Backing Up Your Virtual Environment – Best Practices

George Pradel: Sr. Director Strategic Alliances

Vizioncore

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

Drivers of Virtualization Adoption

• Initial virtualization strategies highlighted Server Consolidation

– Cost savings

• Hardware purchases

• Cooling/Electricity

• Floor space

– Hardware resource optimization

– Simplified provisioning

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

Drivers of Virtualization Adoption

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

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

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

Obstacles to Virtualization Adoption

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

Typical Virtualization Growth

Timeline of Virtualization Deployment

Initial Adoption

3:1 Consolidation

Physical

Systems

Consolidated

Virtual Machines

3-6 Months In

VMs Double

6-9 Months In

VMs Double Again

Physical Footprint Still 3:1

Administrative Workload x 4

Storage Requirements x 4

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?

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

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

Acronyms You Should Know

RPORTO

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

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!

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

B2.0: Simply Better Data Protection

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

What is Image-Based Recovery?

• Three things are recoverable from an image:– Image (reconstituted server)– File– Object (e.g.: email)

• Files and objects can be recovered without image reconstitution

Stored

Image

Recovered

Object

Recovered

File

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

Two Methods for B2.0

Direct-to-Target Benefits:

• No Backup Servers

• No Performance Bottleneck

• Maximum Performance Throughput

for Networks, I/O, Storage

• Shortest Possible Backup Windows

• Shortest Possible Recovery Times

Direct-to-Target

Proxy-Based

SAN

Proxy-Based Benefits:

• LAN-Free Movement of Data

• Preserves SAN Investment

• Enables Sweep-to-Tape for All Data

The Big Picture - Tiered Environment

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

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

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

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