best practices for protecting virtual servers final
TRANSCRIPT
© 2011 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited1©2010 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice
BEST PRACTICES FOR PROTECTING VIRTUAL SERVERSHP INFORM Webinar – July 12th
In cooperation with Forrester
Rachel Dines, Analyst, ForresterMike Peebles, Product Marketing,Data Protector software
© 2011 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited2 © 2009 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited
Best Practices For Protecting Virtual ServersRachel Dines, Analyst
July 12, 2011
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The backup challenge
Protecting virtual machines efficiently
Solving application protection headaches
Recommendations
Agenda
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Backups cause headaches for IT...
Time-consuming– You must configure, schedule,
troubleshoot, and monitor backups.
Error-prone– Backup errors are common and
difficult to diagnose
Capital intensive– You must purchase backup
software, media servers, disk, & tape
Offsite tape vaulting exposes the company to the risk– You must encrypt tapes before they
go offsite
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…And it’s not getting any easier
There is more data to back up than ever before– Storage growth between 30%-50%
Backup windows are shrinking– You can’t finish backups in time
Recovery demands are tougher– Users don’t want any data loss or
downtime
Your environment is changing– You’ll have a larger mix of virtual
and physical servers, OSes, DBs and apps
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x86 server virtualization adoption
Base: 637 IT decisions makers at North American and European enterprises
“What are your firm’s plans to adopt x86 server virtualization?”
Source: Forrester's Technology Forrsights For Hardware, Q3 2010
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Operating system adoption
Base: 616 server, storage, or data center decision-makers at North American and European enterprises with at least one x86 serverSource: Forrester's Technology Forrsights For Hardware, Q3 2010
75% Windows,25% non-Windows!
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To compete, enterprises are adopting more and more new applications . . .
Source: Enterprise And SMB Software Survey, North America And Europe, Q4 2009
Base: 455 packaged application software decision-makers at North American and European enterprises
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Application integration
OS
Database
Collaboration
Business intelligence/
analytical applications
Application development
tools
Hardware platform
Applications
Services
Storage Security
Network and systems management
IDS
Content Filtering
Management
AV/Spyware
Anti-Spam
Identity Management
Regulatory ComplianceManagement Vendors
Provisioning
Firewalls
FS Applications
Computer Network Storage
Vulnerability Assessment
MonitoringGrid
A Fortune 500 financial institution
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“How much data/information does your firm currently maintain for server backups for disaster recovery and continuity?”
Enterprise backup environments are measured in the hundreds of terabytes
Base: 649 server, storage, or data center decision-makers at North American and European enterprises
Source: Forrester's Technology Forrsights For Hardware, Q3 2010
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Data growth continues“What do you expect will be the overall storage growth at your company over the
next 12 months?”
Base: 351 server, storage, or data center decision-makers at North American and European enterprises
Source: Forrester's Technology Forrsights For Hardware, Q3 2010
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Why the information explosion?
Retention requirements
Compliance
Litigation
Fear of deletion
Backups are retained for longer than necessary
Application data growth
Systems for rich digital content
Virtual images
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The five-year growth of 100 terabytes
Source: The February 2010 “Controlling Storage Cost Amid High Growth” Forrester report
In 5 years 100 TB of production storage
turns into almost 3 PB!
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New pressures driving increased uptime
Accountability
Cost of downtime
Increased customer expectations
Supplier expectations
Employee expectations
Competitive advantage
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Today’s backup challenge
Capacity requirements are still growing 30%-
50% per year
Business owners have less and less tolerance for any
data loss
More and more companies operate
close to 24 X 7
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The backup challenge
Protecting virtual machines efficiently
Solving application protection headaches
Recommendations
Agenda
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Backup is a top challenge in the virtual server environment
Base: 104 vendor and user companies that currently use virtualization technology in the x86 server environments
Source: September 2010 Global Virtual Server Environments Online Survey
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Virtual machine backup challenge
As you increase the ratio of VMs to physical host, you will not have enough CPU and bandwidth to backup all the VMs at the same time.
You also likely don’t want to pay for, deploy and manage a backup agent in each VM
Backup admins don’t always know when new VMs have been deployed so they don’t get protected
Virtual servers
Physical servers
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VMware backup options
1. Deploy one backup agent in each VM• Provides the ability to restore individual VMs as well as application awareness
and granular object recovery• Costly, slow, lots of processing overhead• Doesn’t protect vmdk, can’t restore an entire VM
2. Deploy one backup agent per ESX host• Protects the entire ESX host including vmdks, can restore entire VMs• Less costly (if using agent-based licensing)• No granular recovery of individual VMs or objects
3. Use VMware vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP)• Supported by most major backup application vendors with native GUI
integration• Agent-less with no processing on the host• Granular restore and full VM restore
4. Use specialized VM backup products• Typically agent-less with no processing on the host• Designed specifically to backup VMware• Separate point product
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VMware backup options (cont.)
5. Use a backup application with source deduplication• Deduplicates data (block-level) at the source (on the ESX host) before backup
– Less data to backup and transmit– Also saves capacity on the back-end
• Application awareness, granular restore capabilities• Does require software/agent in each VM, additional overhead on host
6. Use storage-based snapshots• Increasing application awareness and integration• Provides multiple PIT copies (some vendors offer unlimited snapshots)• Space efficient snapshots reduce capacity overhead (25%-30%) • Snapshot technology is increasingly included the cost of storage or bundled
with other feature sets• Combine with replication for a DR solution• Can be controlled through backup platforms• Requires central storage (SAN/NAS)
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Most companies are still backing up VMs inefficiently
Base: 104 vendor and user companies that currently use virtualization technology in the x86 server environments
Source: September 2010 Global Virtual Server Environments Online Survey
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Demystifying vStorage API for Data Protection
Myth: I need additional production storage capacity to support VADPFact: VADP takes a off-host snapshot so it does not impact your production storage capacity or performance
Myth: VADP will take too long to deployFact: VADP is a native feature in most enterprise backup solutions and is easily enabled in the software. Many backup solutions will even auto-discover virtual machines for you
Myth: VADP can’t provide granular restores of individual files or objectsFact: Nope, that was VADP’s predecessor, VMware Consolidated Backup, that required deploying guest-level agents in order to get granular file restore
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The backup challenge
Protecting virtual machines efficiently
Solving application protection headaches
Recommendations
Agenda
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The benefits of application-aware backup agents
Ensure application consistency and get recoverable backupsAgents with application knowledge can
quiesce the application to make sure a consistent backup is taken that will be easily recoverable
Mitigate the disruption to the applications
Application aware agents can run the backup process in the background, or even move processing off the host to lessen the performance impact of the backups
Shorten backup windows
Application-aware agents can oftentimes complete backups faster than generic agents
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What to look for in an application specific agent
Granular recovery capabilities
– Single files, emails, records, SharePoint sites
Administrator/end-user self service
– Empower administrator to do their own restore with a native GUI in the application
Support for your version/the most current version of the application
– i.e., SharePoint 2010 and 2007
Support for snapshot assisted backups
– The ability to do the backup by calling an array-based snapshot
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Common application-aware agents offered by backup vendors
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Exchange backup and recovery options
Backup Storage solutions
Pros
•Relatively inexpensive, backup to tape or to disk
•Improving features (i.e. granular mailbox and mail recovery)
•RTO/RPO measured in minutes or seconds
•Multiple snapshots provide for PIT copies
•Storage vendors have increasing application awareness
•Cost of storage is declining, many vendors no longer charge for snap licenses
Cons •RTO/RPO measured in hours •Requires the deployment of a central storage (SAN or NAS)
Guidance
•Appropriate for Exchange environments, where RPO and RTO take a back seat to budget concerns or availability. In addition, all companies should complement the other solutions with backup for backup version history.
•If you already have or plan to deploy central storage this is a good option
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The backup challenge
Protecting virtual machines efficiently
Solving application protection headaches
Recommendations
Agenda
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• Identify your “trouble” applications like Exchange, SharePoint, Oracle, DB2 etc. and evaluate backup providers with strengths in these areas
• For VMware and Exchange, the enterprise-class backup vendors have caught up with the point solutions in terms of capabilities—no need for additional point products to be deployed
• For additional gaps in protection, VMware-aware snapshots are a good alternative—especially if you can catalog the snaps in your backup application
Avoid point products for protecting specific applications
© 2009 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited
Thank you
Rachel Dines+1 [email protected]@RachelDinesBlogs.forrester.com/rachel_dines
Advanced protection for virtual environmentsData Protector software 6.2
Mike PeeblesProduct MarketingData Protector software
HP Data Protector software 6.2
Simplifying application protection through un if ied recover y and advanced automation
• Broad hypervisor support
• Down-to-the-second snapshot recovery for VMware and Hyper-V on HP and non-HP arrays
• Unique VMware single item recovery solution
• One agent for VMware and Hyper-V– Long-standing tradition of one agent, multiple applications
– Simplify installation and use (API-level integration)
• VMware vSphere 4.x (vSphere)– Incremental, differential, change block tracking
– GUI integration for vStorage API backup
– VMware Ready Certified
Leading integration in virtual environmentsHP Virtual Environment Integration Agent
Simplified snapshots• Data Protector Zero Downtime Backup on HP and non-HP arrays
– Including: P2000, P4000, P6000 (EVA), 3PAR, P9000 (XP), EMC, NetApp – For virtual and physical servers
One - click protect ion
One click protection for Exchange, SharePoint and SQLAutomated protection for Microsoft Apps
One- click protect ionOne- click protect ion
Unique user-driven recovery of single items for SharePoint & VMwareDistributed granular recovery
Unique user-driven recovery
User-driven recovery of single items for VMwareDistributed granular recovery
Application admin browses and select
files then click restore
Unique user-driven
recovery within vSphere Client
•Browse Data Protector imaged virtual machine backups
HP Data Protector software 6.2
• Simple, flexible licensing structure– All SKUs fit on one US letter-sized piece of
paper
– 48% reduction in number of licenses required for an enterprise environment
• Unlimited backup of clients
• DR (bare metal restore) included
• Redeploy agents when changing or retiring applications
• Centralized management reduces complexity and staff time required
Lower the cost of backup ownership by up to 70%
Simplify application protection through unified recovery and advanced automationHP Data Protector software
hp.com/go/imhub/dataprotector
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