Converged Virtual Infrastructure - NDM Technologies · Converged Virtual Infrastructure Building Block Dell and CommVault introduce an integrated converged virtual infrastructure

Converged Virtual Infrastructure

Integrated VMware Data Management with EqualLogic and CommVault® Simpana® Software

Jeff Junker Shwethan Shetty Zahid Ilkal

A CommVault® White Paper

Contents

Integrated and Scalable Data Protection for Microsoft and Linux Applications 3

Converged Virtual Infrastructure Building Block 3

EqualLogic PS Series Arrays 5

EqualLogic PS Array Features and Benefits 6

Data Protection Challenges in a Virtual Environment 8

CommVault® Simpana® Software: New Approach to Data Management 9

Integrated Data Protection for the Converged Virtual Infrastructure 10

Snapshot-based Protection With SnapProtect™ for Virtual Servers 11

Incremental Forever Backups with DASH Full 14

Application Integration 17

Multiple Recovery Options 19

Automatic VM Discovery and Automated Data Protection 20

Reference Architecture for Virtualization Building Block 21

Performance Summary 24

Summary 27


3Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Data centers continue to evolve from an environment based on physical servers and storage to one based on

virtual platforms. Such modern data centers based on converged infrastructure (servers, storage, networking

and applications) demand an integrated approach to deploying, managing and protecting critical business

resources within a consolidated virtual environment. Due to unprecedented scale and consolidation afforded

by VMware® vSphere, today’s data centers have begun to resemble private clouds where the physical

infrastructure complexity is completely hidden from users and application owners to such a high degree

that protecting and managing the data for each user and each application has become challenging to say the

least. A proven tool and a simple approach are needed to provide agility and automation to how individual

application and user data is protected and managed in modern data centers.

Integrated and scalable data protection for Microsoft and Linux applications

Too often in a super virtualized cloud-like data center with converged infrastructure, data protection and

management are an afterthought, addressed with limited-purpose external tools leading to sub-optimal results

and poor resource utilization. The critical and ever more complex task of data management within virtual

machines—including protection, recovery and long-term retention—in a densely populated data center with

multiple applications like Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange and multiple databases like Oracle and MS-SQL,

needs a more integrated and flexible approach.

CommVault® Simpana® software is a proven solution that provides an integrated, unified, and robust end-to-

end data management solution that seamlessly enables data protection policies in physical as well as virtual

environments. Simpana software natively integrates with VMware vStorage APIs and EqualLogic PS Series

APIs for agile and automated data protection and recovery, while minimizing impact on production systems.

Organizations that use VMware and EqualLogic virtualization infrastructure can confidently transition to a

modern data center knowing that they can bridge the same level and granularity of protection as in physical

environments, but optimized to deal with the unique challenges of virtualization.

Converged Virtual Infrastructure Building Block

Dell and CommVault introduce an integrated converged virtual infrastructure that combines the best of Dell

servers, storage and networking components with industry leading CommVault® Simpana® software. The

combined solution forms the core building block for IT departments looking to build scalable VMware-based

private clouds.



The building block includes all components needed to build a truly agile and responsive virtual data center,

ranging from very small environments to the very large data centers with agile and automated data protection

and recovery.

Key components of the converged virtual infrastructure building block are:

■ Dell PowerEdge M1000e Blade Enclosure

■ Dell PowerEdge M610, M610x, M710 or M910 blade servers

■ Dell PowerConnect M6220, M8024, 8024F Switches

■ Dell EqualLogic PS 6510X or PS 6010XV for primary storage

■ Dell EqualLogic PS 6510E for tier 2 secondary storage

■ CommVault® Simpana® 9 Software for Data Protection and Management

■ Optional Dell PowerEdge DL2200 with MD1200 enclosures for tier 3 and offsite storage

■ Optional Dell DX Object Store Platform for long-term granular retention and archiving

Figure 1: Converged Virtual Infrastructure with Dell and CommVault® Simpana® Software



Integrated and robust end-to-end data protection for the virtual machines on this converged virtual infrastructure

is provided by CommVault® Simpana® software. Automated protection and recovery can be delivered using

the Simpana® software integration with VMware vStorage APIs and EqualLogic PS APIs, while also minimizing

impact on production systems. Organizations can confidently shift to a converged modern data center knowing

that they get the same level of protection as in physical environments, but optimized to deal with the unique

challenges of virtualization.

Key Benefits of the Converged Virtual Infrastructure

■ Flexible: Supports workloads for the smallest virtual environments to very large and

dense virtual data centers

■ Linearly scalable: Simply add identical virtualization blocks enabling predictable and

manageable growth

■ Highly available and reliable: Built-in redundancy for all key components ensures

there is no single point of failure in the entire block

■ Integrated Data Protection and Recovery: Includes all components necessary for

end-to-end data protection and recovery

EqualLogic PS Series Arrays

The key to any successful VMware deployment is the underlying storage system. The EqualLogic PS Series

storage arrays form the backbone of the Converged Virtual Infrastructure Building Block, delivering consolidated,

highly-available and scalable iSCSI storage. At the core is the peer storage architecture that allows multiple

arrays to function as a single virtualized pool of highly-available storage. This enables businesses to shift and

grow storage resources as needed with minimal disruption to existing production workloads, a flexibility that is

critical to a successful VMware deployment. By using Ethernet as the underlying networking protocol, EqualLogic PS

Series arrays also enable IT groups to avoid the cost and complexity of specialized storage networks and allow them

to capitalize on their existing investment in, and knowledge of, server networking infrastructure.

The PS series is available in a wide variety of flavors for differing workloads. For instance, the Converged Virtual

Infrastructure includes the 10K RPM SAS based PS6510X for hosting VMs with moderate workloads, the 15K RPM

SAS based PS6010XV (or SSD based PS6010 XS) for VMs with high I/O requirements and SATA based PS6010E for

hosting backup copies. Each of these PS series arrays have the inherent benefit of the peer storage architecture,

allowing capacity and performance to increase seamlessly, linearly and on demand.



EqualLogic PS Array Features and Benefits

Peer storage architecture

The EqualLogic PS Series is based on a unique, peer storage architecture. In this context, peer describes

the collaboration and equal partnership of a single, simple architecture—components and arrays function

as peers, working together to share resources, evenly distribute loads, and collaborate to help optimize

application performance and provide comprehensive data protection.

The result is an intelligent storage array that can deliver rapid installation, simple management and seamless

expansion. Using patented, page-based data mover technology, members in a storage area network (SAN)

work together to automatically manage data, load balance across resources, and expand to meet growing

storage needs. Because of this shared architecture, enterprises can use PS Series arrays as modular building

blocks for simple SAN expansion.

This architecture provides the basis for numerous features and capabilities, including peer deployment,

control, provisioning, protection and integration.

Peer deployment is a SAN configuration technology that can sense network topology, automatically build

RAID sets and conduct a system health check to help ensure that components are fully functional. Peer

deployment enables IT staff to potentially install, configure and deploy most EqualLogic arrays in minutes.

Peer control offers virtualized storage management with a single view. PS Series arrays are designed to

be self-managing—systems are designed to continuously monitor storage resources and automatically load

balance data across controllers, network connections and disk drives to help deliver optimal performance.

Peer control automates key functions for configuration, management, storage pooling and data distribution,

helping minimize the complexity of storage administration.

Peer provisioning enables administrators to dynamically provision resources to meet application

requirements—including not only disk space, but also connectivity, security, performance and data

protection. When application requirements change, the storage configuration can change seamlessly. Peer

provisioning is designed to simplify expansion while systems remain online—new arrays can be automatically

added to the group and automatically connect to the SAN. Expansion is linear, enabling administrators to

scale not only disk drives but also controllers, ports, cache and performance as the environment grows.

Peer provisioning enables enterprises to purchase storage on demand, which facilitates efficient use of both

capital and storage resources. Advanced thin provisioning capabilities are included, giving administrators



additional flexibility in providing storage to applications. Administrators can also allocate virtual storage

to volumes up to preset limits and add physical capacity on demand. In both physical and virtual server

environments, cloned volumes can be rapidly assigned to different servers to help meet changing needs.

Peer protection starts with a robust design that avoids single points of failure and is designed to provide

greater than 99.999 percent availability. It also includes built-in features such as application-aware snapshots

for quick recovery and remote replication for disaster protection. These features enable administrators to

quickly create end-to-end solutions that can help provide comprehensive protection against multiple types

Performance Summary of failure or outage.

Peer integration provides a comprehensive software toolkit to facilitate the deployment, ongoing

management and protection of EqualLogic SANs in Microsoft® Windows® OS environments and VMware®

environments.

vStorage API for Array Integration

Organizations can confidently shift to a converged modern data center knowing that they get the same

level of protection as in physical environments, but optimized to deal with the unique challenges of

virtualization. Dell and VMware collaborated in the development of the VMware vStorage APIs for Array

Integration (VAAI) to help improve the scalability of a virtualized environment while enhancing business

agility. These APIs provide native integration between the hypervisor hosts and the storage arrays, enabling

the VMware vSphere software to work directly with the Dell EqualLogic PS Series arrays. These APIs enable

administrators to offload certain storage workloads from the host servers to the SANs. These offloading

operations can dramatically accelerate VM deployment tasks by avoiding the requirement to read the data

all the way up the storage stack and write it back down the storage stack. Instead, this operation occurs

within the storage array. Administrators can deploy VMs even faster than before, enhancing the agility of IT

and the business. Helping to reduce processor, memory and network burdens also makes the environment

increasingly efficient—there are additional server and network resources available for running an increased

number of VMs. These APIs also enable administrators to scale the virtual environments to higher densities

than before through the use of increasingly granular protection of VMFS metadata provided by Hardware

Assisted Locking. This command enables administrators to increase the number of VMs in each data store

that can now utilize increased volume sizes.

Some additional key features for VMware include:

Storage Adapter for Site Recovery Manager (SRM): Enables VMware SRM to take advantage of PS Series

replication for full SRM integration.



Multipathing Extension Module for VMware® vSphere: Enhances VMware multipathing functionality with

connection awareness of PS Series network load balancing.

PSAPI Services: For high level of automation and coordinated operations, most of the PS-Series tools and

controls are available via the PS-API, enabling closer integration with Simpana® software to customize and

automate many of the EqualLogic snapshot and administrative functions.

Built-in monitoring: Includes management tools and consolidated monitoring of individual volumes, arrays,

pools and tiers of storage. SAN HQ enables detailed historical reporting and analysis.

Data Protection Challenges in a Virtual Environment

Traditional data protection solutions use resource-intensive agents to physically collect and move data from

production storage to a backend disk or tape target. This legacy method of using brute processing power

to move data from one place to another is not sufficient. Moreover, the traditional practice of depending on

previous night’s backup is simply no longer acceptable for modern Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Daily

change rates are too high to make this a reliable recovery strategy.

With the shift to virtualized data centers and round the clock operations, there is a need to rethink the

traditional data protection techniques. Data protection and data recovery must have minimal front end impact

and cannot exclusively rely on copying from the production to the backend. An effective solution minimizes

the load on production systems, minimizes administrative effort and eases the transition to a virtualized and

eventually a cloud-based data center. Some key challenges for data protection in a virtual environment are:

Not enough time to move data for backup: High server consolidation and high VM density concentrates

data ownership to a small number of ESX servers with most resources dedicated for production workloads.

There are little resources, if any, left for traditional backup tasks that move data nightly. Moreover, high data

growth and round the clock operations are rapidly shrinking backup windows.

Multiple Recovery Points: With high data growth and change rate, relying on last night’s backup for recovery

is no longer sufficient. Organizations are demanding Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) of hours. In other words,

it is necessary to be able to recover to a few hours ago, not to last night, to minimize data loss as a result of

disruption. Creating frequent recovery points without disrupting production activity is a huge challenge.

Enforcing Data Protection policies: The ease of deploying new VMs leads to a virtual machine sprawl,

making it tedious and time consuming for administrators to keep track of new virtual machines and ensure

correct data protection and retention policies are applied to them. Administrators spend a significant part of

their day tracking down new VMs and manually applying data protection policies.



Application Integration: As more and more mission critical applications are virtualized, it is necessary to

provide the same level of protection and recovery capabilities for these applications, while staying within the

bounds of constraints imposed by a highly consolidated VMware environment.

Multiple Recovery Options: Need to perform full VM as well as granular recovery from a single protection

operation.

Long-Term Retention: Moving data into virtual servers does not eliminate the need for long-term retention of

data. However, it makes the process more complicated since backup now involves full VM images. Retaining

full VM images for several months if not years is extremely wasteful, even with techniques like deduplication.

Businesses are looking for smarter ways to retain critical data, especially individual objects within applications,

for long duration independently of the VM backup images.

CommVault® Simpana® Software: New Approach to Data Management

CommVault® Simpana® software is a revolutionary data management solution that not only addresses the

challenges arising out of limitations in legacy data center environment, but more importantly, accelerates the

shift into virtualized and cloud-enabled data centers. With Simpana® software, businesses can start to realize

tangible benefits on day one of deployment as they transition from traditional environments to the modern data

center. More critically, using techniques that access data once, but reused for multiple operations, businesses

can reap the advantages of the modern data center immediately with Simpana® 9, bypassing many of the pitfalls

that arise from trying to force-fit legacy techniques or point solutions.

With CommVault® Simpana® software you can:

■ Protect hundreds of virtual servers in minutes with no impact on physical production servers

■ Protect very large VMware environments with thousands of virtual machines

■ Automatically discover new virtual machines for guaranteed protection with minimal administrator intervention

■ Use embedded source side deduplication for rapid creation of secondary DR copies

■ Create 100% application consistent protection copies

■ Rely on Granular Message level protection for granular restores, content search and eDiscovery

Customers can use Simpana® software to rapidly modernize their data centers into private clouds to take full

advantage of the advances in virtualization technology while continuing to meet all the data management and

data retention needs.



Integrated Data Protection for the Converged Virtual Infrastructure

Figure 2 illustrates an example of the converged virtual infrastructure using Dell blade servers, networking

and Dell EqualLogic storage with integrated Simpana® data protection software.

The production blade servers (highlighted in the green box) run VMware ESX and host the production virtual

machines. These virtual machines host their virtual machine disks on the primary EqualLogic group. This

group consists of one or more EqualLogic PS 6510 X or PS 6010XV storage arrays connected via 10 GigE

iSCSI to the production ESX servers.

A dedicated or lightly loaded utility blade server (highlighted in red) is responsible for end-to-end data

protection and recovery of all the VMs in the building block. The utility node runs an ESX server and a virtual

machine to which most of the physical resources are allocated. The virtual machine runs the Simpana®

Virtual Server Agent (VSA) and MediaAgent (MA) that executes data protection policies with no impact on

the production ESX blades or the virtual machines. Simpana® software drives the secondary copies on the

Secondary EqualLogic Group which contains Tier 2 EqualLogic PS 6510E SATA based storage. These backup

copies are deduplicated and indexed.

Also shown are optional components, the Dell DL2200 which functions as Tier 3 disk target for long-term

retention of data. The architecture also includes the Dell DX6000 object store which Simpana® software

utilizes to drive message level protection policies for long-term retention of messages from Exchange

mailboxes hosted on virtual machines.

Figure 2: Converged Virtual Infrastructure Example with Optional Components



The integrated Simpana® solution on the single utility blade affords a variety of data protection solution for

this environment depending on recovery needs. These include:

Snapshot-based Protection With SnapProtect™ for Virtual Servers: Leverages snapshot capabilities in

the EqualLogic PS storage array to create persistent snapshot-based recovery copies on primary storage to

protect hundreds of virtual machines in minutes. Also supports creation of deduplicated and indexed copies

on secondary EqualLogic from the snapshot copies using vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP).

Incremental Forever Backup with vStorage API for Data Protection: Leverages VMware APIs and Change

Block Tracking (CBT) for incremental forever backups. Deduplication enhanced DASH Full to create full

secondary copies.

Snapshot-based Protection With SnapProtect™ for Virtual Servers

Embrace EqualLogic Snapshots with SnapProtect™ for Virtual Servers

Traditional data protection techniques for VMware such as vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP), or

VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) rely on an off-host agent to protect virtual machine images. As efficient

as VADP is, it is still a streaming method that moves the image files from the datastore to backup disk for

protection. This method suffices for small to moderate sized environments with reasonable backup windows.

For larger environments with ever-shrinking backup windows, there is simply not enough time or bandwidth

to move all the VM data. Moreover in a highly dense virtual environment, VADP backups could impose a

tremendous burden on the production ESX hosts and virtual machines each time backup job runs. With

an estimated average of 40% data growth rate every year, this method is simply not sustainable.

Figure 3: Virtual Server Protection Workflow using VSA, SnapProtect and Media Agent Comnbiation



SnapProtect™ for Virtual Servers solves these issues by integrating with the EqualLogic PS APIs and the

native hardware snapshot capabilities in the EqualLogic PS array to create persistent snapshot-based

recovery copies for virtual machines.

SnapProtect™ for Virtual Servers using Virtual Server Agent and the Media Agent module are configured on

a Windows system. This system could be a virtual machine or a physical machine. In the converged virtual

infrastructure block, this is hosted on a single half height blade server or utility blade. This backup ESX proxy

can also run on the ESXi version of the hypervisor.

A SnapProtect™ job leverages VMware APIs to prepare VMs for backup. However, instead of using VADP to

copy data blocks, it executes a rapid hardware snapshot. The sequence is as follows:

■ Discover new VMs based on pre-defined criteria

■ Quiesce VMs in protection policy to ensure a consistent set of image files

■ Determine data stores associated with the VMs

■ Execute hardware snapshot using EqualLogic PS APIs, this takes a few seconds

■ Un-quiesce the VMs to resume normal operations

■ Index the snapshots and the VM list inside the snapshot

The SnapProtect™ operation takes only a few minutes, and the VMs themselves are made quiescent for a

very short time. The short duration with minimal impact on virtual servers allows the creation of multiple

recovery copies per day, enabling more aggressive recovery SLAS. Simpana® VSA software also includes

the Live Browse capability that allows users to browse and recover individual files from Windows virtual

machines directly from the hardware snapshot copy.

Extend Hardware Snapshots with Deduplication enabled copies

EqualLogic snapshots when used with Simpana® SnapProtect™ technology to allow rapid fire creation of

persistent and consistent snapshot copies. These snapshot copies are ideal for applications that require rapid

recovery and multiple recovery points per day. However, there are certain considerations to keep in mind

with snapshots:

■ Snapshots need reserve space to keep track of changed blocks. More snapshots

require more reserve space, leading to less disk utilization.



■ Consequently, snapshots provide limited retention. Retaining snapshots for more

than a couple of weeks may require sizeable reserve space.

■ Since snapshots operate at the volume level, indexing contents of snapshots and virtual

machines is challenging. Applications running inside VMs add an additional layer of complexity.

■ Snapshots depend on the original volume—if the original volume is lost, dependent snapshot

are unavailable.

Most environments have longer retention requirements than what can be met only by snapshot copies. In

a typical environment with 30-90 days retention requirement, one would create snapshot based recovery

copies every 4-8 hours that are retained for 7-14 days. Longer term retention copies require conventional

backup techniques.

Simpana® 9 software extends the lifetime of a snapshot by creating offline, fully cataloged and deduplicated

backup copies on secondary disk targets from snapshots. The SnapProtect and Virtual Server Agent

combination (or SnapProtect™ for VSA) includes the ability to copy the contents of selective snapshots to

a deduplication enabled disk target. In the converged virtual infrastructure the secondary disk target could

be a secondary EqualLogic group or the Dell DL2200 appliance.

When this option is selected, VSA selectively mounts a snapshot to a proxy ESX server (the utility blade) and

uses VADP APIs to copy the contents of the snapshots to a deduplicated disk library. VSA also indexes the

contents of the VM images as they are copied. Since the snapshot already contains consistent VM images, no

interaction is needed with the production ESX servers and VM as the backup copy is created. Moreover, VSA

takes full advantage of Change Block Tracking (CBT) to support incremental backup copies from snapshots.

Figure 4: Creating Secondary Copy from snapshots.



SnapProtect™ for VSA provides all the benefits of hardware snapshot based protection with the ability to

extend these capabilities to meet long-term retention objectives as well.

Benefits of SnapProtect™ for VSA

■ Extremely fast, reliable protection for data in virtual machines, with minimal production impact.

Allows critical systems to be virtualized for more rapid ROI from the shift to the virtual platform

■ Multiple recovery points per days allows users to recover from a point closer to the point of

failure, allowing recovery to a more recent point in time than simply last night’s backup

■ Retain snapshots on primary EqualLogic for 1-2 weeks, while also extending the contents

of the snapshots to secondary EqualLogic for long-term retention

■ Minimize the reserve space required for snapshots

■ Index the contents of the snapshots for granular file-level recovery from long-term copies

■ Since the backup copy is created from a snapshot, it has minimal impact on the production

ESX server and virtual machines

■ Leverage Change Block Tracking (CBT) while creating secondary copies

■ Embedded deduplication reduces the backup storage footprint significantly

Incremental Forever Backups with DASH Full

Figure 5: Virtual Server Protection Workflow using Incremental Forever Backup Approach



In environments that do not require multiple recovery points per day or cannot support snapshot-based

protection, Simpana® software offers an alternate method to protect all VMs in the infrastructure without

overburdening production VMs and ESX servers.

VMware provides vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP), an API set for backup vendors to use for backing

up virtual machines using an external proxy. VADP eliminates the need for configuring backup agents inside

each VM. A key element of VADP is Change Block Tracking (CBT) which identifies only those blocks that have

changed since the last backup. Incremental backup jobs can use CBT to quickly identify changed blocks and

back them up.

The Simpana® VSA agent on the utility blade takes full advantage of the VADP and CBT to enable incremental

forever backups to the secondary EqualLogic pool. The distributed, self-protected, index ensures any

incremental job is capable of performing a single pass full VM recovery or granular file level recovery.

Incremental backups with CBT are a great way to create fully recoverable backup copies without

overburdening the VMs. However, it may be necessary to create a full backup set for exporting to an alternate

site or to offline media like tape. Running a periodic full backup can impose significant overhead on the

production VMs. An alternative is to create Synthetic Full backup copies.

A traditional Synthetic Full reads the last full backup and all incrementals that follow and writes back a new

consolidated full. On a deduplication enabled disk, this is a very expensive and wasteful approach. The

traditional Synthetic Full job reads all the data, thereby rehydrating it, creates a new consolidated full and

feeds this full backup to the deduplication engine for processing. However, since all the data blocks are

already on disk, the deduplication engine never writes these to disk. The net result is that the Synthetic Full

job wasted a lot of time and cycles reading and deduplicating data that resulted in only reference pointers

being updated on disk. This costly, time-consuming approach is illustrated in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Traditional Synthetic Full



Simpana® software solves the rehydration problem by including the option of Deduplication Accelerated

Synthetic Full or DASH Full. DASH Full provides a smarter way to create a consolidated full backup on

secondary EqualLogic disk storage pool. Since all the data blocks are already on the pool, DASH Full operation

does not waste time reading the data blocks and re-processing it for deduplication. Instead it merely creates

a new index that contains references to the appropriate data blocks and updates reference counts in the

deduplication database. As a result the DASH Full creates a new consolidated full in a much shorter time

than a traditional Synthetic Full. This dramatically more efficient approach to deduplicated, CBT enabled VADP

backup is illustrated in figure 7.

Simpana® software combines the power of CBT with DASH Full to enable an incremental forever strategy for

VMware backups. The incremental forever backup minimizes the impact on production virtual machines and

ESX servers and reduces the amount of data that needs to be read and moved from the production storage to

the backup disk. At the same time, DASH Full enables the rapid creation of a consolidated full backup with no

impact on the production ESX hosts, virtual machines or production storage.

Benefits of an Incremental Forever Backup with DASH Full Include:

■ Incremental forever with CBT minimizes the impact of backup in the production ESX

host, virtual machines and data stores, reading and moving only data that has changed

■ Each Incremental backup enables full VM recovery in a single pass

■ Allows multiple incremental backups per day for shorter RPO

■ Fast consolidated full for exporting weekly/monthly fulls to tier 3 disk or offline media,

like tape or cloud for long-term retention

■ Creation of consolidated Full has no impact whatsoever on the production ESX hosts,

virtual machines and data stores

Figure 7: DASH Full



Application Integration

Application Integrated Protection with SnapProtect™ for Virtual Servers

A critical consideration when virtualizing mission critical applications is the ability to protect data in a fully

application consistent manner. One solution is to treat VMs running applications as regular servers and configure

traditional backup agents inside the guest VMs to guarantee application consistent backup. While Simpana®

software does support this approach with source side deduplication for efficient processing, this method may

impose additional burden on the production hosts. Alternately, VADP provides a method to leverage Microsoft

VSS to create application consistent VM snapshots, but application consistency is not guaranteed in all cases.

Simpana® SnapProtect™ for Virtual Servers offers a unique solution to this challenge. VSA integrates with

applications inside virtual machines to ensure the applications are in a consistent state before creating an

EqualLogic snapshot-based recovery copy. This guarantees that the snapshot copy contains an application

consistent representation of the VM image. This is achieved without placing undue burden on the virtual

machine or the ESX host.

The image illustrates how SnapProtect™ for VSA integrates with applications running inside a virtual machine. It

utilizes a lightweight application aware, VSS aware and license free module inside the virtual machine hosting

the application. Before the SnapProtect™ job makes the VM quiescent it interacts with the lightweight module

to prepare the application for backup using VSS. Once the application is ready, SPE invokes PS API to create a

Figure 8: Application Integrated Protection with SnapProtect for VSA.



hardware snapshot of the datastore on the primary EqualLogic storage array. Once the EqualLogic snapshot

creation is complete, the application is released for normal operations and the VM is made un-quiescent.

This whole operation lasts a few minutes. Secondary backup copy operation can then be used to copy the

contents of the snapshot, including the application consistent VM image, to the secondary EqualLogic group.

Applications can be recovered by recovering the application database files and using native application tools to

bring the application back online.

SnapProtect™ for VSA supports Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL and Microsoft SharePoint Database on

virtual machines for VSS consistent protection. In addition, Simpana® software supports log truncation for

Exchange Databases on inside virtual machines that are protected with SnapProtect™ for VSA.

The software module inside the application VM does not actually move any data and uses few resources, if

any, during the protection operation. It does not require special license can be remotely installed and updated.

In addition, it acts as a restore target allowing file-level restores directly to the virtual machine, without the

need to temporarily stage the files being recovered.

Message Level Protection for Exchange

Simpana® software includes ability to provide message level protection for Exchange on VMware virtual

machines. Message level protection for Exchange uses the snapshots created by SnapProtect for VSA as the

source for mailbox backup. This extends all the benefits of snapshot-based off-host protection to Exchange

Mailboxes hosted on virtual machines including:

■ Off-host processing for no impact Mailbox backup. Backup job mounts and extracts

contents from snapshots copies created by the SnapProtect™ jobs automatically

■ Supports message level Full, Incremental and Synthetic (DASH) Full backups

■ All recovery benefits of Mailbox backups including ability to recover individual messages

■ Separate retention for messages, snapshot copies and VMware images, leading to lower

overall storage consumption

■ Enables Content Indexing of e-mails for end-user and compliance search and information management,

without the need for agents inside the virtual machine

It is a common requirement within organizations to retain e-mail messages for significantly longer periods

than backup images. Most VMware backup tools that can only protect VMware images force retention of full

VM images for long periods of time to satisfy e-mail retention needs. This is a wasteful strategy and requires

lot more disks space for backups. As a result, most organizations either do not virtualize Exchange servers,

or if they do virtualize them, use traditional Mailbox backup agents inside the guest VMs, in addition to VADP

backups, imposing additional burden on the Exchange VMs and the underlying ESX servers.



With Message level protection for Exchange, Simpana® software allows businesses to protect and retain

messages separately from the EqualLogic snapshot copies. For example, IT departments can retain snapshot

copies and the associated VM images for short duration (7-14 days) for VM level recovery. Message level

backups can be retained separately on secondary EqualLogic, DL2200 or DX6000 for several months or years,

without the need to preserve the full VM images for the extended duration, leading to significantly less space

overhead. Moreover, all the granular recovery capabilities of mailbox backups are available.

Multiple Recovery Options

Simpana® software enables several recovery options for virtual servers:

Recovery options from EqualLogic snapshots

Full VM Restore: Recover entire virtual machines from the EqualLogic snapshot copies. Simpana® software

automatically and seamlessly mounts the snapshot in question and recovers the selected VMs to the specified

location. The complexities of snapshot related operations (identify, mount, register, unmount) are completely

hidden from end-users.

File Level Restore with Live Browse: Recover files from Windows virtual machines directly from the

EqualLogic snapshot copies. Simpana® software mounts the appropriate snapshot copy and presents a

file-level view of the contents of the selected virtual machine. All storage complexities are masked from

end-users.

Application Level Recovery: Recover application database files using File-Level Live Browse from EqualLogic

snapshot copies.

Exchange Message Level Mining: Recover Exchange Database files to an alternate location using File-Level

Live Browse from an application consistent snapshot copy. Use Offline Mining tool to view and copy individual

messages.

SharePoint Document Level Mining: Recover SharePoint Database files with File-Level Live Browse from

an application-consistent snapshot copy. Use Offline Mining tool to view and copy individual documents.

Full Volume Restore: Recover the entire data store from a snapshot using native EqualLogic tools.



Recovery Options from Secondary EqualLogic Copy

Simpana® software supports a wide variety of restore options from secondary disk copies. SnapProtect™ for

VSA and Incremental Forever backups provide similar restore options:

Full VM Restore: Recover entire virtual machines to the original or alternate location.

File Level Restore: Recover individual files directly to the original VM or an alternate location. Supported

for Windows virtual machines and Linux virtual machines with ext3 file systems.

Message Level Recovery: When using SnapProtect™ for VSA and Message Level Protection, Simpana®

software allows message level recovery similar to recovery from traditional Mailbox level backups.

Application Level Recovery: When using SnapProtect™ for VSA and backup copy to secondary

EqualLogic, it is possible to recover application database files to original or alternate location.

The recovery experience is identical whether data is being recovered from a snapshot on the primary

EqualLogic or backup copy on the secondary EqualLogic. The end-user need not know where the data is

residing, only needs to know the data to be recovered. If the recovery point is a snapshot, Simpana® VSA

uses the appropriate PS API calls to mount the snapshots and recover the data. If the recovery point is on

the secondary EqualLogic, Simpana® software presents the same consistent recovery user interface.

Automatic VM Discovery and Automated Data Protection

Given the ease of creating virtual machines, new ones are created all the time, almost always without

the knowledge of the storage or backup admins. The admins, who are tasked with ensuring all data in the

environment is protected, have to spend an inordinate amount of time every day identifying new virtual

machines and their owners, determining their purpose and deducing their data protection and retention

policy. These manual tasks lead to tremendous loss of productivity and wastage of time that could otherwise

have been spent on projects that help drive business growth.

Simpana® VSA includes the ability to automatically discover new virtual machines based on pre-defined rules

and transparently add them to data protection policies. This ensures virtual machines are protected even

though administrators have no knowledge about their existence. Wide variety of auto-discovery rules are

available that, allow administrators to fine tune discovery policies that best meet their needs. There is even a

catch-all policy to ensure VMs that do not meet any of the pre-defined criteria are protected nevertheless.

With this option, administrators can set the discovery rules once and never have to bother spending a minute

on looking for new virtual machines to protect. This can save hours per person, a time that can be utilized for

more fruitful activities.



Figure 9: Automatic Discovery Rules

The most commonly used rule for SnapProtect™ is the Data Store Affinity rule that groups all VMs in

the datastore in a single data protection policy, or subclient. This ensures that when a datastore LUN

is snapped all the virtual machines hosted in that data store are in a consistent state, eliminating the

possibility of “dirty” VM image within the recovery copy. The data store affinity rules also allows the

backup copy process to distribute the workload of copying data blocks equally across all LUNs without

excessively over-burdening any particular LUN.

Benefits of Virtual Machine AutoProtection Include:

■ Increased IT staff productivity, freeing up more time for administrators to drive business critical

projects that drive revenue

■ Effective workload distribution ensures best possible use of storage LUNs without overwhelming

any single one, allowing production processes to run with minimal impact

Reference Architecture for Virtualization Building Block

This section describes 3 reference architectures for the Converged Virtual Infrastructure building block.

Each of the reference architecture provides a different level of scalability and capacity and can be

combined to build an environment of desired size. Each building block, regardless of the size, contains

an integrated data protection solution with Simpana® software.

Small Reference Architecture

Designed for the small data center that is in the initial stages of virtualization. Optimized to enable

virtualization of non-critical, non-application servers.



Possible Virtual Machine configuration

# of VMs per ESX Total # of VMs Avg. VM size (GB) Avg. VM Ram (GB) Description

28-35 200-250 60-100 2-4 Number of VMs is constrained by how much memory is available on each blade and the number of cores. Typical VMware environ-ments contain 4 server class VMs per core.

Server and Storage Configuration

Device Role Qty Configuration/Description

Server Configuration

MD1000e Blade Enclosure 1

PE M710 Production ESX Servers 7 48-9 GB RAM per blade

Primary ESX servers

PE M610 ESX Server/Utility Blade 1 96 GB RAM Optional vCenter, optional Simpana® CommServe®, SAN Management software (SANHQ)

PE M610 ESX Server/Data Protection Utility Blade

1 96 GB RAM ESX Proxy running Simpana® VSA and MediaAgent with integrated deduplication

Storage Configuration

PS 6510X Primary Storage 1 28.8 TB, ~24 TB usable

About 20% usable space (4 TB) is reserved for snapshots, VMware swap files and Simpana® DDB volume. This leaves about 20 TB of storage for VMs

PS 6010XV Alternate Primary Storage

2-3 19.2 to 28.8 TB, ~15 to ~24 TB usable

20% usable is reserved for snapshots, VMware swap files and Simpana® DDB. Use when VMs run critical apps demanding high IO performance

PS 6010E Secondary Storage 1 32 TB, ~28 TB usable

Used as backup target. Present 2 TB LUNs to Simpana® VSA/MA virtual machine

Medium Reference Architecture



50-70 400-500 60-100 2-8 Number of VMs is constrained by how much memory is available on each blade and the number of cores. Typical VMware environ-ments contain 4 server class VMs per core







PE M710 Production ESX Servers 7 144 GB RAM per blade

Primary ESX servers

PE M610 Alternate Production ESX Servers

14 48-96 GB RAM per blade

Alternative to the M710s. Can also use a combination of M610 and M710 depending on desired VM density

PE M610 ESX Server/Utility Blade 1 96 GB RAM Optional vCenter, optional Simpana® CommServe®, SAN Management software (SAN HQ)

PE M610 ESX Server/Data Protection Utility Blade

1 96 GB RAM ESX Proxy running Simpana® VSA and MediaAgent with integrated deduplication




PS 6010 XV Alternate Primary Storage

5-6 48 to 57.6 TB, ~42 to ~48 TB usable

20% usable is reserved for snapshots, VMware swap files and Simpana® DDB. Use when VMs run critical apps demanding high IO performance

PS 6510E Secondary Storage 1 48 to 96 TB, ~40 to 80 TB usable

Used as backup target. Present 2 TB LUNs to Simpana® VSA/MA virtual machine

PS 6010XV or PS 6010XVS

Deduplication Database storage (optional)

1 4.8 TB Used to store Simpana® deduplication database if primary storage capacity is constrained

Large Reference Architecture



130-165 800-1000 60-100 4-16 Number of VMs is constrained by how much memory is available on each blade and the number of cores. Typical VMware environ-ments contain 4 server class VMs per core







PE M910 Production ESX Servers 6 256-512 GB RAM per blade

Primary ESX servers

PE M610 ESX Server/Utility Blade 1 96 GB RAM Optional vCenter, optional Simpana® CommServe®, SAN Management software (SAN HQ)

PE M610 ESX Server/Data Protec-tion Utility Blade

3 96 GB RAM per blade

ESX Proxy running Simpana® VSA and MediaAgent with integrated deduplication


PS 6010XV or PS 6010XVS

Deduplication Database Storage

1 4.8 TB Used for hosting DDB for the multiple Simpana® MAs that participate in deduplication



PS 6010 XV Additional Primary Storage

2-3 19.2 to 28.8 TB, ~15 to ~24 TB usable

Use for VMs running critical apps that demanding high IO performance

PS 6510E Secondary Storage 2 96 to 192 TB, ~80 to 160 TB usable

Used as backup target. Present 2 TB LUNs to Simpana® VSA/MA virtual machines

Performance Summary

Dell and CommVault conducted extensive performance benchmark tests on the Medium Reference Architecture

to highlight the capabilities of the integrated EqualLogic and CommVault® solution for the Converged Virtual

Infrastructure. Some highlights include:

■ Protect 500 virtual machines in 30 minutes with SnapProtect™ and EqualLogic snapshots

■ A single Simpana® Virtual Server Agent can protect 500 VMs in a daily 8-hour window

(assuming incremental forever backups)

■ Deduplication accelerated DASH Full complete in 8 hours for all 500 virtual machines

Test Details

The tests were run for an environment equivalent to the Medium Reference Architecture described above.

The virtual machines were configured as follows:

# # of VMs per ESX Size of each VM # of Data Stores Total Data Size

500 30 GB 15 15 TB



Space on each virtual machine was about 90% full with representative data that was unique to the virtual

machine to simulate real world conditions. The only common content across all 500 virtual machines was

the operating system binaries.

Simpana® Virtual Server Agent (VSA) and MediaAgent (MA) are configured on a virtual machine on a dedicated

Utility Blade. This single Simpana® VSA is able to protect all 500 virtual machines in the converged infrastructure.

Simpana® VSA integrates with the PS APIs to create persistent snapshot based recovery copies in the Primary

EqualLogic Group. VSA also uses VADP to create backup copies on the secondary EqualLogic Group for longer

retention.

Test Results: SnapProtect™ for VSA

This sequence of tests measures the performance when using SnapProtect™ for VSA along with EqualLogic

snapshots to protect 500 virtual machines. This sequence also measures the time required and the throughput

to create deduplicated secondary backup copies on the secondary EqualLogic array. The following table

summarizes the results:

Job Type Time Average

Processing Rate

Description

SnapProtect™ for VSA 30 minutes - Make quiescent 500 virtual machines across 15 jobs, engage PS API to create a datastore level hardware snapshot and thaw the VMs. 15 jobs completed in 30 mins

Full Secondary Copy 24 hours 625 GB/hr Copy the contents of hardware snapshots to the secondary EqualLogic. Deduplication occurs inline. Usually done once a week or once a month

Incremental Secondary Copy

8 hours - Copy changed blocks from previously created hardware snapshots using VADP and CBT to the secondary EqualLogic

Test Results: Incremental Forever with DASH Full

This sequence of tests measures the performance when using Incremental forever protection strategy with

DASH full to backup 500 virtual machines to the secondary EqualLogic storage. Hardware snapshots on the

primary storage are not used in this case. The following table summarizes the results:

Job Type Time Average

Processing Rate

Description

First Full Backup 30 hours 500 GB/hr First full backup using VADP. Since the data has never been backed up (or deduplicated before) the throughput is relatively low

Incremental Backup 8 hours - The default backup policy, uses Change Block Tracking to backup only changed blocks from VMs

DASH Full 9 hours 1,667 GB/hr Creates a periodic consolidated Full. Can be run once a week to mimic the traditional weekend full, daily incremental schedule. Run bi-weekly or once a month, if at all. Typically used when selective Full copies are required on tier 3 disk media, on tape or on cloud



Beyond the Numbers

The intention of the performance tests described above is to identify resources sufficient to accomplish data

protection tasks for converged virtual infrastructure within a typical operating window. The results are not by any

means an indication of any performance limitations of the EqualLogic PS arrays or Simpana® software. If higher

performance is desired, the peer storage architecture of EqualLogic arrays ensures additional storage controllers

can be added seamlessly and easily without any disruption.

Similarly, the modular and linearly scalable nature of Simpana® software allows you to dramatically improve

performance by simply introducing additional Simpana® Virtual Server Agents (VSA) and MediaAgents (MA). For

instance, by adding a second VSA/MediaAgent in the converged virtual infrastructure building block, the average

processing rate can be doubled and the time take can be cut in half for an environment with 500 virtual machines.

Scaling it up

Each building block in the Converged Virtual Infrastructure is an independent entity with data protection

capabilities built in. By adding additional building blocks, not only do you increase the size of the virtual

environment but you also add means to protect the larger infrastructure. The Simpana® VSA included in each

converged infrastructure building block ensure that data protection capacity scales linearly along with the

infrastructure. With each Simpana® VSA protecting VMs in its own block and all the Simpana® agents working

in parallel, the time to protect the virtual machines within this stack remains constant. For example, 500 VMs

in a single block is backed up in 8 hours by a single Simpana® VSA. 1000 VMs in two blocks with two Simpana®

VSAs will also be backed up in 8 hours. The following table summarizes the effect of stacking multiple building

blocks and the time required for data protection.

1 Building Block 2 Building Blocks 3 Building Blocks 4 Building Blocks

# of VMs @ 30 GB 500 1000 1500 2000

# of VMs @ 50 GB 300 600 900 1200

Data store size 15 TB 30 TB 45 TB 60 TB

# of Simpana® VSA 1 2 3 4

SnapProtect™ for VSA

Snapshot Copy Time 30 mins 30 mins 30 mins 30 mins

Full Backup Copy Time 24 hours 24 hours 24 hours 24 hours

Full Backup Copy Throughput 625 GB/hr 1,250 GB/hr 1,875 GB/hr 2,500 GB/hr

Incremental Backup Copy Time 8 hours 8 hours 8 hours 8 hours

Incremental Forever with

DASH Full

First Backup Time 30 hours 30 hours 30 hours 30 hours

First Backup Throughput 500 GB/hr 1,000 GB/hr 1,500 GB/hr 2,000 GB/hr

Incremental Backup Time 8 hours 8 hours 8 hours 8 hours

DASH Full Time 9 hours 9 hours 9 hours 9 hours

DASH Full Throughput 1,667 GB/hr 3,333 GB/hr 5,000 GB/hr 6,667 GB/hr



As the table indicates, additional building blocks increase the infrastructure required to host more

virtual machines. However, the time taken to protect this larger virtual environment remains constant.

This is because each building block contains its own Simpana® data protection capabilities built in. The

predictability of this model makes it extremely easy to plan for and deploy converged virtual infrastructure

that will scale to meet the virtualization requirements of the largest of environments.

Summary

The Converged Virtual Infrastructure Block includes all the components necessary to successfully and

reliably deploy a virtual data center. Each building block includes high level of hardware component

redundancy, built-in 10 Gb networking and EqualLogic Peer Storage architecture for unprecedented

availability. The fully integrated Simpana® software, with ability to protect hundreds of virtual servers

in minutes, provides level and scale of protection and recovery for the building block unmatched in the

industry. Each self-contained, self-protected and self-managed building block allows businesses the ability

to rapidly shift to a modern and agile data center.

www.commvault.com ■ 888.746.3849 ■ E-mail: [email protected] Worldwide Headquarters ■ 2 Crescent Place ■ e, NJ 07757 ■ 888-746-3849 ■ Fax: 732-870-4525 CommVault Regional Offices: United States ■ Europe ■ Middle East & Africa ■ Asia-Pacific ■ Latin America & Caribbean ■ Canada ■ India ■ Oceania

©1999-2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. CommVault, CommVault and logo, the “CV” logo, CommVault Systems, Solving Forward, SIM, Singular Information Management, Simpana, CommVault Galaxy, Unified Data Management, QiNetix, Quick Recovery, QR, CommNet, GridStor, Vault Tracker, InnerVault, QuickSnap, QSnap, SnapProtect, Recovery Director, CommServe, CommCell, RO-MS and CommValue are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems, Inc. All other third party brands, products, service names, trademarks, or registered service marks are the property of and used to identify the products or services of their respective owners. All specifications are subject to change without notice.

Documents

Converged Virtual Infrastructure - NDM Technologies · Converged Virtual Infrastructure Building Block Dell and CommVault introduce an integrated converged virtual infrastructure