BACKUP AND RECOVERY FOR
MICROSOFT-BASED PRIVATE CLOUDS
LEVERAGING THE EMC DATA
PROTECTION SUITE
A Detailed Review
ABSTRACT
This white paper highlights how IT environments which are increasingly
implementing Microsoft-based infrastructure for private clouds can benefit from
industry leading backup and recovery with an EMC Backup and Recovery
Solution. High-Level feature descriptions and implementation scenarios are
covered. Highlighting how these features are beneficial is the primary goal of
this paper.
January, 2014
1 EMC WHITE PAPER
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................. 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ........................................................................................................................... 3 Challenges of Backup and Recovery in Microsoft Hyper-V Environments .................................................... 3 Audience .......................................................................................................................................... 3 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................... 4 EMC Data Protection Suite For Backup Overview .................................................................................... 4 EMC Avamar ................................................................................................................................ 4 EMC NetWorker............................................................................................................................ 5 Integration with EMC Data Domain Deduplication Systems® .................................................................... 5 BENEFITS OF USING THE EMC DATA PROTECTION SUITE IN A MICROSOFT-BASED PRIVATE CLOUD
ENVIRONMENT ...................................................................................................................................... 6 OPTIMIZED IMAGE BACKUP OF HYPER-V VIRTUAL MACHINES .............................................................. 7 EMC Avamar and EMC NetWorker VHD Image Backup ....................................................................... 7 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................ 9 REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................................... 10 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Challenges of Backup and Recovery in Microsoft Hyper-V Environments
Amongst all the benefits Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization technology has brought us, such as faster virtual server deployment
and easier management, new challenges have emerged. For example, server counts along with data growth have dramatically
accelerated.
When looking to protect these new rapidly growing server implementations, traditional backup methods clearly begin to “bust at
the seams.” With increased server instance counts, approaching backup and recovery in this manner quickly makes backup
windows already in place seem incredibly limiting. It’s at this juncture where IT teams hit the proverbial “brick wall” and are
forced to make a decision to make things work. Unfortunately, that decision comes at the cost of reducing the growth plans of
the application server environment, nullifying the cost and power savings advantages, which are the reason for implementing a
virtualized data center in the first place.
Here are some key reasons why traditional backup methods limit virtualization growth:
•
Relying on virtualized application server resources for backup load adversely affects application
performance.
o
Traditional backup methods can bottleneck Hyper-V shared resources such as CPU, memory, and network
interfaces, that were originally sized and allocated for application transaction workloads.
o
Even in situations where best practices recommend backup agents, lack of efficient backup scanning and data
deduplication methods can exacerbate application server bottlenecks.
•
Backup Media Consumption
o
Leveraging costly storage without any form of capacity optimization, and performing sometimes required
multiple backups for various recovery purposes (DR, Operational File Recovery, etc.) consume more target
media.
•
Increased Business Risk
o
With backup windows quickly being outgrown when using inefficient backup processes, restore point objective
(RPO) and restore time objective (RTO) service level agreements (SLAs) just simply can’t be met. This puts
the IT team, and more importantly the business at risk of monetary loss from down time and data loss.
EMC’s Data Protection Suite and protection storage address these challenges head on by first interfacing with the application
hosting critical data and scanning it for backup in an intelligent and efficient manner. Secondly and equally important,
transferring and storing that data in an efficient manner utilizing industry leading deduplication technology.
All of the points discussed so far directly effect the capital IT expense equation. The EMC Data Protection Suite and its robust
feature set, when integrating with important mission critical apps, also brings tremendous savings to the operational expense
equation. This is achieved by providing visibility and control directly within the application being protected as well as a
centralized management and reporting interface across applications and data types. It’s this consistent visibility between the
various IT owners that allows the business to avoid costly errors.
Audience
This white paper is intended for those Virtualization Administrators looking at deploying efficient backup solutions for enterprise
wide Microsoft-based private cloud implementations. Knowledge of Microsoft Hyper-V, Microsoft Windows Azure Pack, and
Windows Server 2012 and their overall architecture, terminology and methods are required.
3 INTRODUCTION
EMC Data Protection Suite For Backup Overview
The Data Protection Suite makes it easier than ever for organizations to access EMC's broad portfolio of backup, archive, and
compliance software solutions. Like an “IT survival kit”, the Suite provides advantages for multiple types of users. It includes
tier-based licensing options that are cost effective and designed to simplify management and deployment.
The Suite enables fast, reliable deduplicated backup and recovery for many data types. In this paper we concentrate on
protecting Microsoft-based private cloud environments, however the Suite can protect a wide array of data types: file systems,
desktops/laptops, and other mission critical applications. The Suite also includes support for industry leading NAS as well as
snapshot management and backup of EMC arrays. Access to EMC's best in class backup software portfolio within the Data
Protection Suite For Backup includes EMC Avamar, EMC NetWorker, and EMC Data Protection Advisor. These components offer
tight integration with EMC's industry leading protection storage, EMC Data Domain, which delivers the time-critical performance
and reliability required by enterprise companies.
EMC Avamar
Developed to solve the challenges associated with traditional backup, EMC Avamar deduplication backup software and system,
equipped with integrated global, client-side data deduplication technology, provide fast, next-generation daily full backups for
virtual environments, NAS systems,
desktops/laptops, remote offices and
business critical applications. EMC Avamar
reduces the size of backup data at the
client—before it is transferred across the
network and ultimately stored. Unlike
traditional backup, Avamar delivers fast,
daily full backups via existing IP networks,
and makes recovery fast and easy with
single-step restore.
Avamar also deduplicates backup data
globally across applications and sites
worldwide to reduce the total required
backup storage by up to 30x. As a result,
Avamar provides the benefits of efficient
long-term retention on disk while
dramatically lowering capital and operating
Figure 1: Avamar Deduplication Moves Less Data
expenses including floor space, power, and
cooling.
Avamar backups can be quickly recovered in just one step—eliminating the hassle of restoring the last good full and subsequent
incremental backups to reach the desired recovery point. Avamar’s intuitive interface allows desktop and laptop users to quickly
recover their own data, reducing the burden on IT staff. In addition, Avamar’s centralized web-based management and at-aglance dashboard view make it easy for administrators to protect hundreds of offices from a single location via existing
networks. Data can be encrypted in flight and at rest for added security.
Avamar software, similar to the other components in the Data Protection Suite, is integrated for multi-streaming backups to EMC
Data Domain deduplication storage systems for efficient and highly scalable backup of specific data types and applications,
simplifying management and maximizing existing IT investments.
4 EMC NetWorker
EMC NetWorker backup and recovery software centralizes, automates, and accelerates data backup and recovery. NetWorker
delivers industry-leading performance and a wide range of data protection options to safeguard critical business data. Both
physical and virtual environments can be protected with NetWorker.
NetWorker simplifies data protection of
Microsoft-based private cloud environments
by providing centralized policy
management, client configuration wizards,
cluster support – including Active/Active, as
well as creating copies of the backups for
off-site storage – ensuring adherence to
long term data retention requirements.
EMC NetWorker provides client/application
side deduplication when leveraging Data
Domain Boost. In this scenario, Data
Domain is configured as the backup target,
and Deduplication occurs on the Hyper-V
server. As discussed earlier, Avamar is also
supported with NetWorker and provides
similar deduplication advantages.
Figure 2: EMC NetWorker Benefits
Integration with EMC Data Domain Deduplication Systems®
Data Domain systems reduce the amount of disk storage required to retain and protect data by an average of 10-30x. This
makes Data Domain systems a cost-effective alternative to comparable capacity tape solutions. Data Domain systems provide
the industry’s greatest scalability, performance, and efficiency in a single system, which allow customers to keep data online and
onsite for longer retention periods than previously thought feasible.
Figure 3: EMC Data Domain Deduplication Storage Systems
More importantly, a Data Domain system is designed as the “storage of last resort”. With industry leading data integrity
protection from the Data Domain Data Invulnerability Architecture, which ensures end-to-end data verification, continuous fault
detection and self-healing, along with other resiliency technology, you can be assured that your data will be recoverable.
EMC Data Domain Replicator software transfers only the deduplicated and compressed unique changes across an IP link to a
remote site. This requires a fraction of the bandwidth, time, and cost compared to traditional replication methods and provides
5 customers leveraging Data Domain replication for off-site storage of EMC Avamar or EMC NetWorker backup savesets a faster
“Time-to-DR readiness”.
Integration of Data Domain together with the Data Protection Suite provides for features mentioned in this paper up to this
point, but in addition provides a true end-to-end data protection solution sought out by many IT administrators today.
Partnering industry leading protection storage with industry leading backup management and orchestration software is the
recipe for a complete next-generation data protection solution.
The enabler for this integration with both Avamar and
NetWorker is EMC Data Domain Boost (DD Boost). DD Boost
distributes parts of the deduplication process from the Data
Domain system to the backup server or application client.
By sending only unique data from the application client to the
Data Domain system less LAN bandwidth is required, and
application server CPU consumption is actually reduced.
Looking specifically at the implementation with EMC Avamar,
the integration with Data Domain provides the ability to
selectively perform high-speed, scalable backups for specific
data types, from an application server running an Avamar
agent to a Data Domain system. With regards to Microsoftbased private cloud backups and storing backups of Hyper-V
VHDs specifically, backups within Avamar can be directed
Figure 4: EMC Avamar Integration with EMC Data Domain
from the Hyper-V Backup Proxy Node directly to Data Domain
bypassing a “dual-hop” data flow model typically seen with
traditional backup software architecture.
Integration with EMC NetWorker provides similar benefits
and a few additional flexible deployment options. DD Boost
can be leveraged within the NetWorker Storage Node to
bring next generation backup efficiencies in a legacy backup
deployment model. However, similar to the implementation
in the EMC Avamar model, DD Boost is also included and
can be utilized directly in the Application Client Modules.
This implementation model is referred to as NetWorker
Client Direct, and provides for efficient backup scanning and
data transfers between the application server and the Data
Domain system directly.
As discussed, Data Domain Replicator software is a vital
component of an overall data protection deployment
strategy. With the integration of DD Boost with the EMC
Data Protection Suite, no additional setup or maintenance
Figure 5: EMC NetWorker Integration with EMC Data Domain
configuration is required to incorporate data replication when using Data Domain systems. Once a Data Domain system is
configured within the Avamar and NetWorker implementation, the software maintains all the replication and catalog awareness
of off-site copies automatically. There is no requirement to separately provision replications policies or configurations on the
Data Domain systems themselves. This centralized point of management within the solution is one of the key factors in making
backup processing and orchestration more efficient for any size IT team.
BENEFITS OF USING THE EMC DATA PROTECTION SUITE IN A
MICROSOFT-BASED PRIVATE CLOUD ENVIRONMENT
As mentioned earlier in this paper, traditional backup and recovery methods introduce limiting factors that involve reduced VM
to hypervisor consolidation ratios and increased resource load on virtual application servers. The Microsoft Windows Hyper-V
architecture was designed to allow much more consolidated and better utilization of physical compute and memory resources in
physical servers. However, if you as the administrator can’t protect the larger amount of servers, which can now be provisioned
in a given footprint based on current backup windows, the investment made in Microsoft Hyper-V is moot.
6 When re-architecting the data center to increase or extend the use of a virtualization platform it often times is also the perfect
opportunity to examine the backup and recovery services currently in place. Depending on the analysis done, it may be evident
that switching to a more tightly integrated solution for backup and recovery of VM images will allow you to overcome limitations
you find. Here are just some of the key points you should be looking for in your backup and recovery solution for Microsoftbased private clouds:
•
No impact to Hyper-V servers during backups – Looking for a backup application that tightly integrates within the
Hyper-V Cluster and is aware of the current production state of all VHD images in a particular implementation is key. For
example, does the backup application offer the ability to designate a separate proxy system that can offload the backup and
recovery workload from production nodes servicing VM transactions? With the EMC Data Protection Suite, in a Hyper-V
Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) implementation you have the flexibility of choosing and/or designating a proxy Hyper-V Node
that will perform all backup processing, offloading the other Hyper-V nodes in the cluster. This proxy node architecture is
also highly scalable with the ability to designate multiple proxy nodes in the cluster to process VM backups in parallel when
working to protect a large scale environment in a short backup window.
•
Simplified configuration and management – Being able to quickly and easily deploy modules and agents into your
production Hyper-V servers with newly introduced Client Configuration Wizards provides two benefits. It saves time at
deployment without losing flexibility, and provides tight integration with features/functions normally only accessible via
special setup and configuration.
After initial analysis of your current implementation, and a few questions specific to your environment input into the wizard,
the backup and recovery software modules required to integrate with Hyper-V VSS are validated and installed. This wizard
based process of validation and simplified configuration can save hours of unwanted troubleshooting.
•
Native VHD Format Image Backup – The most essential factor for assuring that next generation Hyper-V environments
can be protected in given backup windows, is the ability to protect each VM via an “image based backup” method rather than
through an agent deployed internally on each individual VM. Understanding the VHD format allows the backup application to
scan the VM files directly in the Hyper-V file system directly thus processing the source data more efficiently over legacy
traditional backup methods, which involved combing through VM Guest OS file systems.
It is this infrastructure specific intelligence and integration which allows backup software such as the EMC Data Protection Suite
to truly realize the full potential of the Microsoft-based Private Cloud you are looking to deploy to take your IT operations to the
next level.
OPTIMIZED IMAGE BACKUP OF HYPER-V VIRTUAL MACHINES
EMC Avamar and EMC NetWorker VHD Image Backup
Now we will take a deeper look at the workflows and processes involved with how the components of the EMC Data Protection
Suite (EMC Avamar and EMC NetWorker) go about protecting the more popular types of Microsoft-based Private Cloud
Enviornments.
Standalone Hyper-V Server Implementation:
For smaller environments typically designated in
the small to medium business market segments,
a single Hyper-V Server hosting several VMs is
most commonly implemented. For these smaller
environments a single server is all that is
required.
Figure 6 shown to the left is a high-level diagram
representation of how the EMC Data Protection
Suite integrates into these types of
implementations. With only one Hyper-V Server
in the implementation, the EMC Data Protection
Suite modules/plug-ins leveraging DD Boost are
installed directly on the stand-alone Hyper-V
Figure 7: Stand-Alone Hyper-V Backup Architecture
7 server.
Backup data can be sent directly to a Data Domain System leveraging efficient DD Boost technology mentioned previously,
assuring lower network resource utilization as well as minimal impact to the Hyper-V server, which is also leveraged for
production VM workloads.
Given the integrated approach that the EMC Data Protection Suite For Backup employs, and its intelligent understanding of
Hyper-V VSS APIs and VHD format, a complete VM backup can be performed while the VM is still online. More importantly the
efficiencies in backup scanning introduced using this method assures minimal impact on the Hyper-V server’s valuable compute
and networking resources.
Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) Hyper-V Implementation:
A larger scale enterprise environment requires hundreds, if not thousands, of application servers to be deployed all supporting
business critical data. This scale requires deployment of the Hyper-V foundation technology to be deployed in a cluster
implementation to provide services at a large and highly available scale. Microsoft leverages Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) as
the Virtual Machine storage mechanism for providing access to all VM files to multiple Hyper-V Servers. This allows for the
ultimate in flexibility and redundancy allowing any Hyper-V Server to service compute and memory resources for any VM stored
inside CSVs.
Just like in the single server deployment
scenario we covered in the previous
section, EMC Data Protection Suite
software modules are installed to directly
interface with the Hyper-V VSS
components for online backups. However,
since we are dealing with several nodes
working together in a cluster, it is not
necessary to deploy the backup software
components on all nodes. All that is
required is that one or more “proxy
nodes” are designated as backup nodes
within the Hyper-V cluster. With the Data
Protection Suite components installed on
these proxy systems, it is now possible to
Figure 8: Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) Hyper-V Backup Architecture
scan ALL VMs that are accessible on the
CSVs.
EMC’s Data Protection Suite components in this scenario offer unparalleled intelligence and integration in this type of
environment. If we step back and take a look at how much more complex a cluster configuration can be, there is the possibility
of any number of failure states. To put it more concretely, a single VM could be “owned” by any given Hyper-V server making
backup policy management difficult. With the backup software technology included in the EMC Solution, from day to day, at the
run time of backup, the plug-ins communicate current states and locations of VMs and provide complete protection coverage for
ALL VMs regardless of which physical node that VM is running on.
For those Microsoft-based private cloud implementations leveraging the latest Windows Server 2012 foundation, it is possible to
designate multiple proxy node systems for backup, which allow for performance increases in environments hosting hundreds, if
not thousands, of VMs. In this architecture, EMC Data Protection Suite software components are installed on multiple proxy
nodes, and a single virtual “Proxy Cluster Client” is used within the Data Protection Suite software for consolidated management
of backup and recovery for the entire private cloud. With this cluster aware capability built into the backup solution, not only can
coordination occur between backup proxy nodes to assure complete protection, but you can also increase overall backup window
performance by parallelizing backups of all VMs across multiple backup nodes. Not to mention similar to the single server
implementation, all components also have built in DD Boost capability for efficient data transport to Data Domain.
8 CONCLUSION
EMC Data Protection Suite delivers enhanced backup and recovery capabilities for Microsoft-based private clouds, including
cluster aware and CSV intelligence, which is essentially a requirement that provides for easier management and performance for
large-scale deployments.
The EMC Data Protection Suite brings additional value and reduces the total cost of ownership by automatically load balancing
the backup and restore of the multi-node cloud infrastructure – jobs are directed to available proxy hosts based on a
configurable preferred proxy host order list, as well as providing integrated industry leading deduplication.
The EMC Data Protection Suite solution includes a comprehensive solution that brings benefits to Microsoft-based Private Cloud
customers:
•
No impact to Hyper-V servers during backup
•
Simplified configuration and management
•
Increased operational flexibility
•
File Recovery from Image Backup
•
Utilizes existing LAN/WAN IP bandwidth and virtual infrastructure
•
Centralized Policy Management
•
Integrated Deduplication with Data Domain systems
•
Centralized Monitoring and Reporting
•
Incremental Forever Backup
•
Disaster Recovery and Replication
9 REFERENCES
EMC Data Protection Suite Homepage (emc.com)
EMC Avamar Product Page (emc.com)
EMC NetWorker Product Page (emc.com)
EMC Data Domain Product Page (emc.com)
Demo - EMC NetWorker 8.1 Hyper-V Configuration Wizard
NetWorker Module for Microsoft Applications 2.4 Hyper-V CSV
NetWorker Module for Microsoft Applications 2.4 Hyper-V Overview and GLR
Video Demo - Centralized Protection for Windows Azure Private Cloud VMs – EMC Avamar
Video Demo – Centralized Protection for Windows Azure Private Cloud VMs – EMC NetWorker
10 CONTACT US
To learn more about how
EMC products, services, and
solutions can help solve your
business and IT challenges,
contact your local
representative or authorized
reseller—or visit us at
www.EMC.com.
www.EMC.com
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property of their respective owners. Published in the USA. White Paper H12654