Virtualization Spotlight

Date Smart Dynamic Export from esXpress

VMSpotlight — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:47:37 GMT

It’s been a while since we’ve talked a bit a bout esXpress‘ features. In this post we’ll be looking at the “Date Smart Dynamic Export”, which allows you to pinpoint the virtual data you want to archive, and combine it with your physical backup data.

Utilizing Patent Pending technology, esXpress’ Date Smart Dynamic Export (an extensive set of pre-defined date categories), provides a seamless path for moving uncompressed, native VMDK and VMX files to tape when combined with traditional solutions such as Symantec Backup Exec, IBM TSM, EMC Legato, or HP Data Protector. Since the esXpress software is not required to run restores, future restoration from tape is fast and easy.

The Optimal Combination for the Future of Data Protection

Today’s system administrator must protect the systems they’re responsible for with the best software available. esXpress in coordination with existing backup solutions, yields a faster data to tape backup, creating the optimal combination for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity.

VMs are moved to disk by esXpress and then tape backup can occur during normal business hours as no production VMs are affected. Tape data consists of VMs in their native state, consuming fewer tapes (up to 50%) and fewer resources associated with tapes (off-site storage fees, tape costs, and legacy agent licensing). Reduction in virtual machine backup times, together with faster restoration and reduced costs, represents the future of data protection.

Disaster Recovery tools such as NetBackup, BackupExec, TSM, Data Protector, Networker, Avamar, CommVault, Arcserve and others, provide effective protection against data loss, however, as virtualization progresses through the corporate environment, new backup tools are required. esXpress complements your existing DR implementation with the best Virtual to Disk Backup & Disaster Recovery solution in the industry.

Agent-Based Solutions and Tape Storage: The Shortcomings

Agent-based backup solutions solve critical needs in the current IT landscape. These solutions effectively quiesce applications while allowing users to continue to use those mission-critical applications on the physical server. Data stored on physical hosts must be protected and applications such as file servers, databases, and messaging, each povide unique challenges when it comes to backup.

Currently, the most cost-effective, off-site, backup storage medium is tape. And mature, agent-based backup solutions efficiently move data from disk to tape. While tape is not as fast for restoration as disk may be, tapes have the benefit of assuring backups are not on the physical premises in case of a disaster. Unfortunately, though, agent-based technologies have not been able to grow with virtualization. Recovery of an entire system with an agent-based backup preserves only the data—the entire system must be reloaded—including the operating system, applications, and the agent before any data can be restored.

Data Center DR: Best-of-Breed Solution

esXpress and legacy backup solutions work together to provide a best of breed solution for data center disaster recovery. Though legacy solutions provide effective backup of physical servers, as well as disk-to-tape solutions, esXpress provides the fastest backups from virtual machines to disk. Utilizing our date smart export directory, esXpress provides a direct path for legacy backups to take uncompressed native VMDK and VMX files to tape. Future restoration from tape is quick and easy as the esXpress software is not required for the restoration.

To achieve the lowest time-to-restoration in a virtual environment, block level backups utilizing VCB are often deployed. Unfortunately, VCB requires additional hardware and can not provide the number of concurrent streams necessary to meet backup windows.

Backups in a virtual environment should be performed with a solution tailored to the emerging virtualization technology. esXpress utilizes virtual machines to provide up to 16 concurrent backup streams direct to target per ESX host. Utilizing virtual machines requires no additional hardware or software licensing, and provides a superior level of fault-tolerance. In addition, each backup stream is compressed and deduplicated before the data ever leaves the host.

Veeam Backup 3.1 – puzzled by decrease in backup performance

VMSpotlight — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:19:08 GMT

On Sunday Eric Sloof wrote a blog post highlighing a potential issue with version 3.1 of Veeam Backup. The main focus of the discussion surrounds drastic reductions in back-up speed with servers upgraded to vSphere 4.

The people at Vizoncore and Veeam have posted on the subject in several online spaces also. One of Veeam’s product managers who runs a blog has posted on this topic here: http://www.vnotion.com/?p=38 explaining testing he has done on the issue.

View the VMTN discussion thread here: http://communities.vmware.com/message/1302322

Jason Mattox and Steve Philip also contributed to the discussion (excerpts below from Eric Sloof’s blog):

Jason Mattox :

Putting my differences aside, (I’m from vizioncore) and wanting to see this fixes for all VMware users, here is what it think is going on. I think this is due to the read speeds from VMFS on ESX 4 VS ESX 3. Give this test a try, create a 10 GB VM and run this command, how does it take on ESX 3 vs ESX 4? You have to remember that VCB over the network is using VMware API’s which are going to get more disk/read time. I think VMware has starved the COS reads again. I think this same thing happened from ESX 2.5.x to 3.0 and when 3.0.1 came out it was fixed, I’m not 100% on that ,but I think that’s what happened. time cat
JM_10GB_Test-flat.vmdk > /dev/null

Steve Philp :

As the person that posted the original question both on VMware’s forum and on Veeam’s forum, I can tell you that we’re all just waiting for VMware to acknowledge and fix the issue. We have been working with VMware tech support for a few weeks now, providing them with backup and file copy performance data involving the Service Console. We have no idea whether they’re seeing other reports of the issue, they haven’t been very forthcoming with info. I can confirm that the backup speed problem ONLY affects transfers using the Service Console. Using VCB / SAN mode in Veeam Backup allows full backup speed. Here’s the followup posting on my blog with our “lesson’s learned”.

PHD Virtual Releases New Freeware Solution: Patch Downloader v6.0

VMSpotlight — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:38:44 GMT

http://phdvirtual.com/

PHD Virtual Technologies, provider of the pioneering esXpress data protection and recovery solution for virtual machines, today announced availability of Patch Downloader version 6.0, a new freeware solution to simplify patch downloading for various VMware ESX versions.

Patch Downloader version 6.0 is the fifth free virtualization utility to be offered by PHD Virtual as part of its longstanding commitment to the virtualization community.

Patch Downloader v6.0 eases the pain of downloading patches for various ESX versions from the VMware support site by automating the process for users that cannot use the VMware Update Manager. Now, rather than downloading each patch manually through a Java Download manager, VMware administrators can simply select the version of ESX from the Patch downloader drop down menu, and select the file repository (including folder, drive map, SMB share, etc.) to download the patches to. The new freeware solution will list all of the available patches and information about the patches including severity of the problem it corrects, what the impact on VM/Host uptime is, and a description of the problem fixed. Downloads of selected patches are performed with a simple click making it easy to keep the ESX patch repository up to date.

Read the full post here: PHD Virtual Releases New Freeware Solution: Patch Downloader v6.0