Simplified Backup and Disaster Recovery for Virtual Machines

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Greg Paul

Are you dealing with some of the following VM backup and recovery challenges?

  • Significant storage redundancies between VMs
  • Monitoring and management of large # of VMs
  • Ease of VM deployment complicates discovery of new production resources
  • Lack of visibility to individual VMs—backing up one can impact performance of other production (virtualized) servers
  • Outside of backup window
  • Time to restore after failure
  • Reliability of disaster recovery (if still using tape)

If so, a webcast from ExaGrid and Quest Software might help you. A combined solution from the two companies provides reliable backup and restoration, full support of Quest vRanger advanced features, and advanced deduplication and data replication for off-site protection.

Many IT people are familiar with the Grow/Break/Replace cycle—where you buy a product to you’re your backup or storage needs today, your data grows, the system can no longer handle the increased amount of data and backup breaks, and then you have to replace the system. In this webcast, you’ll learn how only ExaGrid solves this problem by permanently shortening your backup window as data grows, quickly recovering VMs and files and protecting your IT budget over time.

In the webcast, you’ll learn how the combination of ExaGrid and Quest vRanger gets you the following benefits:

  • Lower CapEx – vRanger’s Active Block Mapping (ABM) technology combined with VMware Changed Block Tracking (CBT), significantly reduces amount of data transferred to ExaGrid
    ExaGrid further reduces backup size by up to 50:1 with patented zone-level deduplication
  • Faster Recovery – vRanger with ExaGrid enables rapid image-level and file-level restores. Native catalog in vRanger enables fast, easy granular recoveries
  • Offsite DR – Joint solution allows customers to quickly and safely copy vRanger backups offsite via ExaGrid appliance. Enables fast, reliable recoveries over the WAN in the event of disaster

Here’s just one of several customer stories that might be of interest to you.

BeforeAfter
Backing up to tape (6 tapes/day nightly, 9 tapes on weekends)Backing up to 2-site ExaGrid (main Ft. Meyers data center, DR site)
Long backup times--13-hour backupsBackups run 5 hours including replication
Many hours/week spent transporting tape for offsite DRTape management time and costs completely eliminated

If you’d like to learn more, click here to register for the webcast and watch it live on Wednesday, May 16 at 11:30am Eastern. You can also watch via replay.

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Better Backups – ExaGrid Enhances TSM Reclamation Processes

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Greg Paul

Best Practices Guide for Exagrid and TSMOne consequence of TSM’s “Progressive Incremental” approach is that objects which are no longer needed are still stored in the database and on media (volumes), in addition to objects that are still needed.  If TSM let this condition continue indefinitely, the quantity of disk storage needed to store backups would exceed a reasonable level and would eventually fill up the ExaGrid appliance.  The TSM reclamation process prevents the infinite growth of backup data.

ExaGrid recommends setting the reclamation threshold for all storage pools to 100% and then defining reclamation thresholds and schedules in either Administrative Schedules to finely tune reclamation for a specific storage pools or in Server Maintenance Schedules to broadly define when reclamation will run for all data backed up by the server.

In either case, reclamation should be run daily. A key part in planning your backups to an ExaGrid System must include accommodations for reclamation. Reclamation will free up disk space on your ExaGrid System consumed by expired objects within volumes.

To perform a reclamation operation, your TSM server must access your ExaGrid System. This process will use ExaGrid System resources that might otherwise be used to land, deduplicate and/or replicate your backups.

TSM Space Reclamation Process

TSM Space Reclamation is a process of identifying tape files that meet threshold requirements then moving the unexpired objects off the tape file candidate to another tape file. Here’s an example of how this works.

  1.  In this example, all volumes are fully occupied by client data.
  2. As time passes by, data ages and expires. Space is (logically) freed up on the volumes.
  3. The space reclamation process consolidates and shifts the client data onto one physical volume which is then expired.
  4. The space that was reclaimed onto another volume has freed enough space to create an empty volume.

For more information on using TSM and ExaGrid together for better TSM backups, download a copy of the ExaGrid and TSM Best Practices Guide from our TSM Resource Page.

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ExaGrid Can Significantly Reduce Oracle Backup Storage Costs

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Greg Paul

ExaGrid Can Significantly Reduce Oracle Backup Storage CostsThe use of primary storage as a backup target adds tremendous cost and complexity of protecting the databases that you manage. While built-in database tools for Oracle and SQL provide the basic capability to backup and recover these mission-critical databases, most administrators use standard primary storage to hold additional database backups. ExaGrid eliminates the need for expensive primary storage for database backups without affecting the ability to use familiar built-in database protection tools.

Database administrators must rely on their organization’s backup policies and procedures to ensure that the databases they manage can be recovered in the event they are corrupted or lost. This often involves some compromises, including:ExaGrid Can Significantly Reduce Oracle Backup Storage Costs

  • Loss of productivity to run disruptive backup agents on your production database servers
  • Extra cost from allocating expensive primary storage as a “dump” area for temporary backups
  • Financial loss and longer downtime due to relying on tape for restore of critical databases
  • Loss of data by relying on unreliable tape to store all historic copies of the database backups
  • Long recovery times in the event of a disaster as the off-site backups are also stored on tape

Adding an ExaGrid disk-based backup appliance allows database administrators to gain control over their data protection needs, at lower cost and with lower complexity without affecting the ability to use familiar built-in database protection tools.

You can download a copy of the Solution Brief from our Oracle RMAN page.

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ExaGrid Offers Integration Guide for IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Greg Paul

ExaGrid Offers Integration Guide for IBM Tivoli Storage ManagerExaGrid has created a new resource for IBM® Tivoli® Storage Manager (TSM) users, “Best Practices Guide: IBM® Tivoli® Storage Manager with ExaGrid® Disk Backup with Deduplication.” This quick guide provides high-level information about best practices and recommended settings for integrating an ExaGrid appliance into a TSM environment.

Upcoming Guides in this series, including Oracle RMAN, Symantec Backup Exec and CommVault Simpana, are planned or under way.ExaGrid Offers Integration Guide for IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

Using an ExaGrid appliance and TSM together allows you to take advantage of several additional benefits of the combined ExaGrid-TSM solution, such as reclamation enhancements, which will be described in more detail in upcoming posts.

This Guide would be useful to any TSM administrator or manager responsiible for backing up in a TSM environment. You can download a copy of the Best Practices Guide from the ExaGrid TSM Resource page on our web site.

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ExaGrid Offers Integration Guide for Symantec NetBackup Environments

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Greg Paul

ExaGrid Best Practices GuideExaGrid has created a new resource for Symantec NetBackup users, the “Best Practices Guide: Symantec NetBackup with ExaGrid Disk Backup with Deduplication.”

This quick guide provides high-level information about best practices and recommended settings for integrating an ExaGrid appliance into a Symantec® NetBackup® (NBU) environment.  The Guide includes details about our support for advanced features like Symantec OST and Optimized Synthetics.

NetBackup Benefits with ExaGrid Appliances

Using a Symantec OpenStorage (OST) enabled ExaGrid appliance and NetBackup together allows you to take advantage of several additional benefits of the combined ExaGrid-NetBackup solution, which are described in more detail in a later section of this document.

  • Unified Control and Tracking is available since NetBackup tracks all copies of backup data including copies replicated to disaster recovery sites, the NBU catalog and tape copies via the NetBackup interface.
  • Simplified Disaster Recovery with the ability to recover replicated backup data from an offsite ExaGrid appliance from within the NetBackup console.
  • Flexible Storage Lifecycle Policies allow different data retention at local sites versus off-site disaster recovery locations by leveraging the unique ExaGrid architecture.
  • Optimized Synthetics Support allows switching backup strategy to use fast, resource-friendly daily differential incremental backups plus a fast, resource-friendly daily optimized synthetic full backup, without requiring large amounts of backup data movement around the network.

The Guide is written for Symantec NetBackup customers, backup administrators, partners and others who are interested in configuration, backup best practices and recommended settings for using an ExaGrid appliance in conjunction with Symantec NetBackup. It is the first in a series of best Practices Guides for each of the popular backup applications that ExaGrid supports. You can download a copy on our Symantec NetBackup Resource page.

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ExaGrid Contributes Deduplication Course to Backup Academy

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Greg Paul

 

Backup AcademyAs a leader in the field of data deduplication, ExaGrid was recently honored by Backup Academy.
Marc Crespi, our VP of Product Management has created and delivered a Backup Academy course, “Data Deduplication in Virtualized Environments.”

As you may know, Marc has over 20 years of software and hardware experience in the high technology sector. He is part of the ExaGrid team that drives product strategy and execution and is responsible for managing product operations.

Deduplicating Virtualized Environments

An interesting feature of using Veeam Backup & Replication’s built-in source-side deduplication in concert with ExaGrid’s disk-based backup system with zone-level deduplication is that you can reduce the total amount of storage needed for backups by as much as 1000:1.

If you’re interested in learning more about why deduplication makes virtualized backups better, Marc covers these topics during his presentation:

  • What is Deduplication?
  • Why Use Deduplication in Backup and Recovery?
  • Challenges of Deduplication in Virtualized Environments
  • Deduplication approaches (two camps)
  • Summary -  Deduplication’s Role in Data Protection and Disaster Recover

The course is “live” now, and may be viewed here.

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Finding the Right Purpose Built Backup Appliance for Your Business

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Greg Paul

Storage Switzerland
When organizations are choosing a disk-based backup appliance with deduplication, they invariably evaluate the differences in performance and product architecture between ExaGrid and other purpose built backup appliance vendors. The main difference between other backup appliances and ExaGrid’s is that we use post-process zone-level deduplication (which is faster and more scalable) while other appliances offer inline block-level deduplication (which is not as fast and does not scale as seamlessly). But performance is just one factor in a purpose built backup appliance for your business.

According to a recent report, “How to Judge Purpose Built Backup Appliance Performance,” by George Crump, Senior Analyst at Storage Switzerland, the key to a successful long term purpose built backup appliance investment is to overlay the performance needed on the available budget. In most cases the budget will dictate how much backup performance you will get more so than the performance you want. Finally, compare the performance available at that budget level to expected growth in the environment over the next 3-5 years. Make sure that the system purchased can either scale to meet that growth or that there is budget set aside at some mid-point to upgrade the system.

Judging purpose built backup appliance performance can be a confusing task, but it doesn’t have to be if focus is placed on the needs of the organization, exactly what backup performance is needed in your environment and what is available given your budget, not to what the fastest system on earth is.

Read the entire report on our Industry Analyst Perspectives page to learn more about the key to a successful long-term purpose built backup appliance investment.

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Scale Up vs. Scale Out Architectures

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Greg Paul

 

Is Data Growth Extending Your Backup Window?

When looking to replace your tape library with a purpose-built disk backup appliance you may assume that all the big players in the market offer solutions that are similar in performance and capabilities. But the technical details, including the underlying architecture and how the deduplication operation is implemented, make a huge difference in the overall value of the solution. Let’s examine scale up vs. scale out architectures.

Choosing Between Scale Up vs. Scale Out Architectures

The most obvious reasons for choosing between scale up vs. scale out approaches are scalability and performance. Scale out architecture allows you to combine the power of multiple machines into a combined deduplicated data repository with each node having its own dedicated deduplication power. So, you are not limited to the server capacity of a single controller. In a scale up architecture scenario, however, you have a hard limit – the scale of the hardware on which you are currently running. Clearly then, one factor in choosing between scale up vs. scale out is whether or not you have enough resources within a single machine to meet your scalability requirements.

Solutions that have legacy front-end server architectures SCALE UP by adding resources to the single server. In this case disk shelves are added as data grows, but supported with no additional CPU or memory resources. As data grows, the backup windows keep expanding because of the fixed pool of available deduplication resources. Eventually, the backup window expands to a point where you must replace the front-end server with a more powerful server via a costly “forklift upgrade.”

ExaGrid offers the only disk-based backup appliances that offer GRID architecture that can SCALE OUT to respond to data growth. As a new appliance is installed, it gets added to the existing GRID. Each new appliance is a full server that adds more deduplication resources – processor, memory and bandwidth, along with its added disk capacity.

Scale Up vs Scale Out

Reasons for Choosing Scale Out Architecture Even If a Single Machine Meets Your Requirements

Today, with the availability of large multi-core and large memory systems, you might well have a single disk-based backup with deduplication appliance that can cover your scalability and performance goals. And yet, there are several other factors to consider carefully:

Continuous Availability/Redundancy – Having one big controller is a single point of failure. With a GRID, if one of the nodes fails the other nodes continue to function normally.

Cost/Performance Flexibility – As hardware tends to change quickly over time, you want to have the flexibility to choose the optimal configuration setup at any given time or opportunity to optimize cost/performance. If your system is designed for scale up only, then you are pretty much locked into the hardware that you are using.

Continuous Upgrades – Building a backup system as one big unit means that if a newer, more powerful controller is needed to keep up with expanding requirements over time, the only choice is to remove and replace the unit. Unexpected incompatibilities between older components and new appliances due to obsolescence may mean a complete forklift upgrade is needed.

More information on scale up vs. scale out architectures and how ExaGrid stacks up against other appliances is available at our Resource Center.

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ExaGrid and Symantec NetBackup Deliver Optimized Synthetic Backups

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Greg Paul

ExaGrid Supports Optimized Synthetic Backups with Symantec NetBackup

Backup administrators use a variety of methodologies and technologies when backing up data.  Combining traditional synthetic backups with appliances that are capable of optimizing them gives backup administrators a powerful weapon in their battle to keep ahead of ever-expanding data protection needs.

ExaGrid was recently named the first third-party deduplication appliance to be certified by Symantec for Optimized Synthetic Backups with NetBackup. Optimized Synthetics use metadata to create a roadmap for recovering a full backup without actually doing the data movement to rebuild the full. ExaGrid’s support for optimized synthetic backups was built under the Symantec OpenStorage API integration (OST). Let’s take a look at the benefits of this integrated solution.

Traditional Synthetic Backups

Synthetic backups have been around for a while. They “stitch together” a full backup with all its subsequent incremental backups to “synthesize” a full backup. However, this operation represents a lot of data movement and backup application and hardware bandwidth consumption.

Optimized Synthetic Backups

Optimized synthetic full backups take a different approach to the problem. They eliminate that bandwidth and server load penalty by synthesizing a new “full” from a previous (“real”) full and a series of previously-done differential incremental backups. Symantec OpenStorage technology enables ExaGrid’s disk backup with deduplication system to achieve the high level of integration with NetBackup needed to create optimized synthetic backups. The benefits to this approach are as follows:

  • Reduced backup windows from elimination of full backups
  • Reduced backup application load
  • Improved RTOs and RPOs
  • Reduced replication bandwidth

Optimized synthetic cumulative incremental backups allow a low-cost cumulative incremental backup to be synthesized from a series of previously-done differential incremental backups.  The optimization provided by the manipulation of metadata alone allows backup administrators to drastically reduce the frequency of those time and resource-costly full backups. Instead, they can perform many days of fast, resource-friendly differential incremental backups plus a fast, resource-friendly daily optimized synthetic full backup. This concept is illustrated below:

Optimized Synthetic Backups Chart

As this figure illustrates, the optimized synthetic full is the accumulation of all the metadata from the Day 1 full backup plus Day 2-5 differential incremental backups (just the changes).

The various pieces of protected data are tracked via metadata, and these are used to optimize the construction of the synthetic full (or the cumulative incremental).  No data is moved when constructing the synthetic full, since it is already safely stored on the advanced disk-based backup appliance. Only the references to the actual data are manipulated. Full recovery from that optimized synthetic full backup leverages the metadata references to bring back only the data required.

To learn more about ExaGrid’s support for Optimized Synthetic Backups with NetBackup, download our free whitepaper “Exploiting Metadata to Optimize Synthetic Backups.”

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Top Data Storage Companies to Watch in 2012

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Greg Paul

It’s that time of year when the lists come out, and the data storage industry is no different. Over at the Storage Switzerland blog, George Crump and Erick Slack, Senior Analysts for Storage Switzerland, have created a list of top data storage companies to watch in 2012.  We are very pleased that ExaGrid was named as one of the top data storage companies by these respected storage industry analysts.

Storage Switzerland Logo

According to Crump and Slack, “The purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA) market has certainly come into its own over the past few years. During that time ExaGrid has established itself as a leader, especially in the mid-range market where it focuses. ExaGrid uses a scale-out architecture to allow midrange customers to start small and grow their investment as needed instead of having to do a fork-lift upgrade.”

They continued, “In 2012 look for ExaGrid to continue maturing its product with tighter integration with software applications like those from Symantec and Veeam. They should also be able to take advantage of processor improvements and disk capacity improvements to be able to scale into the higher end of the PBBA market. Look for 2012 to end with only three serious PBBA vendors instead of the dozen that we have today. I expect ExaGrid to be one of those three.”

Thank you Storage Switzerland for the top data storage companies in 2012 nod! For more information about ExaGrid, please visit our Resource Center.

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