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Protecting Converged Virtual
Infrastructures
A reference architecture for VMware Data
Protection using CommVault® Simpana®
IntelliSnap™ and Dell EqualLogic Arrays
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Tableaaaaa
Contents
Converged Virtual Infrastructure Building Block ........................ 4
Data Protection Challenges in a Virtual Environment .................. 7
Integrated Protection for the Converged Virtual Environment ........ 8
Reference Architecture ..................................................... 17
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Data centers continue to evolve from an environment based on physical servers and storage to one based on virtual platforms.
Such modern data centers based on converged infrastructure (servers, storage, networking and applications) demand an
integrated approach to deploying, managing and protecting critical business resources within a consolidated virtual
environment. Due to unprecedented scale and consolidation afforded by VMware vSphere, today’s Data Centers have begun
to resemble private clouds where the physical infrastructure complexity is completely hidden from users and application
owners to such a high degree that protecting and managing the data for each user and each application has become
challenging to say the least. A proven tool and a simple approach are needed to provide agility and automation to how
individual application and user data is protected and managed in modern data centers.
Integrated and scalable data protection for Microsoft and Linux applications
Too often in a super virtualized cloud-like data center with converged infrastructure, data protection and management are an
afterthought, addressed with limited-purpose external tools leading to sub-optimal results and poor resource utilization. The
critical and ever more complex task of data management within virtual machines – including protection, recovery and long
term retention – in a densely populated data center with multiple applications like Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange and
multiple databases like Oracle and MS-SQL, needs a more integrated and flexible approach.
CommVault® Simpana® software is a proven solution that provides an integrated, unified, and robust end-to-end data
management solution that seamlessly enables data protection policies in physical as well as virtual environments. CommVault
software natively integrates with VMware vStorage APIs and EqualLogic PS Series APIs for agile and automated data
protection and recovery, while minimizing impact on production systems. Organizations that use VMware and EqualLogic
virtualization infrastructure can confidently transition to a modern data center knowing that they can bridge the same level and
granularity of protection as in physical environments, but optimized to deal with the unique challenges of virtualization.
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Converged Virtual Infrastructure Building Block
Dell and CommVault introduce an integrated converged virtual infrastructure that combines the best of Dell servers, storage
and networking components with industry leading CommVault® Simpana® software. The combined solution forms the core
building block for IT departments looking to build scalable VMware based private clouds.
Figure 1: Converged Virtual Infrastructure with Dell and CommVault® Software
The building block includes all components needed to build a truly agile and responsive virtual data center, ranging from very
small environments to the very large data centers with agile and automated data protection and recovery.
Key components of the converged virtual infrastructure building block are
Dell PowerEdge M1000e Blade Enclosure
Dell PowerEdge M610, M610x, M710 or M910 blade servers
Dell PowerConnect M6220, M8024, 8024F Switches
Dell EqualLogic PS 6510X or PS 6010XV for primary storage
Dell EqualLogic PS 6510E for tier 2 secondary storage
CommVault® Simpana® Software for Data Protection and Management
Optional Dell PowerEdge DL2200 with MD1200 enclosures for tier 3 and offsite storage
Optional Dell DX Object Store Platform for long term granular retention and archiving.
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Integrated and robust end-to-end data protection for the virtual machines on this converged virtual infrastructure is provided by
CommVault® Simpana® software. Automated protection and recovery can be delivered using the Simpana® software
integration with VMware vStorage APIs and EqualLogic PS APIs, while also minimizing impact on production systems.
Organizations can confidently shift to a converged modern data center knowing that they get the same level of protection as in
physical environments, but optimized to deal with the unique challenges of virtualization.
Key Benefits of the Converged Virtual Infrastructure
Flexible: Supports workloads for the smallest virtual environments to very large and dense virtual data centers
Linearly scalable: Simply add identical virtualization blocks enabling predictable and manageable growth
Highly available and reliable: Built-in redundancy for all key components ensures there is no single point of failure in
the entire block.
Integrated Data Protection and Recovery: Includes all components necessary for end to end data protection and
recovery.
EqualLogic PS Series Arrays
The key to any successful VMware deployment is the underlying storage system. The EqualLogic PS Series storage arrays
form the backbone of the Converged Virtual Infrastructure Building Block, delivering consolidated, highly-available and
scalable iSCSI storage. At the core is the peer storage architecture that allows multiple arrays to function as a single
virtualized pool of highly-available storage. This enables businesses to shift and grow storage resources as needed with
minimal disruption to existing production workloads, a flexibility that is critical to a successful VMware deployment. By using
Ethernet as the underlying networking protocol, EqualLogic PS Series arrays also enable IT groups to avoid the cost and
complexity of specialized storage networks and allow them to capitalize on their existing investment in and knowledge of
server networking infrastructure.
The PS series is available in a wide variety of flavors for differing workloads. For instance, the Converged Virtual Infrastructure
includes the 10K RPM SAS based PS6510X for hosting VMs with moderate workloads, the 15K RPM SAS based PS6010XV
(or SSD based PS6010 XS) for VMs with high I/O requirements and SATA based PS6010E for hosting backup copies. Each of
these PS series arrays have the inherent benefit of the peer storage architecture, allowing capacity and performance to
increase seamlessly, linearly and on demand.
EqualLogic PS Array Features and Benefits
Peer storage architecture
The EqualLogic PS Series is based on a unique, peer storage architecture. In this context, peer describes the collaboration
and equal partnership of a single, simple architecture; components and arrays function as peers, working together to share
resources, evenly distribute loads, and collaborate to help optimize application performance and provide comprehensive data
protection.
The result is an intelligent storage array that can deliver rapid installation, simple management, and seamless expansion.
Using patented, page-based data mover technology, members in a storage area network (SAN) work together to automatically
manage data, load balance across resources, and expand to meet growing storage needs. Because of this shared
architecture, enterprises can use PS Series arrays as modular building blocks for simple SAN expansion.
This architecture provides the basis for numerous features and capabilities, including peer deployment, control, provisioning,
protection, and integration
Peer deployment is a SAN configuration technology that can sense network topology, automatically build RAID sets, and
conduct a system health check to help ensure that components are fully functional. Peer deployment enables IT staff to
potentially install, configure, and deploy most EqualLogic arrays in minutes.
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Peer control offers virtualized storage management with a single view. PS Series arrays are designed to be self-managing;
systems are designed to continuously monitor storage resources and automatically load balance data across controllers,
network connections, and disk drives to help deliver optimal performance. Peer control automates key functions for
configuration, management, storage pooling, and data distribution, helping minimize the complexity of storage administration.
Peer provisioning enables administrators to dynamically provision resources to meet application requirements—including not
only disk space, but also connectivity, security, performance, and data protection. When application requirements change, the
storage configuration can change seamlessly. Peer provisioning is designed to simplify expansion while systems remain
online; new arrays can be automatically added to the group and automatically connect to the SAN. Expansion is linear,
enabling administrators to scale not only disk drives but also controllers, ports, cache, and performance as the environment
grows. Peer provisioning enables enterprises to purchase storage on demand, which facilitates efficient use of both capital and
storage resources. Advanced thin provisioning capabilities are included, giving administrators additional flexibility in providing
storage to applications. Administrators can also allocate virtual storage to volumes up to preset limits and add physical
capacity on demand. In both physical and virtual server environments, cloned volumes can be rapidly assigned to different
servers to help meet changing needs.
Peer protection starts with a robust design that avoids single points of failure and is designed to provide greater than 99.999
percent availability. It also includes built-in features such as application-aware snapshots for quick recovery and remote
replication for disaster protection. These features enable administrators to quickly create end-to-end solutions that can help
provide comprehensive protection against multiple types of failure or outage.
Peer integration provides a comprehensive software toolkit to facilitate the deployment, ongoing management, and protection
of EqualLogic SANs in Microsoft® Windows® OS environments and VMware® environments.
vStorage API for Array Integration
Organizations can confidently shift to a converged modern data center knowing that they get the same level of protection as in
physical environments, but optimized to deal with the unique challenges of virtualization. Dell and VMware collaborated in the
development of the VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) to help improve the scalability of a virtualized
environment while enhancing business agility. These APIs provide native integration between the hypervisor hosts and the
storage arrays, enabling the VMware vSphere software to work directly with the Dell EqualLogic PS Series arrays. These APIs
enable administrators to offload certain storage workloads from the host servers to the SANs. These offloading operations can
dramatically accelerate VM deployment tasks by avoiding the requirement to read the data all the way up the storage stack
and write it back down the storage stack. Instead, this operation occurs within the storage array. Administrators can deploy
VMs even faster than before, enhancing the agility of IT and the business. Helping to reduce processor, memory, and network
burdens also makes the environment increasingly efficient—there are additional server and network resources available for
running an increased number of VMs. These APIs also enable administrators to scale the virtual environments to higher
densities than before through the use of increasingly granular protection of VMFS metadata provided by Hardware Assisted
Locking. This command enables administrators to increase the number of VMs in each data store that can now utilize
increased volume sizes.
Some additional key features for VMware include
Storage Adapter for Site Recovery Manager (SRM): Enables VMware SRM to take advantage of PS Series replication for
full SRM integration.
Multipathing Extension Module for VMware® vSphere: Enhances VMware multipathing functionality with connection
awareness of PS Series network load balancing.
PSAPI Services: For high level of automation and coordinated operations, most of the PS-Series tools and controls are
available via the PS-API, enabling closer integration with Simpana® software to customize and automate many of the
EqualLogic snapshot and administrative functions.
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Built-in monitoring: Includes management tools and consolidated monitoring of individual volumes, arrays, pools and tiers of
storage. SAN HQ enables detailed historical reporting and analysis.
Data Protection Challenges in a Virtual Environment
Traditional data protection solutions use resource intensive agents to physically collect and move data from production storage
to a backend disk or tape target. This legacy method of using brute processing power to move data from one place to another
is not sufficient. Moreover, the traditional practice of depending on previous night’s backup is simply no longer acceptable for
modern Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Daily change rates are too high to make this a reliable recovery strategy.
With the shift to virtualized data centers and round the clock operations, there is a need to rethink the traditional data
protection techniques. Data protection and data recovery must have minimal front end impact and cannot exclusively rely on
copying from the production to the backend. An effective solution minimizes the load on production systems, minimizes
administrative effort and eases the transition to a virtualized and eventually a cloud-based data center. Some key challenges
for data protection in a virtual environment are
Not enough time to move data for backup: High server consolidation and high VM density concentrates data ownership to a
small number of ESX servers with most resources dedicated for production workloads. There are little resources, if any, left for
traditional backup tasks that move data nightly. Moreover, high data growth and round the clock operations are rapidly
shrinking backup windows.
Multiple Recovery Points: With high data growth and change rate, relying on last night’s backup for recovery is no longer
sufficient. Organizations are demanding Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) of hours. In other words, it is necessary to be able
to recover to a few hours ago, not to last night, to minimize data loss as a result of disruption. Creating frequent recovery
points without disrupting production activity is a huge challenge.
Enforcing Data Protection policies: The ease of deploying new VMs leads to a virtual machine sprawl making it tedious and
time consuming for administrators to keep track of new virtual machines and ensure correct data protection and retention
policies are applied to them. Administrators spend a significant part of their day tracking down new VMs and manually applying
data protection policies.
Application Integration: As more and more mission critical applications are virtualized it is necessary to provide the same
level of protection and recovery capabilities for these applications, while staying within the bounds of constraints imposed by a
highly consolidated VMware environment.
Multiple Recovery Options: Need to perform full VM as well as granular recovery from a single protection operation
Long Term Retention: Moving data into virtual servers does not eliminate the need for long term retention of data. However,
it makes the process more complicated since backup now involves full VM images. Retaining full VM images for several
months if not years is extremely wasteful, even with techniques like deduplication. Businesses are looking for smarter ways to
retain critical data, especially individual objects within applications, for long duration independently of the VM backup images.
CommVault® Simpana® Software: New Approach to Data Management
CommVault® Simpana® software is a revolutionary data management solution that not only addresses the challenges arising
out of limitations in legacy data center environment, but more importantly, accelerates the shift into virtualized and cloud-
enabled data centers. With Simpana software businesses can start to realize tangible benefits on day one of deployment as
they transition from traditional environments to the modern data center. More critically, using techniques that access data
once, but reused for multiple operations, businesses can reap the advantages of the modern data center immediately with
Simpana software, bypassing many of the pitfalls that arise from trying to force-fit legacy techniques or point solutions.
With CommVault® Simpana® software you can:
Protect hundreds of virtual servers in minutes with no impact on physical production servers.
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Protect very large VMware environments with thousands of virtual machines
Automatically discover new virtual machines for guaranteed protection with minimal administrator intervention
Use embedded source side deduplication for rapid creation of secondary DR copies.
Create 100% application consistent protection copies.
Rely on Granular Message level protection for granular restores, content search and eDiscovery
Customers can use Simpana software to rapidly modernize their data centers into private clouds to take full advantage of the
advances in virtualization technology while continuing to meet all the data management and data retention needs.
Integrated Data Protection for the Converged Virtual Infrastructure
Figure 2 illustrates an example of the converged virtual infrastructure using Dell blade servers, networking and Dell
EqualLogic storage with integrated Simpana® data protection software.
Figure 2: Converged Virtual Infrastructure Example with Optional Components
The production blade servers (highlighted in the green box) run VMware ESX and host the production virtual machines. These
virtual machines host their virtual machine disks on the primary EqualLogic group. This group consists of one or more
EqualLogic PS 6510 X or PS 6010XV storage arrays connected via 10 GigE iSCSI to the production ESX servers
A dedicated or lightly loaded utility blade server (highlighted in red) is responsible for end to end data protection and recovery
of all the VMs in the building block. The utility node runs an ESX server and a virtual machine to which most of the physical
resources are allocated. The virtual machine runs the Simpana® Virtual Server Agent (VSA) and MediaAgent (MA) that
executes data protection policies with no impact on the production ESX blades or the virtual machines. Simpanasoftware
drives the secondary copies on the Secondary EqualLogic Group which contains Tier 2 EqualLogic PS 6510E SATA based
storage. These backup copies are deduplicated and indexed.
Also shown are optional components, the Dell DL2200 which functions as Tier 3 disk target for long term retention of data. The
architecture also includes the Dell DX6000 object store which Simpana software utilizes to drive message level protection
policies for long term retention of messages from Exchange mailboxes hosted on virtual machines.
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The integrated Simpana solution on the single utility blade affords a variety of data protection solution for this environment
depending on recovery needs. These include:
Snapshot based Protection With IntelliSnap™ for Virtual Servers: Leverages snapshot capabilities in the EqualLogic PS
storage array to create persistent snapshot based recovery copies on primary storage to protect hundreds of virtual machines
in minutes. Also supports creation of deduplicated and indexed copies on secondary EqualLogic from the snapshot copies
using vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP).
Incremental Forever Backup with vStorage API for Data Protection: Leverages VMware APIs and Change Block Tracking
(CBT) for incremental forever backups. Deduplication enhanced DASH Full to create full secondary copies
Snapshot based Protection With IntelliSnap™ for Virtual Servers
Embrace EqualLogic Snapshots with IntelliSnap™ for Virtual Servers
Traditional data protection techniques for VMware such as vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP), or VMWare Consolidated
Backup (VCB) rely on an off-host agent to protect virtual machine images. As efficient as VADP is, it is still a streaming
method that moves the image files from the datastore to backup disk for protection. This method suffices for small to moderate
sized environments with reasonable backup windows. For larger environments with ever shrinking backup windows, there is
simply not enough time or bandwidth to move all the VM data. Moreover in a highly dense virtual environment, VADP backups
could impose a tremendous burden on the production ESX hosts and virtual machines each time backup job runs. With an
estimated average of 40% data growth rate every year, this method is simply not sustainable.
IntelliSnap™ for Virtual Servers solves these issues by integrating with the EqualLogic PS APIs and the native hardware
snapshot capabilities in the EqualLogic
PS array to create persistent snapshot-
based recovery copies for virtual
machines.
IntelliSnap™ for Virtual Servers using
Virtual Server Agent and the Media
Agent module are configured on a
Windows system. This system could
be a virtual machine or a physical
machine. In the converged virtual
infrastructure block, this is hosted on a
single half height blade server or utility
blade. This backup ESX proxy can
also run on the ESXi version of the
hypervisor.
A IntelliSnap™ job leverages VMware
APIs to prepare VMs for backup.
However, instead of using VADP to
copy data blocks, it executes a rapid
hardware snapshot. The sequence is
as follows
Discover new VMs based on
pre-defined criteria.
Quiesce VMs in protection policy to ensure a consistent set of image files.
Determine data stores associated with the VMs.
Execute hardware snapshot using EqualLogic PS APIs, this takes a few seconds.
Figure 3: Virtual Server Protection Workflow using VSA, IntelliSnap and Media Agent Combination
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Un-quiesce the VMs to resume normal operations.
Index the snapshots and the VM list inside the snapshot.
The IntelliSnap operation takes only a few minutes, and the VMs themselves are made quiescent for a very short time. The
short duration with minimal impact on virtual servers allows the creation of multiple recovery copies per day, enabling more
aggressive recovery SLAS. Simpana VSA software also includes the Live Browse capability that allows users to browse and
recover individual files from Windows virtual machines directly from the hardware snapshot copy.
Extend Hardware Snapshots with Deduplication enabled copies
EqualLogic snapshots when used with Simpana® IntelliSnap™ technology to allow rapid fire creation of persistent and
consistent snapshot copies. These snapshot copies are ideal for applications that require rapid recovery and multiple recovery
points per day. However, there are certain considerations to keep in mind with snapshots
Snapshots need reserve space to keep track of changed blocks. More snapshots require more reserve space, leading to
less disk utilization.
Consequently, snapshots provide limited retention. Retaining snapshots for more than a couple of weeks may require
sizeable reserve space.
Since snapshots operate at the volume level, indexing contents of snapshots and virtual machines is challenging.
Applications running inside VMs add an additional layer of complexity.
Snapshots depend on the original volume, if the original volume is lost, dependent snapshot are unavailable.
Most environments have longer retention requirements than what can be met only by snapshot copies. In a typical
environment with 30-90 days retention requirement, one would create snapshot based recovery copies every 4-8 hours that
are retained for 7-14 days. Longer term retention copies require conventional backup techniques.
Simpana software extends the lifetime of a snapshot by creating offline, fully cataloged and deduplicated backup copies on
secondary disk targets from snapshots. The IntelliSnap and Virtual Server Agent combination (or IntelliSnap™ for VSA)
includes the ability to copy the contents of selective snapshots to a deduplication enabled disk target. In the converged virtual
infrastructure the secondary disk target could be a secondary EqualLogic group or the Dell DL2200 appliance.
Figure 4: Creating Secondary Copy from snapshots
When this option is selected, VSA selectively mounts a snapshot to a proxy ESX server (the utility blade) and uses VADP APIs
to copy the contents of the snapshots to a deduplicated disk library. VSA also indexes the contents of the VM images as they
are copied. Since the snapshot already contains consistent VM images, no interaction is needed with the production ESX
servers and VM as the backup copy is created. Moreover, VSA takes full advantage of Change Block Tracking (CBT) to
support incremental backup copies from snapshots.
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IntelliSnap™ for VSA provides all the benefits of hardware snapshot based protection with the ability to extend these
capabilities to meet long term retention objectives as well.
Benefits of IntelliSnap™ for VSA
Extremely fast, reliable protection for data in virtual machines, with minimal production impact. Allows critical systems to
be virtualized for more rapid ROI from the shift to the virtual platform.
Multiple recovery points per days allows users to recover from a point closer to the point of failure, allowing recovery to a
more recent point in time than simply last night’s backup.
Retain snapshots on primary EqualLogic for 1-2 weeks, while also extending the contents of the snapshots to secondary
EqualLogic for long term retention
Minimize the reserve space required for snapshots.
Index the contents of the snapshots for granular file level recovery from long term copies.
Since the backup copy is created from a snapshot, it has minimal impact on the production ESX server and virtual
machines.
Leverage Change Block Tracking (CBT) while creating secondary copies.
Embedded deduplication reduces the backup storage footprint significantly.
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Incremental Forever Backups with DASH Full
In environments that do not require multiple recovery points per day or cannot support snapshot based protection, Simpana®
software offers an alternate method
to protect all VMs in the
infrastructure without
overburdening production VMs and
ESX servers.
VMware provides vStorage API for
Data Protection (VADP), an API set
for backup vendors to use for
backing up virtual machines using
an external proxy. VADP eliminates
the need for configuring backup
agents inside each VM. A key
element of VADP is Change Block
Tracking (CBT) which identifies
only those blocks that have
changed since the last backup.
Incremental backup jobs can use
CBT to quickly identify changed
blocks and back them up.
The Simpana® VSA agent on the
utility blade takes full advantage of
the VADP and CBT to enable
incremental forever backups to the
secondary EqualLogic pool. The
distributed, self-protected, index ensures any incremental job is capable of performing a single pass full VM recovery or
granular file level recovery.
Incremental backups with CBT are a great way to create fully recoverable backup copies without overburdening the VMs.
However, it may be necessary to create a full backup set for exporting to an alternate site or to offline media like tape. Running
a periodic full backup can impose significant overhead on the production VMs. An alternative is to create Synthetic Full backup
copies.
A traditional Synthetic Full reads the last full backup and all incrementals that follow and writes back a new consolidated full.
On a deduplication enabled disk, this is a very expensive and wasteful approach. The traditional synthetic full job reads all the
data, thereby rehydrating it, creates a new consolidated full and feeds this full backup to the deduplication engine for
processing. However, since all the data blocks are already on disk, the deduplication engine never writes these to disk. The
net result is that the Synthetic Full job wasted a lot of time and cycles reading and deduplicating data that resulted in only
reference pointers being updated on disk. This costly, time-consuming approach is illustrated in Figure 5.
Figure 4: Virtual Server Protection Workflow using an Incremental Forever Backup Approach
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Figure 5: Traditional Synthetic Full
Simpana® software solves the rehydration problem by including the option of Deduplication Accelerated Synthetic Full or
DASH Full. DASH Full provides a smarter way to create a consolidated full backup on secondary EqualLogic disk storage
pool. Since all the data blocks are already on the pool, DASH full operation does not waste time reading the data blocks and
re-processing it for deduplication. Instead it merely creates a new index that contains references to the appropriate data blocks
and updates reference counts in the deduplication database. As a result the DASH Full creates a new consolidated full in a
much shorter time than a traditional Synthetic Full. This dramatically more efficient approach to deduplicated, CBT enabled
VADP backup is illustrated in figure 6.
Figure 6: DASH Full
Simpana® software combines the power of CBT with DASH Full to enable an incremental forever strategy for VMware
backups. The incremental forever backup minimizes the impact on production virtual machines and ESX servers and reduces
the amount of data that needs to be read and moved from the production storage to the backup disk. At the same time DASH
full enables the rapid creation of a consolidated full backup with no impact on the production ESX hosts, virtual machines or
production storage.
Benefits of an Incremental Forever Backup with DASH Full Include
Incremental forever with CBT minimizes the impact of backup in the production ESX host, virtual machines and data
stores, reading and moving only data that has changed.
Each Incremental backup enables full VM recovery in a single pass
Allows multiple incremental backups per day for shorter RPO.
Fast consolidated full for exporting weekly/monthly fulls to tier 3 disk or offline media like tape or cloud for long term
retention.
Creation of consolidated Full has no impact whatsoever on the production ESX hosts, virtual machines and data stores.
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Application Integration
Application Integrated Protection with IntelliSnap™ for Virtual Servers
A critical consideration when virtualizing mission critical applications is the ability to protect data in a fully application consistent
manner. One solution is to treat VMs running applications as regular servers and configure traditional backup agents inside the
guest VMs to guarantee application consistent backup. While Simpana® software does support this approach with source side
deduplication for efficient processing, this method may impose additional burden on the production hosts. Alternately, VADP
provides a method to leverage Microsoft VSS to create application consistent VM snapshots, but application consistency is not
guaranteed in all cases.
Simpana IntelliSnap™ for Virtual Servers offers a unique solution to this challenge. VSA integrates with applications inside
virtual machines to ensure the applications are in a consistent state before creating an EqualLogic snapshot based recovery
copy. This guarantees that the snapshot copy contains an application consistent representation of the VM image. This is
achieved without placing undue burden on the virtual machine or the ESX host.
The image illustrates how IntelliSnap for VSA integrates with applications running inside a virtual machine. It utilizes a
lightweight application aware, VSS aware and license free module inside the virtual machine hosting the application. Before
the IntelliSnap job makes the VM quiescent it interacts with the lightweight module to prepare the application for backup using
VSS. Once the application is ready, SPE invokes PS API to
create a hardware snapshot of the datastore on the primary
EqualLogic storage array. Once the EqualLogic snapshot
creation is complete, the application is released for normal
operations and the VM is made un-quiescent. This whole
operation lasts a few minutes. Secondary backup copy
operation can then be used to copy the contents of the
snapshot, including the application consistent VM image, to
the secondary EqualLogic group. Applications can be
recovered by recovering the application database files and
using native application tools to bring the application back
online.
IntelliSnap for VSA supports Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft
SQL and Microsoft SharePoint Database on virtual machines
for VSS consistent protection. In addition, Simpana software
supports log truncation for Exchange Databases on inside
virtual machines that are protected with IntelliSnap for VSA.
The software module inside the application VM does not
actually move any data and uses few resources, if any, during the protection operation. It does not require special license can
be remotely installed and updated. In addition, it acts as a restore target allowing file level restores directly to the virtual
machine, without the need to temporarily stage the files being recovered.
Message Level Protection for Exchange
Simpana software includes ability to provide message level protection for Exchange on VMware virtual machines. Message
level protection for Exchange uses the snapshots created by IntelliSnap for VSA as the source for mailbox backup. This
extends all the benefits of snapshot based off-host protection to Exchange Mailboxes hosted on virtual machines including
Off-host processing for no impact Mailbox backup. Backup job mounts and extracts contents from snapshots copies
created by the IntelliSnap™ jobs automatically.
Supports message level Full, Incremental and Synthetic (DASH) Full backups.
Figure 7: Application Integrated Protection with IntelliSnap for VSA
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All recovery benefits of Mailbox backups including ability to recover individual messages.
Separate retention for messages, snapshot copies and VMware images, leading to lower overall storage consumption.
Enables Content Indexing of e-mails for end user and compliance search and information management, without the need
for agents inside the virtual machine.
It is a common requirement within organizations to retain e-mail messages for significantly longer periods than backup images.
Most VMware backup tools that can only protect VMware images force retention of full VM images for long periods of time to
satisfy e-mail retention needs. This is a wasteful strategy and requires lot more disks space for backups. As a result, most
organizations either do not virtualize Exchange servers, or if they do virtualize them, use traditional Mailbox backup agents
inside the guest VMs, in addition to VADP backups, imposing additional burden on the Exchange VMs and the underlying ESX
servers.
With Message level protection for Exchange, Simpana® software allows businesses to protect and retain messages
separately from the EqualLogic snapshot copies. For example, IT departments can retain snapshot copies and the associated
VM images for short duration (7-14 days) for VM level recovery. Message level backups can be retained separately on
secondary EqualLogic, DL2200 or DX6000 for several months or years, without the need to preserve the full VM images for
the extended duration, leading to significantly less space overhead. Moreover, all the granular recovery capabilities of mailbox
backups are available.
Multiple Recovery Options
Simpana® software enables several recovery options for virtual servers.
Recovery options from EqualLogic snapshots
Full VM Restore: Recover entire virtual machines from the EqualLogic snapshot copies. Simpana® software automatically
and seamlessly mounts the snapshot in question and recovers the selected VMs to the specified location. The complexities of
snapshot related operations (identify, mount, register, unmount) are completely hidden from end users.
File Level Restore with Live Browse: Recover files from Windows virtual machines directly from the EqualLogic snapshot
copies. Simpana® software mounts the appropriate snapshot copy and presents a file level view of the contents of the
selected virtual machine. All storage complexities are masked from end users.
Application Level Recovery: Recover application database files using File Level Live Browse from EqualLogic snapshot
copies.
Exchange Message Level Mining: Recover Exchange Database files to an alternate location using File Level Live Browse
from an application consistent snapshot copy. Use Offline Mining tool to view and copy individual messages
SharePoint Document Level Mining: Recover SharePoint Database files with File Level Live Browse from an application
consistent snapshot copy. Use Offline Mining tool to view and copy individual documents.
Full Volume Restore: Recover the entire data store from a snapshot using native EqualLogic tools.
Recovery Options from Secondary EqualLogic Copy
Simpana® software supports a wide variety of restore options from secondary disk copies. IntelliSnap™ for VSA and
Incremental Forever backups provide similar restore options
Full VM Restore: Recover entire virtual machines to the original or alternate location
File Level Restore: Recover individual files directly to the original VM or an alternate location. Supported for Windows virtual
machines and Linux virtual machines with ext3 file systems
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Message Level Recovery: When using IntelliSnap™ for VSA and Message Level Protection, Simpana® software allows
message level recovery similar to recovery from traditional Mailbox level backups.
Application Level Recovery: When using IntelliSnap™ for VSA and backup copy to secondary EqualLogic, it is possible to
recover application database files to original or alternate location.
The recovery experience is identical whether data is being recovered from a snapshot on the primary EqualLogic or backup
copy on the secondary EqualLogic. The end user need not know where the data is residing, only needs to know the data to be
recovered. If the recovery point is a snapshot, Simpana® VSA uses the appropriate PS API calls to mount the snapshots and
recover the data. If the recovery point is on the secondary EqualLogic, Simpana® software presents the same consistent
recovery user interface.
Automatic VM Discovery and Automated Data Protection
Given the ease of creating virtual machines, new ones are created all the time, almost always without the knowledge of the
storage or backup admins. The admins, who are tasked with ensuring all data in the environment is protected, have to spend
an inordinate amount of time every day identifying new virtual machines and their owners, determining their purpose and
deducing their data protection and retention policy. These manual tasks lead to tremendous loss of productivity and wastage
of time that could otherwise have been spent on projects that help drive business growth.
Simpana® VSA includes the ability to automatically discover new virtual machines based on pre-defined rules and
transparently add them to data protection policies. This ensures virtual machines are protected even though administrators
have no knowledge about their existence. Wide variety of auto-discovery rules are available that, allow administrators to fine
tune discovery policies that best meet their needs. There is even a catch-all policy to ensure VMs that do not meet any of the
pre-defined criteria are protected nevertheless.
With this option, administrators can set the discovery rules once and never have to bother spending a minute on looking for
new virtual machines to protect. This can save
hours per person, a time that can be utilized for
more fruitful activities.
The most commonly used rule for IntelliSnap™ is
the Data Store Affinity rule that groups all VMs in
the datastore in a single data protection policy, or
subclient. This ensures that when a datastore
LUN is snapped all the virtual machines hosted
in that data store are in a consistent state,
eliminating the possibility of “dirty” VM image
within the recovery copy. The data store affinity
rules also allows the backup copy process to
distribute the workload of copying data blocks
equally across all LUNs without excessively
over-burdening any particular LUN.
Benefits of Virtual Machine AutoProtection Include
Increased IT staff productivity, freeing up more time for administrators to drive business critical projects that drive
revenue.
Effective workload distribution ensures best possible use of storage LUNs without overwhelming any single one, allowing
production processes to run with minimal impact.
Figure 5: Automatic Discovery Rules
*
Reference Architecture for Virtualization Building Block
This section describes 3 reference architectures for the Converged Virtual Infrastructure building block. Each of the reference
architecture provides a different level of scalability and capacity and can be combined to build an environment of desired size.
Each building block, regardless of the size, contains an integrated data protection solution with Simpana® software.
Small Reference Architecture
Designed for the small data center that is in the initial stages of virtualization. Optimized to enable virtualization of non-critical,
non-application servers.
Possible Virtual Machine configuration # of VMs per ESX
Total # of VMs
Avg VM size (GB)
Avg. VM RAM (GB)
Description
28-35 200-250 60-100 2-4 Number of VMs is constrained by how much memory is available on each blade and the number of cores. Typical VMware environments contain 4 server class VMs per core
Server and Storage Configuration Device Role Qty Configuration/Description
Server Configuration
MD1000e Blade Enclosure 1
PE M710 Production ESX Servers 7 48-96 GB RAM per blade
Primary ESX servers
PE M610 ESX Server/Utility Blade 1 96 GB RAM
Optional vCenter, optional Simpana® CommServe®, SAN Management software (SANHQ)
PE M610 ESX Server/Data Protection Utility Blade
1 96 GB RAM
ESX Proxy running Simpana® VSA and MediaAgent with integrated deduplication
Storage Configuration
PS 6510X Primary Storage 1 28.8 TB, ~24 TB usable
About 20% usable space (4 TB) is reserved for snapshots, VMWare swap files and Simpana® DDB volume. This leaves about 20 TB of storage for VMs
PS 6010XV Alternate Primary Storage 2-3 19.2 to 28.8 TB, ~15 to ~24 TB usable
20% usable is reserved for snapshots, VMware swap files and Simpana® DDB. Use when VMs run critical apps demanding high IO performance.
PS 6010E Secondary Storage 1 32 TB, ~28 TB usable
Used as backup target. Present 2 TB LUNs to Simpana® VSA/MA virtual machine.
Medium Reference Architecture
Possible Virtual Machine configuration # of VMs per ESX
Total # of VMs
Avg VM size (GB)
Avg. VM RAM (GB)
Description
50-70 400-500 60-100 2-8 Number of VMs is constrained by how much memory is available on each blade and the number of cores. Typical VMware environments contain 4 server class VMs per core
Server and Storage Configuration Device Role Qty Configuration/Description
Server Configuration
*
MD1000e Blade Enclosure 1
PE M710 Production ESX Servers 7 144 GB RAM per blade
Primary ESX servers
PE M610 Alternate Production ESX Servers
14 48-96 GB RAM per blade
Alternative to the M710s. Can also use a combination of M610 and M710 depending on desired VM density
PE M610 ESX Server/Utility Blade 1 96 GB RAM
Optional vCenter, optional Simpana® CommServe®, SAN Management software (SAN HQ)
PE M610 ESX Server/Data Protection Utility Blade
1 96 GB RAM
ESX Proxy running Simpana® VSA and MediaAgent with integrated deduplication
Storage Configuration
PS 6510X Primary Storage 2 57.6 TB, ~48 TB usable
About 20% usable space (8 TB) is reserved for snapshots, vmware swap files and Simpana® DDB volume. This leaves about 40 TB of storage for VMs
PS 6010 XV
Alternate Primary Storage 5-6 48 to 57.6 TB, ~42 to ~48 TB usable
20% usable is reserved for snapshots, VMware swap files and Simpana® DDB. Use when VMs run critical apps demanding high IO performance.
PS 6510E Secondary Storage 1 48 – 96 TB, ~40 – 80 TB usable
Used as backup target. Present 2 TB LUNs to Simpana® VSA/MA virtual machine.
PS 6010XV or PS 6010XVS
Deduplication Database storage (optional)
1 4.8 TB Used to store Simpana® deduplication database if primary storage capacity is constrained.
Large Reference Architecture
Possible Virtual Machine configuration # of VMs per ESX
Total # of VMs
Avg VM size (GB)
Avg. VM RAM (GB)
Description
130-165 800-1000 60-100 4-16 Number of VMs is constrained by how much memory is available on each blade and the number of cores. Typical VMware environments contain 4 server class VMs per core
Server and Storage Configuration Device Role Qty Configuration/Description
Server Configuration
MD1000e Blade Enclosure 1
PE M910 Production ESX Servers 6 256-512 GB RAM per blade
Primary ESX servers
PE M610 ESX Server/Utility Blade 1 96 GB RAM
Optional vCenter, optional Simpana® CommServe®, SAN Management software (SAN HQ)
PE M610 ESX Server/Data Protection Utility Blade
3 96 GB RAM per blade
ESX Proxy running Simpana® VSA and MediaAgent with integrated deduplication
Storage Configuration
PS 6010XV or PS 6010XVS
Deduplication Database Storage
1 4.8 TB Used for hosting DDB for the multiple Simpana® MAs that participate in deduplication
PS 6510X Primary Storage 4 115.2 TB, ~96 TB
About 20% usable space (16 TB) is reserved for snapshots, vmware swap files and
*
usable Simpana® DDB volume. This leaves about 80 TB of storage for VMs
PS 6010 XV
Additional Primary Storage 2-3 19.2 to 28.8 TB, ~15 to ~24 TB usable
Use for VMs running critical apps that demanding high IO performance.
PS 6510E Secondary Storage 2 96 – 192 TB, ~80 – 160 TB usable
Used as backup target. Present 2 TB LUNs to Simpana® VSA/MA virtual machines.
Performance Summary
Dell and CommVault conducted extensive performance benchmark tests on the Medium Reference Architecture to highlight
the capabilities of the integrated EqualLogic and CommVault® solution for the Converged Virtual Infrastructure. Some
highlights include
Protect 500 virtual machines in 30 minutes with IntelliSnap™ and EqualLogic snapshots
A single Simpana® Virtual Server Agent can protect 500 VMs in a daily 8 hour window (assuming incremental forever
backups)
Deduplication accelerated DASH Full complete in 8 hours for all 500 virtual machines
Test Details
The tests were run for an environment equivalent to the Medium Reference Architecture described above. The virtual
machines were configured as follows
# of VMs Size of each VM # of Data Stores Total Data Size
500 30 GB 15 15 TB
Space on each virtual machine was about 90% full with representative data that was unique to the virtual machine to simulate
real world conditions. The only common content across all 500 virtual machines was the operating system binaries.
Simpana® Virtual Server Agent (VSA) and MediaAgent (MA) are configured on a virtual machine on a dedicated Utility Blade.
This single Simpana VSA is able to protect all 500 virtual machines in the converged infrastructure. SimpanaVSA integrates
with the PS APIs to create persistent snapshot based recovery copies in the Primary EqualLogic Group. VSA also uses VADP
to create backup copies on the secondary EqualLogic Group for longer retention
Test Results: IntelliSnap™ for VSA
This sequence of tests measures the performance when using IntelliSnap™ for VSA along with EqualLogic snapshots to
protect 500 virtual machines. This sequence also measures the time required and the throughput to create deduplicated
secondary backup copies on the secondary EqualLogic array. The following table summarizes the results.
Job Type Time Average Processing Rate
Description
IntelliSnap™ for VSA 30 minutes
- Make quiescent 500 virtual machines across 15 jobs, engage PS API to create a datastore level hardware snapshot and thaw the VMs. 15 jobs completed in 30 mins.
Full Secondary Copy 24 hours 625 GB/hr Copy the contents of hardware snapshots to the secondary
*
EqualLogic. Deduplication occurs inline. Usually done once a week or once a month
Incremental Secondary Copy
8 hours - Copy changed blocks from previously created hardware snapshots using VADP and CBT to the secondary EqualLogic.
Test Results: Incremental Forever with DASH Full
This sequence of tests measures the performance when using Incremental forever protection strategy with DASH full to
backup 500 virtual machines to the secondary EqualLogic storage. Hardware snapshots on the primary storage are not used
in this case. The following table summarizes the results
Job Type Time Average Processing Rate
Description
First Full Backup 30 hours 500 GB/hr First full backup using VADP. Since the data has never been backed up (or deduplicated before) the throughput is relatively low.
Incremental Backup 8 hours - The default backup policy, uses Change Block Tracking to backup only changed blocks from VMs.
DASH Full 9 hours 1,667 GB/hr Creates a periodic consolidated Full. Can be run once a week to mimic the traditional weekend full, daily incremental schedule. Run bi-weekly or once a month, if at all. Typically used when selective Full copies are required on tier 3 disk media, on tape or on cloud
Beyond the Numbers
The intention of the performance tests described above is to identify resources sufficient to accomplish data protection tasks
for converged virtual infrastructure within a typical operating window. The results are not by any means an indication of any
performance limitations of the EqualLogic PS arrays or Simpana® software. If higher performance is desired, the peer storage
architecture of EqualLogic arrays ensures additional storage controllers can be added seamlessly and easily without any
disruption.
Similarly, the modular and linearly scalable nature of Simpana® software allows you to dramatically improve performance by
simply introducing additional Simpana® Virtual Server Agents (VSA) and MediaAgents (MA). For instance, by adding a second
VSA/MediaAgent in the converged virtual infrastructure building block, the average processing rate can be doubled and the
time take can be cut in half for an environment with 500 virtual machines.
Scaling it up
Each building block in the Converged Virtual Infrastructure is an independent entity with data protection capabilities built in. By
adding additional building blocks, not only do you increase the size of the virtual environment but you also add means to
protect the larger infrastructure. The Simpana® VSA included in each converged infrastructure building block ensure that data
protection capacity scales linearly along with the infrastructure. With each Simpana VSA protecting VMs in its own block and
all the Simpana agents working in parallel, the time to protect the virtual machines within this stack remains constant. For
example, 500 VMs in a single block is backed up in 8 hours by a single SimpanaVSA. 1000 VMs in two blocks with two
Simpana VSAs will also be backed up in 8 hours. The following table summarizes the effect of stacking multiple building
blocks and the time required for data protection.
1 Building Block 2Building Blocks 3 Building Blocks 4 Building Blocks
# of VMs @ 30 GB 500 1000 1500 2000
# of VMs @ 50 GB 300 600 900 1200
Data store size 15 TB 30 TB 45TB 60 TB
# of Simpana® VSA 1 2 3 4
IntelliSnap™ For VSA
Snapshot Copy Time 30 mins 30 mins 30 mins 30 mins
Full Backup Copy Time 24 hours 24 hours 24 hours 24 hours
For more information about Simpana® software modules and solutions,
and for up-to-date system requirements, please visit www.commvault.com www.commvault.com • 888.746.3849 • [email protected] CommVault Worldwide Headquarters • 2 Crescent Place • Oceanport, NJ 07757 Phone: 888.746.3849 • Fax: 732.870.4525
CommVault Regional Offices: United States • Europe • Middle East & Africa • Asia-Pacific • Latin America & Caribbean Canada • India • Oceania
©1999-2013 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. CommVault, CommVault and logo, the “CV” logo, CommVault Systems, Solving Forward, SIM, Singular Information Management, Simpana, CommVault Galaxy, Unified Data Management, QiNetix, Quick Recovery, QR, CommNet, GridStor, Vault Tracker, InnerVault, QuickSnap, QSnap, Recovery Director, CommServe, CommCell, IntelliSnap, ROMS, Simpana OnePass, and CommValue, are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems, Inc. All other third party brands, products, service names, trademarks, or registered service marks are the property of and used to identify the products or services of their respective owners. All specifications are subject to change without notice.
Full Backup Copy Throughput 625 GB/hr 1,250 GB/hr 1,875 Gb/hr 2,500 GB/hr
Incremental Backup Copy Time 8 hours 8 hours 8 hours 8 hours Incremental Forever with DASH Full First Backup Time 30 hours 30 hours 30 hours 30 hours
First Backup Throughput 500 GB/hr 1,000 Gb/hr 1.500 GB/hr 2,000 Gb/hr
Incremental Backup Time 8 hours 8 hours 8 hours 8 hours
DASH Full Time 9 hours 9 hours 9 hours 9 hours
DASH Full Throughput 1,667 GB/hr 3,333 GB/hr 5,000 GB/hr 6,6667 GB/hr
As the table indicates, additional building blocks increase the infrastructure required to host more virtual machines. However,
the time taken to protect this larger virtual environment remains constant. This is because each building block contains its own
Simpana® data protection capabilities built in. The predictability of this model makes it extremely easy to plan for and deploy
converged virtual infrastructure that will scale to meet the virtualization requirements of the largest of environments.
Summary
The Converged Virtual Infrastructure Block includes all the components necessary to successfully and reliably deploy a virtual
data center. Each building block includes high level of hardware component redundancy, built-in 10 Gb networking and
EqualLogic Peer Storage architecture for unprecedented availability. The fully integrated Simpana® software, with ability to
protect hundreds of virtual servers in minutes, provides level and scale of protection and recovery for the building block
unmatched in the industry. Each self-contained, self-protected and self-managed building block allows businesses the ability to
rapidly shift to a modern and agile data center.
Note: the original work for this reference architecture was performed using CommVault Simpana v9 and completed in June
2010.