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VMware Infrastructure Backup Solution

Traditional backup solutions under virtualization environments normally consume excessive host resources and extend backup windows. Huawei launches a backup solution for VMware environments to minimize host resource consumption, reduce volume of data to be backed up, improve backup and recovery efficiency, and simplify deployment and management. This solution yields a high efficiency, flexibility, and ease-of-use under VMware virtualization environments, and swells the functionality of virtualization architecture.

Background and Challenge

The virtualization technology can divide a physical server into multiple virtual servers, and can improve resource utilization with increasing virtual servers. For large-scale deployment of virtual servers, a large amount of data needs to be protected and massive redundant data is also generated in the virtualization environment. This environment consists of multiple virtual machines (VMs), and each VM contains storage images used for data protection and disaster recovery, which both require a large storage capacity.

Traditional backup methods can meet data backup requirements if the number of virtual servers is relatively small. However, the rapid development of virtualization technologies makes installing proxy programs on each VM less effective in addressing this challenge. With a traditional backup method still in use, all VMs begin to back up data and compete for resources during data backup. According to some statistics, 10 concurrent backup tasks running on a physical server can trigger a fierce resource competition among server memories, CPUs, networks, and storage resources. This exhausts computing resources of the server and disables the system from handling increasing I/O loads. As a direct result of this, backup fails to be completed within a preset period.

For the preceding reasons, the virtualization environment requires a special backup solution for improving system resource utilization, enhancing backup performance, narrowing backup windows, and reducing data backup scales.

Solution

Huawei offers a solution to meeting those backup requirements by integrating its storage systems with renowned backup software in virtualization environments, such as VMware VADP API, Symantec NetBackup, and CommVault Simpana. This solution features flexible, lightning-quick, efficient, and reliable data backup and disaster recovery.

Also, it is designed for backup scenarios that involve multiple VMs, need to recover an entire VM or a file, and tolerate no VM downtime during data backup.

By using the VADP API, the backup software can directly access virtual disks on the storage system, invoke and query data, and implement file-level or VM-level backup on an operating VM. In addition, the incremental backup function is available for improving backup efficiency, greatly narrowing backup windows, and effectively lowering backup I/O loads of underlying storage devices.

With this solution, users no longer need to install any backup proxy on a target VM as backup processing is switched from the ESX server to the VMware backup server. The VMware backup server is powerful as it can perform centralized and overall backup and recovery on specific ESX servers without adding ESX server loads and affecting VM running.

Notably, this solution also reduces required backup space as it recruits a storage medium that supports data deduplication.

VADP Vmware ESXi Huawei storage servers backup restore solution

 

Highlights

Zero Impact on Services

  • The snapshot-based backup imposes no impact on VMs and ESX servers.
  • The application consistency is under constant protection.
  • The tracking function for changed data blocks can implement incremental backup, narrow backup times, and minimize recovery times.
  • The load of a proxy server can be balanced for an increased throughput.

Flexible Recovery

  • The image of a VM can be recovered in a flash.
  • Backup files can be recovered by using the full or incremental recovery method.
  • The recovery of various data and application programs such as Exchange, SharePoint, and SQL Server is supported.
  • Data, applications, and systems can be quickly recovered for prompt site reconstruction.

High Cost Efficiency

  • The solution supports the deduplication function, which can reduce the volume of backup data and backup network traffic, and can effectively lower the cost on backup infrastructures.
  • The solution simplifies backup system deployment, reducing the required number and expenditure of backup software licenses.