Backing up your virtual environment best practices
1. Backing Up Your Virtual Environment
– Best Practices
George Pradel: Sr. Director Strategic Alliances
Vizioncore
2. Introduction
• Nearly 25 years experience in IT
– 13 years in Virtualization (Citrix, VMWare,
Vizioncore)
– 12 years in corporate IT
• VMWare SE of the year 2005
• Speaker at VMWorld’s US and Europe, Interop
and Virtualization Summit
3. Drivers of Virtualization Adoption
• Initial virtualization strategies highlighted
Server Consolidation
– Cost savings
• Hardware purchases
• Cooling/Electricity
• Floor space
– Hardware resource optimization
– Simplified provisioning
4. Drivers of Virtualization Adoption
• Recent shift towards Disaster Recovery becoming
a primary focus
– Virtual Machines are very portable
– Working “underneath” the OS and Applications
– Hardware Independence
• Server platform
• Storage infrastructure
– Decreased downtime (Live Migration)
– Rapid recovery if done correctly
6. Virtualization Adoption Trends
• According to recent Gartner analysis*:
– 16% of server workloads are running in virtual
machines
• It took approximately 6 years to get to this point
– Predicts to an increase to 50% of server workloads
by the end of 2012
• To a total of 58 Million deployed virtual machines
– This does not include virtual desktop workloads
* Gartner Press Release - Gartner Says 16 Percent of Workloads are Running in Virtual Machines Today – October 21, 2009
7. Virtualization Adoption Trends
• Why this rapid growth?
– Shift from simple Server Consolidation to Data
Protection being the primary virtualization driver
• Not all workloads need to be consolidated
• All workloads can benefit from enhanced DR processes
– Better performing hardware
– Enhanced hypervisor software
– Simplified workload provisioning
– More comfort with High-Performance workloads
8. Where Does Disaster Recovery
Enter?
• Organizations must have a stable virtual
environment before they implement DR
– If DR is a driver of virtualization, it must be considered
during infrastructure design
• DR is a “Stage 2” virtualization challenge
– Not fully realized until the virtual environment is
considered “Production Ready”
• Typically 6-9 months into virtualization in my experience
– Has a tendency to blindside organizations
• Many organizations don’t realize how virtualization impacts
traditional backup strategies
10. Why is Backup an Obstacle?
• Backup processes and meeting backup
windows has historically been a challenge in
the “traditional” physical world
• Virtualization introduces new challenges to
data protection and DR that didn’t exist in the
physical world
11. Physical
Typical Virtualization Growth
Systems
Physical Footprint Still 3:1
Administrative Workload x 4
Consolidated
Storage Requirements x 4
Virtual Machines
Timeline of Virtualization Deployment
Initial Adoption 3-6 Months In 6-9 Months In
3:1 Consolidation VMs Double VMs Double Again
12. What Happens in High Density VM
Deployments?
• What happens if the backup
jobs try to run concurrently?
• How does this get scheduled?
• What happens to VM
performance levels?
• Are all VMs in your dev/test
environment being
protected?
• Are these challenges limiting
your deployment options?
13. New Challenges from Virtualization
• Server capacity for backup processing
– Highly efficient systems
– Processing and Disk capacity optimized from
consolidation
– Rapid virtualization growth leads to more systems to
protect and more data to transfer
– Backup job scheduling impacts workload performance
• Parallel job processing will impact performance
• Must perform serial backup
• Scheduling challenges multiplied
14. The Root Problem
• “The one time that you needed all of that
server capacity was during backup.”
Teneja Group
• “Traditional backup loads are a worst-case
scenario for virtual servers.”
Blogger
16. Taking Advantage of Images
• What’s in an Image?
• An image is a completely
encapsulated system stored
as a binary file
• Point-in-time copy of OS,
Applications, Data, and
Configurations
• Captures running systems
• Image-based Data Protection
is called Backup 2.0
• No agents
• Faster to capture
• No disruption – no window
17. Are Image-Level Backups Safe?
• Consider recoverability of Backup 1.0 to Backup
2.0
– Entire system encapsulated in an image
– Granular restore
– Rapid recovery
• Fewer Moving Pieces
– Small number of larger files vs. very large number of
smaller files
– Hardware platform independence
– Registry and driver issues are a thing of the past!
18. Backup Methods & Opportunities
• Selective Backup of Running VMs versus Powered
Off VMs
• vCenter Notes Amendment
• Test of Storage Free Space
• Support of Platform Advancements
• Utilize Multi-Tier Storage Devices on the Network
• Custom Backup Groups
• Backups at Multiple Virtualization Levels
20. What is Image-Based Protection?
• An image can be recovered on any system, anywhere –
including on-premise, to cloud, and on dissimilar
hardware
• Enables point-in-time DR for environments, whole
systems, single files, and application objects
• Enables new levels of protection that were previously
cost-prohibitive
21. What is Image-Based Recovery?
• Three things are recoverable from an image:
Recovered
– Image (reconstituted server) Object
– File
– Object (e.g.: email)
Stored
Image
Recovered
File
• Files and objects can be recovered without image
reconstitution
22. Recovery Methods & Opportunities
• Hot Copy of a VM for Test and
Troubleshooting
• Preserve Disk Mapping Best Practices
• Selecting Network
• Recovering a LUN-full of VMs
• Traditional Backup Agent can be Recovered as
part of the VM
• Recover-As VM Renaming
23. Two Methods for B2.0
Direct-to-Target
SAN
Proxy-Based
Direct-to-Target Benefits: Proxy-Based Benefits:
• No Backup Servers • LAN-Free Movement of Data
• No Performance Bottleneck • Preserves SAN Investment
• Maximum Performance Throughput • Enables Sweep-to-Tape for All Data
for Networks, I/O, Storage
• Shortest Possible Backup Windows
• Shortest Possible Recovery Times
25. Best Practices for a Small
Environment
• Implement image-based backups to offset traditional costs
• Static servers
– Weekly or bi-weekly full image backups
• Dynamic servers
– Weekly or bi-weekly full image backups
– Incremental or differential daily
• Line of business servers
– Weekly or bi-weekly full image backups
– Incremental or differential daily
– Software replication on or off-site
• Scrape Long-Term storage to tape regularly
• Investigate cloud storage for Long-Term storage
26. Best Practices for Mid-Sized
Environment
• Consider recovery SLA requirements per workload/application
• Displace traditional agents to save costs
• “P2V” Disaster Recovery
• Static Servers
– Weekly full image backup
• Dynamic servers
– Weekly or bi-weekly full image backups
– Incremental or differential daily
• Line of business servers
– Weekly or bi-weekly full image backups
– Incremental or differential daily
– Storage array-based snapshots and replication on and off-site
• Secondary storage costs become a concern for long-term data storage
27. Best Practices for Large
Environments
• Consider recovery SLA requirements per application
• Dynamic mix of technologies to meet defined SLAs
• Infrastructure server/Tier 3 applications
– Weekly or bi-weekly full image backups
• Tier 2 applications
– Monthly/bi-weekly image backups
– Incremental or differential daily
– Regular storage snapshots
– Software replication on or off-site
• Tier 1 applications
– Monthly/bi-weekly image backups
– Incremental or differential daily
– Regular storage snapshots
– Storage-array replication on or off-site
28. One Size Does Not Fit All
• Tiered Environment = Tiered Protection and
Management
• SLAs Determine Your “Best Fit”
Backup/Replication Methodology
• Be Creative = Virtualization Allows You to
Reinvent Data Protection and Disaster
Recovery
