Cut Over
Elastic
Load
Balancer
Active
Production
Amazon
Route 53
www.example.com
Corporate data center
Data
Volume
Application
Server
Slave
Database
Server
Web
AWS region
Web
Application
Server
Master
Database
Server
Non Production
Traffic

25. Warm standby architecture – Failover
Warm
standby
Elastic
Load
Balancer
Active
Production
Amazon
Route 53
www.example.com
Corporate data center
Data
Volume
Application
Server
Slave
Database
Server
Web
AWS region
Web
Application
Server
Master
Database
Server

26. Windows - General
VM Import
• no additional charge beyond Amazon EC2 and Amazon
S3
• Use the AWS CLI or other developer tools to import a
virtual machine (VM) image
• VMware vSphere - AWS Management Portal for vCenter
to import your VM
• Windows and Linux VMs that use VMware ESX or
Workstation, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix Xen
virtualization

27. Windows - Database
Amazon RDS for SQL Server
• Import Your Data – pre-steps
• Create a snapshot of the target database.
• Disable automated backups on the target database.
• Disable foreign key constraints, if applicable.
• Drop indexes, if applicable.
• Disable database triggers, if applicable.
• Import & Export Wizard
• Bulk Copy

28. Start your first migration in 10 minutes or less
Keep your apps running during the migration
Replicate within, to or from Amazon EC2 or RDS
Move data to the same or different database engine
Sign up for preview at aws.amazon.com/dms
AWS
Database Migration
Service

30. Appendix

31. 2012 2013 2014 2015
102% year-over-year increase in
data transfer to and from S3
(Q4 2014 vs Q4 2013, not including Amazon use)
S3 usage

32. Hybrid Cloud Backup
VPC – Datacenter #4
Single GUI for Management

33. Branch office backup to cloud
Considerations:
- Backup Software
- Storage / Caching Gateway
- WAN or Internet
- Deduplication
- Compression
- Encryption
- WAN Acceleration

34. Core data center backup to cloud
Considerations:
- Backup Software
- Storage / Caching gateway
- Direct Connect or Internet
- Telco Burst Models
- Time Warner Telecom
- Deduplication
- Compression
- Encryption
- WAN Acceleration

35. Cloud backup to Cloud
Applications running on EC2 backing up to S3 / Glacier
Considerations:
- Backup software
- Encryption
- Deduplication
- Compression
- Native S3 and Glacier
integration
- AMI Backup Appliance?
- AMI = Golden Master
- EBS Snaps / Scripting

36. Backup & Recovery Challenges
Backup systems are often underfunded
Organizations forget about recovery
• Bad recovery experiences trigger backup system changes
Backup systems change slowly
• Always try to work with existing platforms
No one cares about backups. Everyone cares about recovery.

37. Gateway Big Play: NetApp SteelStore
Features
• Inline deduplication & compression
• 10x – 30x storage reduction
• Reduces bandwidth needs
• Various models:
• Physical
• Virtual (VMware only)
• EC2 (AWS Marketplace)
• Encrypted in transit & rest
• AES 256-bit & SSLv3
• Supports S3 & Glacier
• CIFS/NFS “front side”

38. Gateway Big Play: NetApp SteelStore
Backup modernization
Archival storage targetCold storage target
Backup server Backup server
PBBA
Archive or DB server
Enterprise
Vault
SteelStore appliance
SteelStore appliance
SteelStore appliance
SteelStore appliance
Adding cloud integrated backup
Amazon S3
Amazon Glacier

39. Cloud Native Big Play: Commvault Simpana
Physical Virtual Public Cloud
Applications
Servers
Network
Storage
Private Cloud

40. Remote Office/Branch Office: CTERA
Region 1 Cloud Gateway
NAS & Backup Appliance
Region 1 Cloud Gateway
NAS & Backup Appliance
Region 1 Cloud Gateway
NAS & Backup Appliance
VPC
S3 Buckets
Region 1
S3 Buckets
Region 2
S3 Buckets
Region ...
CTERA Portal
Database
CTERA Cloud
Storage Services
Middleware
Optimized Instance
w/ Cloudwatch
Management
EU: Ireland
Region
Branch Offices