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VMware Backup, Archive, and Disaster Recovery: Next Generation VMware Data Protection

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VMware Backup, Archive, and Disaster Recovery: Next Generation VMware Data ProtectionVBAADRWP-20110922-01

Executive Summary

IntroductionWhen VMware released its vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP), the company revolutionized data

protection capabilities for virtual environments. Prior to VADP, VMware allowed two mechanisms by

which virtual environments could be protected: either at the GOS (Guest Operating System - or

virtual machine) level or at the HOS (Host Operating System) level via VCB (VMware Consolidated

Backup.)

VADP is the next generation evolution of VCB. Like VCB, the design of VADP is centered around

making it possible to off-load backup processing from VMware servers. Unlike VCB, however, VADP

allows data protection vendors to directly access at a block-level VMDK files (the files that are the

underlying storage for VMware virtual machines.) This means that backup vendors have a much

greater latitude for creating more efficient and more affordable backup solutions.

Unitrends has incorporated support for VADP to provide seamless next generation support for

VMware licensed ESXi and ESX environments for all of its backup appliances. The Unitrends backup

solution enables VMware 3.5 and vSphere 4 backup, archive, and disaster recovery capabilities

in an integrated fashion – the capabilities are fully included with every backup appliance we offer.

This webinar consists of a detailed discussion of VMware backup, archive, and disaster recovery

including support for features such as Changed Block Tracking (CBT) and file-level recovery.

Most Common Causes of VMware Data LossWhen used for server consolidation, VMware can reduce the number of underlying hardware

platforms and via clustering enable high availability operation. These act to increase the underlying

MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) of the hardware platforms that constitute the computer

environment upon which VMware executes. This raises the MTTDL (Mean Time To Data Loss) since

hardware typically accounts for 40% of data loss.

Of course, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Utilizing VMware means increased administration

and management complexity as well as being another source of failure. Human error and software

corruption, the second and third leading cause of data loss, respectively, tend to increase in these

more highly available but more complex systems. And this means that backup, archiving, and

disaster recovery are more important rather than less important because these technologies enable

not just replication but retention.

The most common causes of VMware data loss and a few examples include:

• Hardware failure. This includes physical server, drive, RAID, iSCSI, SAN failures.

• Human error. Deleted virtual disks, accidentally reformatted drives, RAID arrays, or iSCSI


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targets, accidentally reformatted or reinstalled VMFS volumes.

• Software corruption. Corrupted virtual disks, VMFS file system corruption, deleted files

within the virtual machine, internal VMDK, file, or database corruption.

• Computer viruses. Viruses within the virtual machine, particularly with respect to Windows.

• Hardware destruction. Natural and human destruction of computer hardware.

Virtual Data Protection ApproachesAs mentioned in the introduction, there are three different approaches for protecting virtual

environments:

• GOS (or virtual machine) level protection.

• HOS level protection via VCB.

• HOS level protection via VADP.

Each will be discussed briefly in the sections that follow.

GOS-Level ProtectionGOS-level protection simply means that you protect your GOS (virtual machine) exactly as if it were

a physical system. The primary advantages to this approach are:

• This approach is available on all VMware environments (including free ESXi.)

• The ability to do highly granular backup operations (via inclusion and exclusion selection

capabilities.)

• The ability to restore individual files.

• The ability to natively backup applications such as Exchange and SQL.

• This approach supports GOS application-level quiescing.

• This approach supports GOS application-aware backup semantics (e.g., transaction log

truncation.)

• Quiescence is supported within the GOS so you don’t have to shut down your virtual

machines to do a backup.

The major disadvantages to this approach are:

• Each GOS must be backed up separately and individually.

• Unless your vendor supports advanced bare metal capabilities, system level recovery within

the GOS itself is difficult.

• Depending upon your vendor’s agent footprint and technology, treating the GOS as a

physical system can be more resource intensive than using an HOS-level backup method.

VCB-Based ProtectionVCB-based HOS-level protection means that you protect all of your virtual environment at the host


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level (the physical server that upon which VMware is operating.) For file-level backups, VCB works

by performing a snapshot of your GOS, mounting the snapshot, and then allows backup of that

mounted snapshot. For image-level backups, VCB works by performing a snapshot of your GOS,

copies the snapshot to the VCB server (a Windows-based server is needed to run the VCB scripts),

unsnaps the GOS, and then allows backup of the copied snapshot image.

The primary advantages to this approach are:

• Centralize backups of VMware servers using VMware snapshots.

• VCB supports both image-level backups.

• Provides file-level backups at both full and incremental levels (note: file-level backup is

available only for Windows GOSs.)

• GOS quiescence is supported so you don’t have to shut down your virtual machine to do a

backup.

• You can connect your VCB server to your SAN directly and thus not have to use the general-

purpose LAN for backup.

• Potentially reduces the load on the VMware HOS by not having to backup at the individual

and separate GOS level.

• Since VCB is a scripting environment and a stand-alone application, it’s possible to write

simplistic scripts to backup your environment.


• VCB has been deprecated by VMware and will not be supported in future versions of VMware

(after vSphere 4.0 VCB will no longer be supported.)VCB is in essence a set of scripts and

thus VCB is a script-driven approach.

• VCB is not included with the free version of ESXi.

• VCB requires a Windows-based proxy server upon which its scripts operate.

• VCB lacks many features that are present in VADP. The most prominent of those features is

Changed Block Tracking (CBT.)

• VCB is implemented as an application - which means that there is another application to

learn, monitor, and manage.

• There is the potential for finger-pointing between VMware and your backup vendor since

they are two separate applications and user interfaces.

• VCB is non-intuitive and difficult to use.

• VCB does not support GOS application-level quiescing.

• VCB does not support GOS application-aware backup semantics (e.g., transaction log

truncation.)

VADP-Based ProtectionVADP-based HOS-level protection means that you protect all of your virtual environment at the


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host level (the physical server that upon which VMware is operating.) Unlike VCB, VADP is not an

application and does not require a Windows VCB (Proxy) server. VADP is a set of APIs to VMware to

which backup solutions may interface.

The primary advantages to this approach are:

• VADP is supported now and in the future by VMware.

• VADP enables much tighter integration between the backup solution and VMware.

• VADP enables new vSphere functionality such as Changed Block Tracking (CBT.)

• VADP will support new VMware functionality such as fault-tolerant VM backups in the future.

• VADP does not require the Windows-based proxy server that VCB does.

• VADP is implemented as an API rather than as the application that VCB is.

• VADP is implemented as an API and thus reduces the potential finger-pointing among

vendors.

• VADP will follow the same backup/recovery paradigm as your backup solution does.


• VADP may not be used with the free version of ESXi.

• Simplistic scripting is not available with the VADP approach.

• VADP does not support GOS application-level quiescing.

• VADP does not support GOS application-aware backup semantics (e.g., transaction log

truncation.)

Introducing Next Generation Unitrends VADP-Based Protection for VMwareBeginning with release 5, Unitrends supports VADP-based protection for VMware. In this chapter,

we’re going to discuss the this protection from the standpoint of Unitrends core D2D2x (Disk-to-Disk-

to-Any) offerings. Thus we’ll explore backup, archive (D2D2D: DIsk-to-Disk-to-Disk), and vaulting

(replication.)

A simple depiction of the overall architecture of the full D2D2x implementation of the Unitrends

VMware VADP-based protection for VMware is depicted on the figure at the top of the next page.


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BackupUnitrends VMware VADP-based protection for VMware includes the following features:

• Full, differential, and incremental backups.

• Native support of thin provisioned disks.

• Changed Block Tracking (CBT.)

• File-level restores from image-based backups.

• Point-in-time restores.

• Dynamic inclusion of newly discovered or created virtual machines.

• Restore to the original or alternative VMware server, restore to the original or alternative

datastore, and restore to the original or alternative name.

• vMotion support.

• HA cluster support.

In the next few sections, we’ll discuss in a bit more detail CBT, file-level recovery from image-based

backups, and P2V and V2P dissimilar bare metal.


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Changed Block Tracking (CBT)CBT is a VMware vSphere 4 technology that is implemented within VMware; it is not supported prior

to vSphere 4. What CBT does is keep track of the storage blocks on virtual machines as they change

over time. This allows backup solutions to very efficiently discover and transfer only the blocks that

have changed. This will radically increase your backup performance compared to VCB and VADP-

based backup on VMware 3.x.

Please note that CBT requires version 7 virtual hardware. This is the default in vSphere; however,

if you upgraded from VMware 3.x to 4 then you’ll need to upgrade the virtual hardware to version

7 in order to use this feature. Also please note that CBT is disabled by default because it incurs a

small amount of overhead when using it; however, Unitrends VADP-based VMware protection will

enable CBT prior to starting the first backup if version 7 virtual hardware is detected because of the

tremendous backup performance improvement that are realized through CBT support.

File-Level Recovery from Image-Based BackupsVADP-based VMware protection is an image-based backup methodology and thus produces a

monolithic image-based set of backups. Unitrends supports file-level recovery from these image-

based backups for Windows.

To do this, the user uses the RRC (Rapid Recovery Console - the user interface for Unitrends

appliances) and “creates” the image. Image creation involves taking the state of a virtual machine

that has been protected and synthesizing a backup image for that point in time.

After the synthesized image has been created, it is exposed as a network share that may be mapped

from your Windows client. At that point the synthesized image may be browsed and files copied

from that synthesized image for file-level recovery.

After you’ve completed this operation, you then “tear down” the synthesized image using the RRC.

Marrying Virtual and Physical - VMware P2V and V2P with Dissimilar Bare MetalUnitrends also supports VMware P2V and V2P dissimilar bare metal. This is often used in migration

of physical to virtual machines - and less often used in a migration from a virtual to physical machine.

ArchiveUnitrends offers disaster recovery with both on-premise rotational archiving and with electronic

vaulting. Vaulting will be discussed in the next section; in this section we’re going to discuss rotational

archiving specifically.

The D2D2D archiving system introduced with release 5 enables special-case handling for VMware

VADP-level protection beyond that normally offered for file and application protection. When a


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virtual machine is specified the following capabilities are enabled:

• Selected VMware virtual machines can be archived.

• VMware full, differential, and incremental backups may be archived.

As with all archiving operations, on-demand and scheduled archiving is supported.

VaultingUnitrends offers electronic vaulting of data that may be used alone for disaster recovery or in concert

with rotational archiving. This electronic vaulting, which uses the core underlying technology of

replication, is implemented using block-level in-flight deduplicaiton such that the greatest amount

of data can be protected with the absolute lowest amount of required WAN bandwidth.

Unitrends offers both single tenant private cloud-based vaulitng and mulitple tenant public cloud-

baed vaulting. The public cloud-based vaulting is offered via a service called Vault2Cloud while the

private cloud-based vaulting is available either via a traditional hub-spoke model or a peer-to-peer

model (which is called “cross-vaulting.”) The VADP-based VMware protection that Unitrends offers is

fully integrated with all types of vaulting that Unitrends offers.

VMware configuration and backups have been integrated into the Unitrends disaster recovery

subsystem such that when an on-premise appliance is restored after a disaster that VMware is able

to be recovered quickly and safely.

Putting It All Together: The User InterfaceCompletely depicting all of the functions of the VADP-based VMware protection that Unitrends

offers is beyond the scope of this introductory paper; for much more information please see the

webinar associated with this paper, schedule a product demonstration, or download our VMware-

based trial software.

The screenshot at the top of the next page depicts the first screen that a user sees after her or his

login to a Unitrends solution (a Unitrends solution consist of from one to hundreds of our appliances

all monitored and managed from a single pane of glass.) Notice the aggregation mechanism mirrors

that of VMware’s vCenter - which we call vCenter-RRC.


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7 Technology Circle, Suite 100Columbia, SC 29203

Phone: 866.359.5411E-Mail: [email protected]: www.unitrends.com

Copyright © 2011 Unitrends. All Rights Reserved.


About Unitrends

Unitrends offers a family of affordable, all-in-one on-premise backup appliances that support virtual

and physical system backup and disaster recovery via disk-based archiving as well as electronic

vaulting to private- and public-clouds. Unitrends is customer-obsessed, not technology-obsessed,

and is focused on enabling its customers to focus on their business rather than on backup.

For more information, please visit www.unitrends.com or email us at [email protected].

mailto:[email protected]


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