10 Best Practices for EMC

VNX/VNXe and Data Domain

Technical Brief

Webinar presented September 13, 2016 by Michael Otey, President, TECA,

and Matt Lloyd, EMC and VMware Alliance, Veeam

Technical Brief | September 13, 2016

10 Best Practices for EMC VNX/VNXe

and Data Domain
Overview

Moderator

An organizations IT infrastructure is only as available as its ability to recover data. In todays

business environment, where data is a strategic asset and virtualization is commonplace, IT
teams must take a serious look at implementing strong data protection strategies and develop
a plan for restoring applications and data quickly.

Brad Sams, Executive Editor,

Petri IT KnowledgeBase

The Veeam Availability Suite is a proven way to provide availability and disaster recovery
to always-on enterprises. Integration between Veeam and EMC VNX/VNXe translates into
seamless backups and restores, giving IT teams greater peace of mind.

Michael Otey, President, TECA

Presenters
Matt Lloyd, EMC and VMware
Alliance, Veeam

Context
Michael Otey described the data-related challenges facing IT teams and the need for data
protection strategies. Matt Lloyd discussed how the integration between Veeam and EMC VNX/
VNXe provides continuous availability for enterprises.

Key Takeaways
As the strategic importance of data grows, downtime costs for organizations
increase
IDC estimates that organizational data volumes are growing by 30% to 50% per year. As a
result, data storage is a larger concern for IT teams. Other data-related issues affecting IT teams
include the consumerization of IT, the need to reduce capital and operating expenditures,
and greater data control and security demands. Thanks to initiatives like business intelligence,
analytics, and the Internet of Things, data has become a strategic asset.

In todays organizations,
data is a strategic asset.
Data protection has
become a requirement
for highly available data
centers.
Michael Otey

The growing importance of data makes downtime costly. Findings on downtime from three
leading sources are:

Gartner downtime research. On average, system downtime costs organizations $5,600 per
minute or $300,000 per hour.

CA survey. Downtime translates into $26 billion in losses yearly. An outage of 14 hours

costs a business $150,000 on average. Most survey respondents (87%) indicated that data
recovery failures would be disastrous for their organizations.

Amazons 2013 outage. This 30-minute outage cost $66,240 per minute or approximately $3
million.

The costs of downtime arent just monetary. Downtime translates into losses of customer and
end-user confidence, reputation, and efficiency.

2016 Petri IT Knowledgebase.

10 Best Practices for EMC VNX/VNXe and Data Domain

Many top challenges facing IT teams are data related

A recent study by Enterprise Strategy Group found that IT leaders recognize the importance of
managing and protecting data. Two of the top five IT priorities were data related.
Top 10 IT Priorities

In addition, virtualization poses data protection challengesparticularly around backup and

recovery.
Virtual Infrastructure Data Protection Challenges

When developing a data protection strategy, IT teams must consider strategy

drivers, backup frequency, and backup location
IT leaders worry about the reliability and speed of backups and recoveries. One way to address
these issues is by developing a data protection strategy. As organizations do so, they should
consider:

1. Restore time objectives (RTOs). RTOs relate to the planned time for data restores and

determine the future point when the organization will be recovered. An important question
to ask when defining RTOs is how long the organization can go without the data or
application in question.

2016 Petri IT Knowledgebase.

10 Best Practices for EMC VNX/VNXe and Data Domain

2. Restore point objectives (RPOs). RPOs relate to the point in the past to which the

organization will recover. When defining RPOs, ask how much data is the organization
willing to lose.

RPO and RTO

Backup frequency may be influenced:

Criticality. The more critical the data, the more often it should be backed up.
Data updates. The more often data is updated, the more often snapshots should be taken
and backed up.

Size. Large files are usually backed up less frequently than smaller ones.
In general, it is advisable for organizations to follow the 3-2-1 rule of data protection:

3: Have at least three copies of your data. More copies means less risk. A good rule of
thumb is to maintain the original data (VM) plus two copies.

2: Keep backups on different media. Media can fail. When backups are stored on different
types of media, it eliminates a common source of failure.

1: Store one backup offsite. This protects organizations from site failure. One option for
offsite backups is the cloud.

Highly available data centers have data protection built into their architectures
Virtualization is the foundation of modern data centers. It enables mobility and enhances
availability. In virtualized environments, VM replication is one way to support backup and
recovery. VM replication makes multiple copies of VMs, which support near continuous data
protection. Geographically dispersed sites or the cloud can be used for site protection and
disaster recovery. The typical replication process has three steps:

1. The entire VM image is copied using replication and is registered on a remote virtualization
host.

2. Incremental changes are sent from the source to the target (or targets).
3. Restore points (VM snapshots) are created.
Different approaches exist for replication and backups. Each has advantages and
disadvantages.

Onsite backup. This provides streamlined recovery, since backups are accessed from disk.
However, it doesnt protect against site outages.

Storage-based snapshots. Frequent restore points are a benefit of this approach. But it
doesnt protect against storage failures.

VM replicas (onsite or offsite). This technique enables fast recovery, since it is possible to

failover to a standby VM. A negative aspect is that the infrastructure may be costly to host.

2016 Petri IT Knowledgebase.

10 Best Practices for EMC VNX/VNXe and Data Domain

Offsite backup. This protects against site outages and supports long retention periods. But
recovery may be slower as it takes time to retrieve data.

As organizations plan for data protection and business continuity, technology is very important.
However, people and processes cannot be overlooked. Employees must be trained on key
procedures. In addition, processes should be captured in standards, documentation, and
runbooks.

Veeam helps IT decision makers address availability gaps

The 2016 Veeam Availability Report found that 84% of IT decisions makers feel their
organizations have an availability gap. In response, 94% increased requirements to guarantee
data access. Of those that test their backups, however, only 26% test more than 5% of their
backups.
Veeam offers solutions to address todays availability challenges. Over 205,000 customers and
41,000 ProPartners use Veeam. The Veeam Availability Suite provides availability and disaster
recovery to always-on enterprises.
Veeam Availability Platform
Private Cloud /
On-Premises

Hybrid Cloud

Veeam
Cloud Connect

Veeam Availability Orchestrator

Disaster Recovery Orchestration for Enterprise

Veeam
Cloud Connect
Veeam Cloud
and Service Providers
(VCSPs)

Veeam Availability Console

Private Cloud & Virtual Workloads
Veeam Availability Suite

Veeam Backup & Replication | Veeam ONE

Public Cloud & Physical Workloads

Veeam Backup
for Windows

Veeam
Cloud Connect

Veeam Backup
for Linux

Managed Cloud

Public Cloud
Compute

Storage

Networking

Hyperconverged

Key aspects of Veeams offerings include:

Veeam Availability Suite supports private cloud and virtual workloads. It is composed of
two products: Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam ONE.

Veeam Availability Console supports public cloud and physical workloads. This is possible
through Veeam Backup for Windows and Veeam Backup for Linux.

Veeam Availability Orchestrator provides enterprise-level disaster recovery planning.

This helps satisfy compliance requirements

Veeam has a robust partner ecosystem. Partners support managed cloud, public cloud,
and private cloud/on-premises IT infrastructures.

Veeams backup and recovery processes are based on storage snapshots

Veeam uses two different types of snapshots:

1. Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots. These provide high-speed recovery directly from
the storage array. Veeam Explorer is supported for Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange,
Oracle, SharePoint, and Microsoft SQL.

2016 Petri IT Knowledgebase.

10 Best Practices for EMC VNX/VNXe and Data Domain

2. Veeam Backup from Storage Snapshots. These keep service levels high on running VMs.
The vSphere APIs for Data Protection (VADP) uses a sequence of events to read data for
backup jobs or replicated VMs. The VM snapshot process causes a phenomenon called
stun to coordinate the merging of the writes. Taking backups during off-hours, when
storage systems are under less stress, reduces the impact of stun.

Integration with EMC snapshots

Both Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots and Backup from Storage Snapshots are included
Two key
capabilities
provided
in Veeams
integration
with EMCare
Unity
storage. in this integration

with EMC storage

Integration with EMC snapshots

Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots

Backup from Storage Snapshots

Included in Veeam Backup Free Edition

Patent-pending technology

A recovery-only technique

Performs backups directly from storage

snapshots

Leverages snapshots on the storage array for

restores directly from the snapshots

The VMware vSphere volume is not mounted

No prior preparation required (other than

snapshot)

VMware CBT data is preserved for the backup

The integration between

Veeam and EMC VNX/
VNXe and Unity storage
minimizes impact on
production VMs. IT
staff spend less time on
backup and recovery, so
they have more time to
focus on innovation.
Matt Lloyd

Veeam and EMC VNX/VNXe and Unity storage provide availability for the
always-on enterprise
www.petri.com

The integration between Veeam and EMC minimizes impact on production VMs. IT teams can
create backups up to 20 times faster from storage snapshots, recover individual items in two
minutes or less, and use Veeam On-Demand Sandbox for storage snapshots. Veeam means
that IT staff spend less time on backup and recovery, giving team members more time to focus
on priorities like innovation.
The Veeam and EMC integration offers two key features:

1. Source-side deduplication with encryption. Integration with EMC Data Domain Boost

enables source-side deduplication and data in-flight encryption over the WAN for faster,
Sourcesidededuplicationwithencryption
more secure backups to offsite EMC Data Domain appliances.
Source-side deduplication with encryption

Optional WAN
acceleration

Sourcesidedata
deduplicationoccurshere

Hostandstorage
datastores

VeeamBackup&
ReplicationServer

BackupProxy

IntegrationwithEMCDataDomainBoostenablessourcesidededuplicationanddata
inflightencryptionovertheWANforfaster,moresecurebackupstooffsiteEMCData
Domainappliances

www.petri.com

2016 Petri IT Knowledgebase.

10 Best Practices for EMC VNX/VNXe and Data Domain

2. Per-VM backup file chains. File chains are created on a per-VM basis, rather than on a

per-backup job basis. They leverage parallel VM processing which enables multiple write
streams to an EMC Data Domain appliance.

Per-VM backup file chains

By following best practices, IT teams can streamline backups and restores in

EMC environments
Tips and tricks for more successful backups and restores when using Veeam and EMC together
are:

Setup data mover so it doesnt interfere with production vSphere storage resources. This
can be accomplished through four steps:
1) Install Veeam Backup & Replication
2) Determine if additional vSphere backup proxies are needed. Create and add them to the
Veeam Backup & Replication console if necessary.
3) Connect proxies to the storage network (iSCSI, Fibre Channel, or NFS).
4) Add proxies to Unisphere and configure in Veeam Backup & Replication.
A basic rule when assigning connectivity to the Veeam proxy is to use the same steps as
assigning a VMware ESXi host to the storage resource. The Veeam proxy moves data via a
backup or replication job directly from the storage snapshot which requires storage-level
access. Additional information is available at the Veeam website.

Set a protection schedule in Unisphere. It is possible to automatically create storage

snapshots on the VNX or VNXe.

Determine which restore option is most appropriate for the organizations needs. Veeam
Explorer for Storage Snapshots offers three categories of restore options: instant VM
recovery, file-level recovery, and application recovery.

Focus on storage snapshot-related considerations. Determine which host will perform the

restore as a customization for subsequent tasks. Select a host, resource pool, and VM folder.
When complete, the restore wizard for Veeam Explorer will populate these attributes.

2016 Petri IT Knowledgebase.

10 Best Practices for EMC VNX/VNXe and Data Domain

Veeam Backup from Storage Snapshots

The benefits of a layered approach include:

Immediate access to backups for instant restore of entire VMs, individual files, or
application data.

Proven recovery by mounting local backups any time for automated backup verification
and disaster recovery testing.

Frequent restore points and the ability to meet the most aggressive RPOs.
Automated offsite backup and VM replication for disaster recovery.
Long-term archiving to tape or the cloud for a final layer of availability which meets audit
requirements.

Dont ignore considerations related to the first full backup. If a VMware snapshot is open

for too long, it can degrade the performance of a running VM when writes are coordinated.
By leveraging Backup from Storage Snapshots, the VMware snapshot is only open for
seconds.

Focus on incremental backup-related considerations. Veeam Backup & Replication

preserves VMwares Changed Block Tracking (CBT) data. When performing incremental
backups from storage snapshots, this eliminates the need to read the whole disk geometry
to find changed blocks which degrades performance. As a result, incremental backup
speeds are up to 20 times faster.

Consider factors related to replication jobs. Usually, a remote data center is the target of a

replication job. Service levels can be significantly improved by reducing the time the VMware
snapshot is open. Veeam WAN Acceleration and storage integration with VNX/VNXe or Unity
arrays reduce stress on production VMs.

Use Instant VM Recovery. With this functionality, a VM can be restarted directly from a

backup file in two minutes. Since it uses existing backups and backup storage, users can
keep working while IT troubleshoots issues.

2016 Petri IT Knowledgebase.

10 Best Practices for EMC VNX/VNXe and Data Domain

Instant VM Recovery: How it works

Implement SureBackup. SureBackup leverages vPower and Virtual Lab. It verifies the

recoverability of every backup, but doesnt increase backup time or require additional
hardware or staff.

SureBackup: How it works

Utilize the On-Demand Sandbox. A group of VMs can be started instantly in a Virtual Lab.

Teams can start from any restore point (full or incremental), as well as from any replica
point. The On-Demand Sandbox can be run directly from the backup file without changing
the backup file. This enables IT teams to use backups for troubleshooting, testing patches
and workarounds, and training.

Other Important Point

Best practices white paper. A best practices white paper focused on EMC VNX/VNXe and
Data Domain with Veeam Availability Suite is available for download.

2016 Petri IT Knowledgebase.