Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
Executive summary............................................................................................................................... 2
What is a Virtual Tape Library? ............................................................................................................. 2
Comparing the VTL and a standard tape library ...................................................................................... 3
Will different virtual and physical drive types cause problems or affect performance? .................................. 3
Advanced Backup to Disk technology using a Data Protector File Library .................................................... 4
OverviewAdvanced Backup to Disk .................................................................................................... 4
Backup to disk-based devicesbenefits .............................................................................................. 5
HP Data Protector Software offers three different device types ................................................................... 6
What is a file library? ....................................................................................................................... 6
Distributed file media format (DFMF) file library ................................................................................... 8
Enhanced incremental backup (Incremental forever) ............................................................................. 9
How does enhanced incremental work in Data Protector? ............................................................... 10
Incremental forever paradigm ...................................................................................................... 10
Object consolidation ...................................................................................................................... 11
Space-efficient synthetic full backup (virtual full) ................................................................................. 12
VLS Automigration option ................................................................................................................... 13
VLS Automigration data copy methods ............................................................................................. 13
How to integrate and configure Automigration in Data Protector .......................................................... 13
How is the Automigration initiated by Data Protector .......................................................................... 16
VLS Automigration advantages ........................................................................................................ 17
Limitations ..................................................................................................................................... 17
VLS versus Data Protector file libraries .................................................................................................. 18
Data Protector GUI wizard .............................................................................................................. 19
Automatic and intelligent space management .................................................................................... 19
Improved disk full handling ............................................................................................................. 19
Use caseDisk staging ...................................................................................................................... 20
New file library license: B7038** ................................................................................................... 21
Advanced Backup to Disk Licensing (B7038AA/BA/CA) ................................................................ 21
HP Data Protector Software licensing using a VTL library .................................................................... 21
Summary and conclusions................................................................................................................... 22
For more information .......................................................................................................................... 23
Executive summary
This white paper provides a better understanding of the integration of HP Data Protector Software
with Virtual Tape Libraries by utilizing the Advanced Backup to Disk functionality available with the
HP Data Protector Software. After reading this paper, you should be able to determine the difference
between a Data Protector file library device and a Virtual Library. You should also be able to
determine how to employ the licensing structure of HP Data Protector Software to best suit your
customers needs.
The VTL consists of three components: computer hardware, application software, and a RAID-based
array of disk drives. The application software emulates a tape library and tape drives and the RAIDbased array of drives ensures no backup data is lost if a hard drive fails. These components are
frequently bundled by a single vendor into an appliance.
The VTL allows a customer to configure virtual tape drives and virtual tape cartridges, and to specify
cartridge capacity. The maximum number of supported virtual tape drives varies by vendor, ranging
from single digits to an unlimited number of drives. And, unlike physical tape libraries, which require
that additional tape drives be purchased and installed, virtual tape drives can be added to the VTL by
changing the software configuration, with no additional hardware costs.
Because the VTL emulates a tape library and its drives, it does not require a change to the backup
paradigm. When using Data Protector Software, you would configure the device just as you would
configure any other direct/LAN/SANattached tape library and drive.
With regard to capacity, the virtual cartridges in the VTL can be configured to whatever size is
desired. Although a physical DLT7000 drive uses a cartridge holding 35 GB of uncompressed data,
a virtual DLT7000 cartridge can be configured to store 300 GB, 1 TB, or whatever capacity is
appropriate to the application. Virtual cartridges should not be configured so large that they limit the
number of concurrently running backup jobsa VTL with 20 TB of storage can only support 20
concurrently running backup jobs if virtual cartridges are sized at 1 TB. If backup jobs are being
multiplexed, very large virtual cartridges can be configured. However, the ability to avoid
multiplexing is considered by many to be a significant benefit of using a VTL.
Many applications and databases frequently make small changes to existing files or produce many
new files containing business-critical data throughout the working day. These files must be backed up
immediately to guarantee their data will not be lost. This requirement means that a fast medium
capable of storing large amounts of data without interruption is necessary for storing data.
Disk-based storage media has become increasingly cheaper in recent years. At the same time, the
storage capacity of disks has risen. This has led to the availability of low-cost, high-performance
single disks and disk arrays for storing data.
Disk backup (also known as disk-to-disk backup) is becoming ever more important. In the past, tape
storage was the favored medium for backup and restore because of its price and effectiveness in
meeting disaster recovery requirements. Today, more businesses are augmenting their tape storage
backup solutions with faster disk-based backup solutions. This ensures faster data backup and
recovery.
Protector creates more than a single file depot for a backup session. The backed up object will span
over two file depots. A file depot is equivalent to a tape media in a slot, whereas the directories
represent the repository (slots) part of a library. As a consequence, many of the known media
operations can be applied, for example, scan, format, recycle, export (non DFMF library), and so on.
However, some operations are not available, for example, eject.
The name of each file depot is a unique identifier that is automatically generated by Data Protector. It
looks similar to the Data Protector media ID, but actually it is not a media ID, instead just a unique file
name. For example, (including path 80 character filename limitation):
C:\back\0100007f54106d9295058c50008.fd
Since each file depot contains backed up or copied data, a corresponding DCBF file keeps the detail
catalog information for it in the IDB. Thus, for each file depot a corresponding DCBF file exists,
providing a logging level or catalog protection period is specified (default).
The size of file depots is defined when you initially create the file library device. During this process
you specify all sizing properties for the device, including the maximum size of the file depots (see
Figure 2). The sizing properties of the file depots, although only entered once, are globally applied to
each file depot within its directory. If the size of data to be backed up within one session is larger
than the originally specified file depot size, Data Protector automatically creates more file depots until
the allocated disk space for the file library device has been consumed.
On Windows, the maximum recommended file depot/slot size is 5 GB, although the standalone file
device has been tested on Windows with file depots of up to 600 GB. On HP-UX, the maximum
allowed file depot size is 2 TB. However, for best performance a 5 GB depot size is recommended.
Analog to the file jukebox file drives can also be created; these are called writers. The naming
convention for the writers is:
<file library name>_Writer<number>
For each newly created file library, by default there will be a new media pool created with the
naming convention <library name>_MediaPool. The user can change this setting to any other existing
mediapool of type file.
Figure 4 shows conceptually the difference between the conventional and the new DFMF format for
the Data Protector 6.0 file library. Instead of putting all data blocks into one file, the new DFMF
creates several files on the file library. For each file that is backed up, an own file is created inside
the file library to host the data blocks. The parent medium file, storing all catalog information, is using
pointers to find the data segments.
The hash-key contains the properties of the file. This information allows Data Protector to detect nearly
all changes to the files and thus it is able to add all the modified files into an incremental backup job.
This is done by comparing the stored hash-key with the current hash-key, generated whenever an
incremental backup is done.
Note that the hash-key does not contain the ACL information. Therefore the enhanced incremental
backup detects changes on file permissions not by the hash-key and must still rely on OS flags, like
attribute flag on Windows.
Incremental forever paradigm
The incremental forever paradigm means that except for the first backup, where a full is performed,
only incremental backups are executed. This concept presents the most efficient way of backing up
only changed data.
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However, without object (backup) consolidation, the restore process would last far too long, since
nearly all backup sessions would have to be restored as separate objects. Due to this behavior,
regular full backups are required.
Object (backup) consolidation removes this drawback. After the first full backup, you employ Data
Protectors new incremental forever technology. To prevent the incremental forever paradigm, Data
Protector 6.0 has introduced the concept of object (backup) consolidation into synthetic full backups
or space-efficient virtual full backups.
Object consolidation
The Data Protector object consolidation functionality enables you to merge a restore chain of a
backup object into a new, consolidated version of this object. Using this functionality, you no longer
need to run full backups. Instead, you can run incremental backups indefinitely and consolidate the
restore chain as needed. During the object consolidation session, Data Protector reads the backed up
data from the source media, merges the data, and writes the consolidated version to the target
media. The result of an object consolidation session is a synthetic full backup of the specified object
version.
Note:
If a file was removed between two incremental backups, the consolidated
session will include the file.
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Synthetic backup is a backup solution that eliminates the need to run regular full backups. Instead,
incremental backups are run, and subsequently merged with the full backup into a new, synthetic full
backup. This can be repeated indefinitely, with no need to run a full backup again. In terms of restore
speed, such a backup is equivalent to a conventional full backup. With a synthetic backup, all blocks
(data and catalog information) are copied to a new media (see Figure 6).
Figure 6 shows how the restore chain is consolidated. The restore chain, consisting of a full and three
incremental backups, is consolidated into a new full, named synthetic enhanced full.
After a consolidation one session with type full (synthetic, enhanced) is listed inside the restore
GUI. This session represents the incremental backup, used for the consolidation, and the
consolidation itself.
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The following prerequisites must be fulfilled to perform a synthetic or virtual full backup:
All the backups that will be consolidated were performed with the enhanced incremental backup
option enabled.
All incremental backups that will be consolidated reside in the same file library.
The restore chain must be complete, meaning that all the object versions that comprise it
have the status Completed or Completed/Errors and all the media holding these object versions
are available.
The necessary backup devices are configured and the media prepared.
A Media Agent that will participate in an object consolidation session is installed on every system.
The appropriate user rights for starting an object consolidation session (Start backup specification)
are secured.
To perform a virtual full backup, all the backups source (full, incremental) and target (virtual full)
must reside in the same file library that uses DFMF.
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3
1
SAN
Destination library
can be a VTL, too.
VLS
Tape library
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VLS configuration
Configuration of a dedicated physical library on the VLS (under the new Automigration tab
on the Command View VLS as can be seen in Figure 8)
Smart Copy Pool Creation for this dedicated physical tape library :
1. Click on
2. Under Destination Libraries, select Media Pools of the of the connected physical
tape library
3.
4.
Click on
Fill out the required fields and click the submit button for Smart Copy Pool Creation
http://www.hp.com/go/VLS
Figure 8. VLS configuration
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Enabling Automigration
Automated smart/media copying: takes place after the completion of a backup session
(Post-backup) or at a specific time or at regular intervals (scheduled)
Interactive smart/media copying creates a copy of a medium containing the backed up
data and can be started on demand at any point in time
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Limitations
Copies through Automigration can only be done between slots and copy slots of the
same VTL
After copy process, source and destination tape are made non-appendable. This is the same
as for the usual media copy
Media in the physical library can only be accessed through VLS
Media within the copy slots cannot be used for other operations like backup and restore.
Further information and consideration regarding the configuration and setup can be found in the VLS
documentation and Data Protectors manuals.
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Disk Agent
Media Agent
Disk Agent
Backup
Disk Agent
NEW:
direct restore from tape
Restore:
Fast restore from disk if data still
available there
Some use cases where a file library as part of a disk staging concept is very useful include:
Continuous backup of transaction log files (no overhead through media load/unload and for tape
drives there is no issue with start/stop mode)
Backup of slow clients without multiplexing
Tapeless backup of branch offices
Working similar to a virtual tape library
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Continuing with the previous model only makes sense in case you do not use compression or
deduplication technology. Otherwise, you get a higher value if you use previously purchased
licenses under the new licensing model.
This capacity enhancement is only available to HP Data Protector Software customers who deploy a
VTL library utilizing the Advanced Backup to Disk Licensing extension.
To utilize the capacity-based license for a VTL, select the Virtual Tape Library option when
configuring the SCSI device (see Figure 12).
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