5 Tips For Failsafe VM Protection

Greg Shields Microsoft MVP and VMware vExpert

What’s in?

Possible reasons of VM failure

Why can’t HA technologies guarantee full protection of your VM?

Why insufficient backup solution can be even worse than none at all?

5 problems that an improper backup solution may bring

5 tips for failsafe VM protection

A VM can fail because of …

Lost or deleted data;

Lost or deleted application objects;

Lost, deleted, or corrupted OS;

Accidentally obliterated VM object;

Corruption as a result of layers miscommunication;

Stupid users;

Stupid admins;

…and a whole range of other man-made or natural disasters

Many paths to VM failure

High-Availability Technologies (HA) can protect against:

a host failure,

some kinds of application failures (might require a certain effort)

Why HA technologies cannot guaranteefull protection of your VMs?

VM VMVM VM

Failed Server Healthy Server

VM VMVM VM

VM VMVM VM

Shared Storage for VMs

VMs fail over to healthy host

Do nothing for Data Loss. Do nothing for Data Corruption. Do nothing for Disaster Recovery.

Yet, High Availability technologies

Having no backup tool might result in a disaster like partial or complete data loss.

But having an insufficient backup solution can bring even more troubles and negative drawbacks!

Why insufficient backup is worse than none?

Insufficient backup may fail in:

capturing data across datacenter layers;

verifying backup integrity;

quiescence or VSS;

notifying you when something happens;

accounting for organic VM growth;

 

5 common problems of insufficient backup tools

Failure in capturing data across datacenter layers

A virtualization-aware backup tool must be cognizant of each layer’s impact to ensure that data is captured successfully.

#1

Failure in verifying backup integrity

If you can’t get a verifiably good backup, you don’t have a backup!

Reliable backup tool should provide an easy way to check backup integrity to ensure availability of any data, at any point in time!

#2

Failure in quiescence

A backup solution designed for virtualization should include the extra monitoring that keeps an eye on quiescence across each virtual environment layer.

#3

Failure in notifying you when something happens

Almost any backup tool can notify you when problems occur, but are your notifications actually being received?

If not, then you’ll never know that the data you’re collecting isn’t good data.

#4

Failure in accounting for organic VM growth

Your backup tool contains extra functionality that exposes it to your virtual platform’s management solution. This is the only way to ensure you’re capturing the right VMs as they’re being organically created and decommissioned.

#5

Follow these tips to resolve the 5 problems! Or ignore them at your peril…

 

5 Failsafe VM Protection Tips

Virtualization adds many layers of separation between a VM and its backup storage: the more layers, the better.

The complicated interactions between those layers may create the source of failure-creating designs.

E.g., Disk-based backups have the potential to aggregate “the backups” with “the data” (which is bad!)

Particularly when “the VMware admin” isn’t “the storage admin”

 

Tip #1: Mind Your Layers

Ensure backups and primary VM storage stay separate!

Failsafe Tip #1

A good backup solution should contain an automated in-built testing tool.

Unlike tape-based backup tools, today’s disk-based backup solutions also provide added checks that ensure that all the backed-up data, applications, operating system and objects are captured correctly.

Disk file data integrity A recoverable backup! 

Tip #2: Don’t Test Your Backups

Ensure backups include comprehensive integrity verifications that automatically occur with each backup!

Failsafe Tip #2

In Windows environments, most data protection tools leverage their own components in combination with Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).

Tip #3: Proactively Monitor Quiescence

SQL, Exchange, Active Directory,

Oracle, SharePoint

Backup application

Operating system, storage array

or system providerDisk volume

Volume Shadow Copy Service

Provider

RequestorWriters

Take the right approach with VSS: Trust, but verify!

Failsafe Tip #3

Your backup tool most likely includes alerting features that provide notification for backup successes and failures.

These alerts must be always enabled!

Tip #4: Demand Visibility for Success

Monitors are better monitors than you are Use them!

Failsafe Tip #4

refer to Tip#2 if you don’t get the joke ;)

Organic growth of dynamic virtual environments (esp., the ones manages like a Private Cloud) can only be supported by a backup tool that is aware of your virtual platform.

Such tool can easily accommodate organic VM growth!

Tip #5: Don’t Add New Backup Jobs for New VMs

Ensure your backup tool backs up by virtual platform constructs:

datacenters,

folders,

clusters,

other objects

and not just a list of VMs!

Failsafe Tip #5

If you need more detailed information on the subject, please, refer to our featured White Paper “5 ways your VMware or Hyper-V may fail you”

Need more information?

Thank you for your attention!

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