1. Smarter Backup/Restore for Virtual Environments
Richard Vining, Product Marketing Manager
11 Mar 2011
Smarter Backup/Restore for Virtual Environments
smarter storage management

2. Backup used to be so easy
Production Servers A A A A A
Backup Server
Tiered Storage
Install a backup agent on production server, schedule the backup, copy the data periodically to the backup server

3. It’s not so easy anymore
Proliferation of different system platforms, applications, physical locations all with different service level requirements
Lots of different things can go wrong, all requiring different recovery capabilities
Need to balance the needs of the business (data availability, resiliency) against the needs of the business (costs, resources, system availability)

4. Is your critical application data adequately protected?
Traditional once-a-night backup leaves up to 24 hours of your most recent data at risk
How much data will you lose if your database server crashes at 5 PM?
How much will it cost you to re-create those transactions?
It can take many hours or days to perform a full restore from traditional backup systems
How much application downtime can your business tolerate?
Recovery Point Objective:
How much data can you afford to lose?
Recovery Time Objective:
How much downtime can you afford?

5. Which tool for which problem?
Recovery
Considerations
Solutions &
Technologies
Infrastructure
Applications
Failure Types
File/
Deletion
Backup
Hardware
Platforms
CDP
RPO
File and Print
Virus
Attack
Operating
Systems
Replication
Snapshots
Disk/Server
Crash
Locations
Messaging
RTO
DR / BC
Deduplication
Local
Disaster
Networks
Labor, Systems
Bandwidth Costs
Database
Disk & Tape
Virtual Tape
Regional
Outage
Desktops
Laptops
Impact on
Applications
Reporting
Mission Critical 5

6. Question
What’s the difference between server virtualization and storage virtualization?

7. Virtual server environments have changed the game
Virtual machines take advantage of the growth in processor power, memory and I/O
The computers get bigger, but the application workloads have remained flat
Virtual machines can be created very quickly
Minutes to provision, rather than weeks to request, procure, install and test
Tremendous savings in hardware, power/cooling, floor space and management costs
VMs enable new levels of service management and new delivery models
Quickly create new servers for application development and testing, special projects, periodic workflows like financial reporting, or to expand capacity on demand
Virtual servers are a basic component of public and private cloud infrastructures

8. Changing the game, for better and for worse …
“Virtualized servers have been a boon to the systems side of the house, but a bane for storage managers.”
Hot Technologies for 2011,
STORAGE Magazine, Dec 2010 (link)

9. VMs have made data and storage management more complex
Data continues to grow at unprecedented rates, across all industries
Server virtualization does not reduce the data
When a virtual server is de-commissioned or moved, what happens to its data, and the storage capacity that it consumed?
How do you manage data management processes in virtual environments?
Backup / Restore
Disaster Recovery
Data Lifecycle Management
Data continues to grow at unprecedented rates, across all industries; analysts estimate that production data is growing at 40%, and when you add in copies of data for backup and disaster recovery, you may need to double your storage capacity every 12 to 18 months.
Reducing the number of physical servers through virtualization does not reduce the amount of data that applications create, manipulate and store
When a virtual server is de-commissioned or moved, what happens to its data, and the storage capacity that it consumed?
How do you manage processes like backup, disaster recovery planning and data lifecycle management in virtual environments?

10. Analyst Predictions
More than 90% of users deploying virtual machines are doing so specifically to reduce x86 server space and energy costs.
VM densities are increasing on physical servers, 1:15 today
By 2012, most x86 server workloads will be running in a VM.
Roughly 80% of the virtual machines today are utilizing “traditional” in-guest backup or host backups.
How do you manage data protection and recovery in your virtual servers?
Sources – Gartner, IDC, ESG

11. Traditional in-guest backup and recovery model
Install a backup agent in the guest OS, just like a physical server
Run and manage backups just like in a physical server environment
Downside: deploying, managing, maintaining ‘backup agent sprawl’
Downside: can put a serious drain on processor, memory, I/O resources
From running multiple backups at once; file system scans during incremental backups; etc.
VMware ESX / ESXi Server
Hypervisor
Virtual Machines
Traditional data backup methods usually operate inside the operating system where a backup device communicates over the network with a backup agent running on the OS to back up the contents of the disks
on the server. This method worked well for physical servers, but virtual servers are much different than physical servers. For one thing, the entire contents of a guest operating system on a virtual machine is encapsulated into a single virtual disk file located on a host server’s file system. In addition, a VM must contend for host resources with many other VMs and each VM can have an impact on the performance of other VMs running on the host. As a result, backing up a VM using a backup agent running inside the OS is not very efficient because it increases network and disk I/O, as well as CPU utilization on the host while the backup is running. This results in fewer resources for the other VMs on that host. Additionally, if multiple backups are running on the host, the problem will be even worse and can seriously degrade the performance of the host. A A A A A A A A
Backup Server
Virtual Disk Volumes
Tiered Storage

12. Next came VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB)
Snapshots of the VMs are taken by the Hypervisor and sent to a Proxy Server, which is then backed up by the Backup Server
Downside: requires more hardware (server and storage)
Downside: multi-step recovery through the Proxy Server
VMware ESX / ESXi Server
VCB API
Backup Server
Hypervisor
Virtual Machines A
Backups that use OS agents on VMs must navigate through the virtualization layer to get to the guest operating system layer. A more efficient way of doing backups in virtualization is to perform the backup at the virtualization layer and never enter the guest operating system. VMware recognized this and released its VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB). VCB acted as a proxy server to offload the backups from within the virtual machine by mounting the virtual disk on the VCB server and then doing an image-level backup of it without involving the host or the virtual machine. This shifted the backup overhead from the VM and the host to the proxy server instead. While this was a step in the right direction, it required a middleman between the backup device and the target disk, adding a step to the process.
Proxy Server
Virtual Disk Volumes

13. The new approach: VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection
Data is accessed directly from the VM storage and passed directly to the backup server (single hop, data is not stored on the vStorage Server)
Changed Block Tracking allows incremental backups (with periodic fulls) without forcing a scan of the guest OS file system
VMware ESX / ESXi Server
vStorage API (VADP)
Backup Server
Hypervisor
Virtual Machines A
With the vSphere release, VMware eliminated VCB and the proxy that was used, and instead leveraged APIs and software development kits (SDKs) so data backup vendors could directly connect to virtual storage targets to back up VMs. The new vStorage APIs for Data Protection include the functionality that was available in VCB and also added new functionality such as Changed Block Tracking (CBT), and the ability to directly interact with the contents of virtual disks. Doing this is much more efficient and offered more features than using VCB to back up virtual machines.
vStorage Server
Backup/Restore Data
Virtual Disk Volumes

14. The new approach: VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection
Data is accessed directly from the VM storage and passed directly to the backup server (single hop, data is not stored on the vStorage Server)
Changed Block Tracking allows incremental backups (with periodic fulls) without forcing a scan of the guest OS file system
The vStorage Server can be a virtual machine – no additional HW needed
VMware ESX / ESXi Server
Backup Server
Hypervisor
VADP
Virtual Machines A
With the vSphere release, VMware eliminated VCB and the proxy that was used, and instead leveraged APIs and software development kits (SDKs) so data backup vendors could directly connect to virtual storage targets to back up VMs. The new vStorage APIs for Data Protection include the functionality that was available in VCB and also added new functionality such as Changed Block Tracking (CBT), and the ability to directly interact with the contents of virtual disks. Doing this is much more efficient and offered more features than using VCB to back up virtual machines.
Backup/Restore Data
Virtual Disk Volumes

15. Potential Benefits of a vStorage Backup/Restore Solution
Leverages vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) – supported by VMware
Offloads the backup workload from virtual machines and production ESX hosts to vStorage backup servers
Changed Block Tracking enables incremental backups, saving storage and network bandwidth
Non-disruptive, single-pass, block-level backup
Flexible recovery options: file, volume, VM image
Near-instant restore of files and disk volumes
No additional hardware required
Simplified agent management – one backup agent supports multiple VMs
Automated discovery and protection of new VMs
Support for LAN-free data transfer from the VMware server’s storage to the backup server —preserving bandwidth for other uses
Integrate with a central data protection solution (e.g. Tivoli Storage Manager)

16. Bonus Content: Got Image Sprawl?
smarter storage management

17. The Image Management Crisis
How do you reduce costs when images are out of control?
How can complex virtual environments support business agility?
How can you ensure app availability & compliance as complexity skyrockets?
Image sprawl increases costs
Image sprawl impairs IT flexibility
Virtualized apps tough to manage
Explosive growth of virtual images requires step change in labor productivity to manage them
Typical image size 5-20GB = larger backups
Image sprawl consumes systems resources
Time spent fixing problems vs. driving new services
Management of complexity decreases time to market
Lack of standardization reduces predictability of business outcomes
Dynamic virtual workloads makes it difficult to troubleshoot and secure applications
Difficult to ensure license compliance
Image sprawl creates security exposures
Image sprawl stresses the IT organization
Communication between VMs blinds existing security policy enforcement
Virtualized environments seeing an increasing number of security incidents
Consumes IT admin time
Increases risk of unplanned work and expense

18. IBM’s Image Management capabilities are the most complete in the industry1 2 3
Reduce cost and risk of service delivery
Accelerate business
agility and responsiveness
Ensure availability and security within complex systems
Benefits:
Increase staff productivity from an avg. of 15 servers per admin to 1200 servers per admin
Lower capex and admin costs
Prioritize workloads using visibility into workload performance
Benefits:
Improve time to market, fewer errors
Repeatable, predictable outcomes
Assign resources to higher value workloads and new services vs. maintenance
Benefits:
Maintain higher service levels and resource utilization
Increase customer satisfaction
Decrease security and compliance exposures
Achieved through:
Availability and performance management
Policy-based optimized image placement and rebalancing
Policy-controlled access & isolation
Image change logging and auditing
Image backup and recovery
Achieved through:
Image capture, storage, deployment
Image health & status
Image inventory
Image catalogue
Service-aware accounting
Achieved through:
Visibility of image context and impact on business services
Rapid, image deployment
Catalogue of reusable images
Self-service UI and reservation
Service-aware provisioning

19. Thank you! 19

20. Trademarks and disclaimers
Intel, Intel logo, Intel Inside, Intel Inside logo, Intel Centrino, Intel Centrino logo, Celeron, Intel Xeon, Intel SpeedStep, Itanium, and Pentium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries./ Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both. Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT, and the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. IT Infrastructure Library is a registered trademark of the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency which is now part of the Office of Government Commerce. ITIL is a registered trademark, and a registered community trademark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries. Java and all Java-based trademarks are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States, other countries, or both. Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. Information is provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind.
The customer examples described are presented as illustrations of how those customers have used IBM products and the results they may have achieved. Actual environmental costs and performance characteristics may vary by customer.
Information concerning non-IBM products was obtained from a supplier of these products, published announcement material, or other publicly available sources and does not constitute an endorsement of such products by IBM. Sources for non-IBM list prices and performance numbers are taken from publicly available information, including vendor announcements and vendor worldwide homepages. IBM has not tested these products and cannot confirm the accuracy of performance, capability, or any other claims related to non-IBM products. Questions on the capability of non-IBM products should be addressed to the supplier of those products.
All statements regarding IBM future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.
Some information addresses anticipated future capabilities. Such information is not intended as a definitive statement of a commitment to specific levels of performance, function or delivery schedules with respect to any future products. Such commitments are only made in IBM product announcements. The information is presented here to communicate IBM's current investment and development activities as a good faith effort to help with our customers' future planning.
Performance is based on measurements and projections using standard IBM benchmarks in a controlled environment. The actual throughput or performance that any user will experience will vary depending upon considerations such as the amount of multiprogramming in the user's job stream, the I/O configuration, the storage configuration, and the workload processed. Therefore, no assurance can be given that an individual user will achieve throughput or performance improvements equivalent to the ratios stated here.
Prices are suggested U.S. list prices and are subject to change without notice. Starting price may not include a hard drive, operating system or other features. Contact your IBM representative or Business Partner for the most current pricing in your geography.
Photographs shown may be engineering prototypes. Changes may be incorporated in production models.
© IBM Corporation All rights reserved.
References in this document to IBM products or services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available in every country.
Trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both can be found on the World Wide Web at 20