7 Expert Tipson VMware Backupby David Davis

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2About the AuthorDavid Davis is a VMware vExpert and is the author of the best-selling VMware vSphere video training library from TrainSignal. He has written hundreds of virtualization articles on the Web, is also a VCP, VCAP-DCA, and CCIE #9369 with more than 18 years of enterprise IT experience. His personal Website is VMwareVideos.com.

3At small companies or in brand-new virtual infrastructures, backup appears easy. You may be able to use a free tool that came with your hypervisor that makes VMware backup deceivingly simple. However, over time, your infrastructure will grow, the virtual machine quantities will grow, and so will the virtual disk files. At some point, usage of the virtual infrastructure will increase and the interdependence of the virtual machines will become more complex. As this happens, youll find what other virtualization experts have already figured out virtualization backup can be much more complex that it seems and you need the right tool for the job.

In this guide, youll learn how to save time, prevent data-loss, and create a bulletproof VMware backup infrastructure by employing the 7 valuable VMware infrastructure backup tips from virtualization backup experts.

4How to Select the Right Backup Tool for your Virtual Infrastructure

Selecting the right tool for the job of backing up you virtual infrastructure is the critical piece of your entire virtual infrastructure protection plan. Just as if you are pulling out a tool from your toolbox to work on your car, selecting the right tool can mean the difference between success and failure.

Here are the steps I recommend to select the right backup tool for your virtual infrastructure:

1. Dont assume you have to select the same tool as everyone else. There are a number of good tools on the market. Just because a tool has the best marketing doesnt make it the best tool. Do your own research and buck the trend.

2. Test tools for yourself and take your time doing it. Every tool offers a free trial period that allows you to test their product on your own infrastructure (plus, if you are really interested in the product, most companies will give you a free extension to try their product longer than the original trial). Put these tools through their paces, with your applications, and focus on features related to recovery. Remember, you arent just getting a tool to backup your VMs, more importantly; you want them to be restored and restored FAST. Test things like multiple restores at a time, file level restore, and application integrity after restore.

3. Make your life easier by selecting a tool that has the latest features. Your tool should offer features like fast restore for multiple VMs, application integrity in your backups, replication, backup of multiple hypervisors, backup of physical and virtual servers, deduplication, and more. Dont settle for less.

5Why You Should Avoid VMware Snapshots of Virtual Machines

Snapshots arent backup. In other words, snapshots should only be used for very short-term, temporary uses. They shouldnt be used as a backup mechanism. Lets say that you are about to perform an application upgrade, you would take a snapshot (and do a backup) before the upgrade. Then, the next day, if the app upgrade was successful, you would remove your shapshot. Lets say that a week later you needed a pre-upgrade database then you could restore if from your backup.

Snapshots take up tons of disk space and space in your backup repository. Space used by snapshots is, many times, forgotten and easily overlooked, causing unexpected results.

Bottom line, use snapshots for very short-term captures of the state of a VM not as a backup mechanism.

6How to Plan for Offsite Backup and Replication

The problem with so many virtualization backup tools is that they stop once something is backed up. They leave the files on disk and leave it up to you to figure out how to get them offsite in case there is a disaster. Thats like the fire department telling you that you can get water from the sink in case there is a fire. Look for a tool that can help you to get your backup data offsite (and make it easy).

No longer is offsite replication of backup data just for the largest of companies with their own cross-country fibre network. Thanks to advancements in backup technology (backing up only changed blocks, deduplication, and compression) now replicating data offsite is affordable and practical.

Something else to consider is that you may need to recover a physical server on a virtual server. Or a virtual server on a physical server. Or, a Hyper-V VM on a VMware host. Can your backup product cover all of these scenarios?

I recommend moving to 100% virtualization, backing up all VMs, and then replicating those backups offsite. In the event of a disaster, youll be able to bring them up at the DR site. However, even if you need just a single file or VM, youll be able to get that data back where it needs to be. Plus, if your backup product has the flexibility to restore physical hosts on virtual hosts and perform cross-hypervisor restore, youll be covered for all the possibilities. Today, youll find that all of this is doable and no archaic tape drives are needed.

7What to Test to Ensure Backups are Recoverable

Just because your backup software tells you that backups were 100% successful, doesnt mean that you can restore your data. You need to either manually test your virtual machine restores AND applications inside or have your backup software do this for you.

How many VMs have you restored that bluescreened when they were booted up?

How many VMs have you restored that had corrupted Exchange or SQL server databases?

To ensure that your backups will be 100% recoverable, make sure that you test:

Virtual machine image level restore

Virtual machine file level restore

That virtual machines boot successfully and filesystems (like NTFS) mount

That application databases mount and service start (for example, Exchange, SQL, and Sharepoint)

Testing all of this on a periodic basis can be overwhelming. The only realistic way to get this done, for all your enterprise applications, on a regular basis, is to have this critical process automated by your backup tool.

8Find out Why Cloud Backup and DR are So Important

Replicating to your own secondary datacenter is an option but not everyone has a secondary datacenter, nor does it make sense for everyone to build one. Cloud-based disaster recovery services are now available that can store your replicated data efficiently and affordably. Instead of spending tens or hundreds of thousands to build a backup DR site and maintain it, why not use cloud-based DR service that can store your data and bring up the VMs, when a disaster strikes. Whether or not you have a backup datacenter, you should at least consider cloud-based DR.

Can your backup software replicate to cloud DR solutions?

9Understand How Applications Affect Backups

The most successful server admins know their companys applications. Understanding of those apps, their criticality to the business, and their backup/recovery requirements is crucial. End users now expect applications like Exchange, SQL, and Sharepoint to be available 24x7. There is no more backup window. Your backup software must be able to:

Backup mission critical applications without downtime

Verify that backups have application integrity

Restore individual items from mission critical applications back into production

The purpose of your backups is to protect your applications. Make sure that your backup software not only backs up VMs, but recovers the critical application data, your company needs.

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Compare agentless vs agent-based backup products

Many virtualization backup products claim that their agentless design is superior. However, the only problem with agents is if they are painful to deploy and manage. Appassures smart agents not only are easy to deploy but they also provide numerous unique benefits, impossible with agentless products, because Appassures agents work inside the OS. Agent-based tools can provide universal recovery (physical to virtual or vice-versa), cross-hypervisor restore, and live recovery.

Dont count out agent-based tools without considering the benefits they offer.

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ConclusionDont make assumptions or mistakes in selecting a data-protection tool for your virtual infrastructure. Make sure that you plan for offsite backup and replication, consider cloud-based backup, and use automated testing to ensure backups are recoverable. Selecting a backup tool that knows your applications and can reliably restore them is crucial. Finally, dont dismiss any tool without fully understanding and testing its capabilities, personally.

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About AppAssure SoftwareAppAssure is the #1 unified backup & replication software for virtual, physical and cloud environments. This multiple award-winning and customer-proven software recovers virtual and physical servers, applications and data in minutes instead of days or hours. AppAssures innovative and groundbreaking technologies assure 100% reliability of recovery and goes beyond just protecting data to protecting entire applications. It also supports multi-hypervisor environments including VMware vSphere / ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer. AppAssure is an Elite VMware Technology Alliance Partner and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. With more than 6,000 customers, partners and service providers in over 50 countries and over 3,000% growth in three years, AppAssure is the worlds fastest growing backup software company as ranked by Inc. Magazine.

AppAssures 3 Innovative and Groundbreaking Backup Technologies:1. Live Recovery Instant restore of VMs or Servers near-zero recovery time (RTO) & 5-minute RPO

2. Recovery Assure Assurance of 100% Reliability of Recoverability

3. Universal Recovery Anywhere to Anywhere Restore to any VM or dissimilar hardware with Granular Object Level Recovery

Winner of 10 TOP Awards!

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