In this new Backup Academy video our new professor Andrea Mauro (vExpert) explains in details: - What is a backup policy - Design a backup plan - What defines a backup policy - Where do backups go - How will backups be performed For more sessions and certification exam please visit http://www.backupacademy.com

1. Basic principles of backup policies
Andrea Mauro
vExpert and VCDX
http://vinfrastructure.it/en
Twitter: @Andrea_Mauro

2. About the speaker
 17 years of experience in IT
 Working for Assyrus Srl – Italy
● Server, Storage, Networking, Security & Virtualization
 Certifications and accreditations
 Italian VMUG founder and board member
 VMTN Community Moderator
 Blogger http://virtual-infrastructure.it/

3. Agenda
What is a backup policy
Design a backup plan
What defines a backup policy
What is a backup policy
Where do backups go
How will backups be performed

4. What is a backup policy?
Amount of data
1 principle or rule to guide decisions and achieve results
2 procedure or protocol
Backup policy
1 set of rules to achieve the required backup goals
2 several aspects: • technical
• non technical

5. Input of backup policies
 Requirements
Risk analysis
Backup/Business Continuity Plan
● Recovery Point Objective
(RPO)
Requirements/Constraints ● Recovery Time Objective
(RTO)
Backup policies  Constraints
● Business needs
● Budget
Backup Procedures ● Max backup window
solutions ● Technical aspects
and
products
 Business Continuity Plan
(BCP)

6. Properties & parameters & dependencies
 What
 Where
 How, How much, How often
 Several dependencies
Wks Days Hrs Mins Secs Secs Mins Hrs Days Wks
Recovery Point Recovery Time
Protection Methods Recovery Methods
Synthetic Backup
Disk Restores Tape Restores
Real Time Replication
Tape Backups Vaults Archival Instant Recovery Search & Retrieve
Disk Backups Staging Off-Host Bare Metal Recovery

7. Backup as a process
Selection
list
Backup Backup
Analysis + job data
Backup
policies

8. What – Define the sources of the backup
 Required protection level
 Way to handle the backup tasks
 Type of sources
Virtual
Files machines
Applications
Systems
 Type of “transport” at source side
● Full copy
● Incremental transfer
● Size of the sources

9. Way to handle the backup tasks
 Agent vs. Agent-less
● Application level
● VM level
 Hot vs. Cold
● Usually agent or specific API are needed for hot-backup
 Push vs. Pull
● Also other models
Data transfer options important

10. Type of sources
 Files ● Windows
● Linux / Unix
 Application data – Not a simple collection of files
 Systems ● A system is not just a set of files
● It may include also files and applications backup
 Virtual Machines – It may include also system, files
and applications backup
 For details see specific lessons on Backup Academy
 Which level of consistency?

11. Consistency and integrity
 Different levels
 Files
● Open files dilemma
● Windows provide VSS
 Application data
● Application that are VSS-aware
● Application specific solutions
 Systems
● Problem with the system state
 Virtual Machines
● Specific hypervisor functions are recommended
 For details see specific lessons on Backup Academy

12. Type of “transport” at source side
 Full copy vs. incremental copy
 LAN based vs. LAN-free

13. Size of the sources
 Amount of data
Type of data How data changes Backup consistency
 How data can be transferred from the source
● Full copy vs. incremental
● Using of compression and/or de-duplication at source side
Data transfer options important

14. Where – Which kind of backup destination
 Disk based
● D2D
● Logical disk or network shares
 Tape based
● D2T
● Real or “Virtual” tape
 Multi-level backup
● D2D2T
● Other levels
 Cloud

15. D2D
 Different type of solutions
● DAS or SAN
● NAS
● Backup Appliance
− Most NAS (and sometime VTL) based
 Pros of D2D
● Great capacity: 1,5 TB (LTO5) vs. 2-3 TB (SATA disk)
● Speed: disks IOPS could scale with RAID
● Bigger scalability
● Replication and disaster recovery
● More flexible

16. D2T
 Type of tape based solutions
● Tape unit: DAS with SAS or SCSI cables
● Autoloader: DAS or SAN
● Tape library: SAN
● Virtual Tape Library (VTL): an appliance (hardware or software)
that can be used as an autoloader or tape library but it works
usually with disk instead of tapes
 Pros of D2T
● Speed: throughput of 140MBps for LTO5
● Removable support with long life?

17. VTL
 A tape that is a disk
● Can be used as an autoloader or tape library but it works usually
with disk instead of tapes
 Implementation
● Gateway appliance
● Implemented in D2D appliances
● But could also implemented with software based products
− Virtual appliance
 Pros of VTL
● Migration from D2T to D2D
● Could be used to scale a D2T solution
● Could export to physical tape
● Backup over SAN

18. How – Save to sources to the destinations
 Multi-tier (hierarchy backup)
● how data are distributed using different type of destinations
 Destination “format”:
● how data are saved in which format
● with which kind of relations with previous data
(full, incremental, differential, de-duplicated, …)
 Backup frequency
● how often are performed the backup jobs
 Backup retention
● how old data are removed from the destination
● how much data must remain

19. Multi-tier backup strategies
 More techniques, levels or hierarchy organization
 D2DT
 Storage Snapshots as a first level
● But not a true backup!
 Offline media
 Replication as an additional level of protection

20. Destination “format”
 Format of the backup data depends on the backup program
 Common way to store the data
● Full
● Differential (Cumulative)
● Incremental
● Reverse incremental
● Synthetic
 Other aspects
● Compression
● De-duplication
● Encryption

21. Backup frequency
 How much
● Job scheduling
 Defined by
● RPO and business requirements
 Different schedules for different format

22. Backup retention
 How much data must be stored?
 Depends on
● Source type and its size
● Frequency
− more backup could mean more data that could limit the retention)
● “Format” type
− by using deduplication or incremental backup and/or compression
we can reduce the amount of backup and increase the retention
● Destination type
− that could define the amount of data that could be stored)
● Required Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
 Reclaim of expired data

23. Retention on D2D and D2T
 D2D
● Incremental model
● Retention vs. Space
− More disks
− Compression and/or deduplication
● Reclaim mean usually delete old files
 D2T
● Full/differential/incremental models
● Retention vs. Space
− Using off-line tapes
● Reclaim with media rotation policies

24. Media rotation policy
 Round Robin (FIFO)
 Grandfather, Father, Son (GFS)
 Tower Of Hanoi
 More info on
● http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup_rotation_scheme
● http://www.computer-repair.com/Backup.htm

25. What we covered
What is a backup policy
What make a backup policy
● What
● Where
● How
Why is important
● To design a backup solution
− Consider the backup as an entire IT process
● Could be used as a documentation of the backup procedures
and jobs
● Could be part of a BCP
● High level policy can be adapted to different type of backup products

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