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Base: 616 server, storage, or data center decision-makers at North American and European enterprises with at least one x86 serverSource: Forrester's Technology Forrsights For Hardware, Q3 2010
1. Deploy one backup agent in each VM• Provides the ability to restore individual VMs as well as application awareness
and granular object recovery• Costly, slow, lots of processing overhead• Doesn’t protect vmdk, can’t restore an entire VM
2. Deploy one backup agent per ESX host• Protects the entire ESX host including vmdks, can restore entire VMs• Less costly (if using agent-based licensing)• No granular recovery of individual VMs or objects
3. Use VMware vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP)• Supported by most major backup application vendors with native GUI
integration• Agent-less with no processing on the host• Granular restore and full VM restore
4. Use specialized VM backup products• Typically agent-less with no processing on the host• Designed specifically to backup VMware• Separate point product
5. Use a backup application with source deduplication• Deduplicates data (block-level) at the source (on the ESX host) before backup
– Less data to backup and transmit– Also saves capacity on the back-end
• Application awareness, granular restore capabilities• Does require software/agent in each VM, additional overhead on host
6. Use storage-based snapshots• Increasing application awareness and integration• Provides multiple PIT copies (some vendors offer unlimited snapshots)• Space efficient snapshots reduce capacity overhead (25%-30%) • Snapshot technology is increasingly included the cost of storage or bundled
with other feature sets• Combine with replication for a DR solution• Can be controlled through backup platforms• Requires central storage (SAN/NAS)
Myth: I need additional production storage capacity to support VADPFact: VADP takes a off-host snapshot so it does not impact your production storage capacity or performance
Myth: VADP will take too long to deployFact: VADP is a native feature in most enterprise backup solutions and is easily enabled in the software. Many backup solutions will even auto-discover virtual machines for you
Myth: VADP can’t provide granular restores of individual files or objectsFact: Nope, that was VADP’s predecessor, VMware Consolidated Backup, that required deploying guest-level agents in order to get granular file restore
Ensure application consistency and get recoverable backupsAgents with application knowledge can
quiesce the application to make sure a consistent backup is taken that will be easily recoverable
Mitigate the disruption to the applications
Application aware agents can run the backup process in the background, or even move processing off the host to lessen the performance impact of the backups
Shorten backup windows
Application-aware agents can oftentimes complete backups faster than generic agents
•Relatively inexpensive, backup to tape or to disk
•Improving features (i.e. granular mailbox and mail recovery)
•RTO/RPO measured in minutes or seconds
•Multiple snapshots provide for PIT copies
•Storage vendors have increasing application awareness
•Cost of storage is declining, many vendors no longer charge for snap licenses
Cons •RTO/RPO measured in hours •Requires the deployment of a central storage (SAN or NAS)
Guidance
•Appropriate for Exchange environments, where RPO and RTO take a back seat to budget concerns or availability. In addition, all companies should complement the other solutions with backup for backup version history.
•If you already have or plan to deploy central storage this is a good option
• Identify your “trouble” applications like Exchange, SharePoint, Oracle, DB2 etc. and evaluate backup providers with strengths in these areas
• For VMware and Exchange, the enterprise-class backup vendors have caught up with the point solutions in terms of capabilities—no need for additional point products to be deployed
• For additional gaps in protection, VMware-aware snapshots are a good alternative—especially if you can catalog the snaps in your backup application
Avoid point products for protecting specific applications