Five Tips for Backup in Virtual Environment

With the rate of virtualized servers being added to IT environments, organizations are facing new challenges in how to adequately protect data and ensure its recoverability without backup operations limiting the performance of the host machines. Despite advances in backup and data protection technologies, the proliferation of virtual machines means that there is an increased need to align the business and IT requirements of data protection to achieve efficiency, minimize risk and increase satisfaction to both users and the organization.

Bocada Inc.www.bocada.com, provider of data protection management software and the creator of the Data Protection Service Management (DPSM) model, offers the following five tips to organizations looking to overcome the challenges of data protection in virtualized environments.

1. Planning and Internal communication
is needed to ensure VM protection
As organizations continue to increase the ratio of VMs to host machines, the challenges of backup and recoverability in virtualized environments are only going to increase in scale. To prepare for growth, organizations that are adopting virtualization need to map out their backup and recovery needs of those virtual machines. Whether the backup responsibilities fall on the same group that manages the virtual environment, or the roles are separate, a protection strategy needs to be put into place so that no data is overlooked. Consistent communication is key, as new VM’s can be deployed without the involvement of the backup admin.

2. Track performance at all levels to identify bottlenecks
Data protection of VMs introduces potential performance issues not seen when backing up physical servers. Performance issues can occur at CPU, I/O and network levels and intensify as the number of VMs per host increase. While many management applications today show CPU and I/O performance, none do so with a lens on data protection activities, and therefore cannot tell the user if backups are impacting performance, or conversely if there will be enough resource available to perform backups. Effectively tracking performance throughout the entire data protection service management process will give a better understanding of how bottlenecks might be preventing successful backups.
 
3. Monitor and manage the amount of capacity
being used by snapshots and backups
Considering on average one third of all capacity consumed across an organization is used for data protection, effectively managing how much capacity snapshots and backups are consuming can potentially help reduce capacity use and capital costs. Whether manually or with the help of a third-party solution, having accurate up to date knowledge of how your VMs consume storage and  how much capacity is being used by snapshots is vital. Having insight into snapshot utilization in every datastore down to the file level will help organizations determine what capacity can be reclaimed, freeing up resources.

4. Minimize additional administrative costs
associated with protecting VMs
While virtualization can help reduce the capital costs of servers and operational expenses of powering additional physical servers, there are some additional administrative costs associated with protecting VMs that organizations must be aware of for budget and operational planning purposes. If an organization uses separate applications to protect virtual and physical servers, there may be an increased burden placed on the IT team. Managing multiple heterogeneous backup applications has long been a challenge, even for specialized backup groups within an organization. As was mentioned in Tip #1, it is critical to map out which applications will be used to backup VMs and physical machines, and determine who is responsible for managing the backups. Often, multiple IT groups will use disparate data protection technologies to protect the same VM (the application team implements snapshots while the backup team continues to backup with a traditional solution, or even a specialized product integrated with the VM API). This can result in overprotection which results in consuming excess capacity and makes it difficult to find the proper recovery point. Coordination among the teams can help reduce administrative costs and reduce time to recovery. Simplifying the complexities of managing the disparate systems will help keep administrative costs to a minimum while capitalizing on current technology investments.

5. Implement a solution that addresses the specific needs
of data protection management in virtual environments
With virtualization backup vendors focused on addressing the complexities of backing up virtual instances, the ability to supply in-depth reporting and proper analysis on backup success, recovery point availability, capacity consumption and performance issues have largely been ignored. With protecting virtual instances becoming a top concern and the challenge of managing both snapshots and backups on the rise, a solution that addresses virtualization with an emphasis on the DPSM model can ensure operational excellence.

"There has been minimal attention paid by vendors in addressing the issues of backup and restore success, performance, and capacity use in traditional backup environments, let alone virtualized ones," said Ralph Wynn, Product Marketing Manager of Bocada. "By understanding how backups are being done within a virtualized environment, organizations will have a clearer path to overcome the inherent challenges they face in ensuring that VMs are properly protected and readily available if needed. A solution, like Bocada Vision, that follows the tried-and-true method of the DPSM model to help users reduce costs, improve customer satisfaction and achieve operational excellence is the ideal way to overcome the challenges of backup in virtualized environments."

Bocada Vision is available as a standalone module within the Bocada Prism family, a service management platform purpose built to help organizations move through the DPSM process, a multi-phase set of best practices to ensure cost-effective delivery of data protection services to customers. The company leveraged years of customer experiences to create a workflow-driven, intelligent analysis solution with built in SLA impact analysis, change tracking, trend analysis and a searchable knowledge base to ensure organizations can meet business goals and improve operational efficiencies. When used over an extended period of time, Prism and Vision provide a historical overview of the backup environment to see if it is operating the way it should be. This information is vital in addressing whether changes need to be made, the architecture needs updating, and what data is readily available, as well as to forecast future growth.