Backup Software Upgrades are a Good First Step to Solving your Virtual Backup Problems
A recent Enterprise Systems article reported on the results of a recent SHARE survey of about 400 IT professionals. It revealed that nearly 70% of these users had virtualized some or all of their servers, 50% of their storage infrastructure and some are even starting down the path of virtualizing their desktop and network infrastructures. But what is notably absent in this article is any discussion around data protection in these newly virtualized infrastructures.
It is no secret that virtualization is transforming how organizations do everything from managing their applications to introducing new strategies such as cloud computing into their environment. While they may not implement all of these changes immediately and may only implement some of them over time, organizations can at least entertain new ways of managing their infrastructure that were never before possible.
However there are some aspects of managing a virtualized environment that are immediately transformed once an organization implements virtualization. One such area is backup and recovery.
In other blogs I've discussed some of the hazards of failing to properly consider the backup infrastructure as an organization virtualizes its environment. Immediate problems an organization may experience using traditional agent-based backup approaches include overloading the virtualized server's CPU as backup jobs run and congesting the host server's network connections as data is sent out to either disk or tape.
Aggravating the situation, while backup jobs run they can impact applications executing on other virtual machines running on that same physical server. In so doing, an organization essentially backs itself into a situation where it has to do something since its current backups in its newly virtualized environment are failing or at least performing in a less than optimal manner.
So what options do organizations have available to them? A lot of them are looking at new disk-based deduplication solutions as a means to expedite backups. Still others are looking at redoing their entire backup design by replacing it with an alternative solution.
However before taking such measures, steps that are more practical for an organization to take are to simply upgrade its current backup software and start using ordinary disk as a backup target. In the last few years newer versions of backup software have added a number of features that can alleviate the pain associated with backing up and recovering a virtualized environment (though they require disk as a backup target to realize these benefits).
However this option is only viable if an organization is running the right version of backup software with the right features. To address this, there are three key features that an organization should look for in a backup software upgrade of its existing software that can tip it off as to whether or not it will solve its new backup problems in its virtualized environment.
The good news is that organizations may not have to request additional funds to redesign their backup infrastructure to meet these new needs since backup software upgrades are many times part of their annual budgets. While they will definitely have to introduce disk into their backup scheme to take advantage of these new backup software features, high capacity disk-based storage systems suitable for backup targets are now relatively inexpensive or they can even use legacy, unused systems. In either case, leveraging new features found in backup software upgrades are a logical first step for organizations to take, may solve current backup problems and save them the time and expense of overhauling their backup infrastructure.
It is no secret that virtualization is transforming how organizations do everything from managing their applications to introducing new strategies such as cloud computing into their environment. While they may not implement all of these changes immediately and may only implement some of them over time, organizations can at least entertain new ways of managing their infrastructure that were never before possible.
However there are some aspects of managing a virtualized environment that are immediately transformed once an organization implements virtualization. One such area is backup and recovery.
In other blogs I've discussed some of the hazards of failing to properly consider the backup infrastructure as an organization virtualizes its environment. Immediate problems an organization may experience using traditional agent-based backup approaches include overloading the virtualized server's CPU as backup jobs run and congesting the host server's network connections as data is sent out to either disk or tape.
Aggravating the situation, while backup jobs run they can impact applications executing on other virtual machines running on that same physical server. In so doing, an organization essentially backs itself into a situation where it has to do something since its current backups in its newly virtualized environment are failing or at least performing in a less than optimal manner.
So what options do organizations have available to them? A lot of them are looking at new disk-based deduplication solutions as a means to expedite backups. Still others are looking at redoing their entire backup design by replacing it with an alternative solution.
However before taking such measures, steps that are more practical for an organization to take are to simply upgrade its current backup software and start using ordinary disk as a backup target. In the last few years newer versions of backup software have added a number of features that can alleviate the pain associated with backing up and recovering a virtualized environment (though they require disk as a backup target to realize these benefits).
However this option is only viable if an organization is running the right version of backup software with the right features. To address this, there are three key features that an organization should look for in a backup software upgrade of its existing software that can tip it off as to whether or not it will solve its new backup problems in its virtualized environment.
- Server virtualization integration. Another method that backup software upgrades are taking to protect virtualized environments is through integrating with VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) or Hyper-V Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). Using this technique, the backup software can automatically issue a command to the virtual server to take a live snapshot of the virtual machine (VM) running on the ESX server or Hyper-V environment without disrupting the virtual server environment and without scripting any of the backup process. An integrated backup software like Backup Exec or NetBackup also ensures there is minimal I/O impact to the virtual server environment and also allows for support of unlimited guest machines with a single agent.
- Granular Virtual Server Recovery. Make sure you can easily restore files and folders inside a guest machine along with an entire guest or host environment. With integrated backup software, the benefits of file-level and image-level recovery are delivered from a single-pass VCB or VSS image-level backup--it's no longer necessary to perform separate guest level back- and file-level backups in order to recover a single file within a virtual disk image. Individual files can be recovered directly from an image-level backup within the Backup Exec console
- Deduplication. The word is getting out amongst knowledgeable IT consultants that using software-based deduplication that is part of the backup software client works well. Products such as the latest version of Symantec NetBackup with its PureDisk option provide a better way to protect your virtual infrastructure without negatively impacting the host server. Since many applications that are virtualized only experience marginal changes throughout the day and the need to recover these back to a specific point in time is less of a requirement, consultants are telling me that using deduplication is a great way to effectively protect one's data doing daily backups. This functionality will also be available in the next release of Backup Exec later this year.
The good news is that organizations may not have to request additional funds to redesign their backup infrastructure to meet these new needs since backup software upgrades are many times part of their annual budgets. While they will definitely have to introduce disk into their backup scheme to take advantage of these new backup software features, high capacity disk-based storage systems suitable for backup targets are now relatively inexpensive or they can even use legacy, unused systems. In either case, leveraging new features found in backup software upgrades are a logical first step for organizations to take, may solve current backup problems and save them the time and expense of overhauling their backup infrastructure.
Newsletter Signup
Leave a comment