Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
manually pull out the individual i le or i les that need to be restored. Be sure to consider
this operational issue in your evaluation.
Numerous backup vendors leverage VADP to perform VM backups. In fact, VMware itself
provides an entry-level backup solution that leverages VADP. That solution is called VMware
Data Recovery.
Implementing VMware Data Protection
VMware Data Protection (VDP) is a disk-based backup and recovery solution. This solution fully
integrates with vCenter Server to enable centralized and efi cient management backup jobs, and
it also includes data deduplication. VDP leverages VADP to streamline the process of backing
up VMs.
So, how does VDP work? VDP is composed of three main components. The i rst component is
the VDP virtual backup appliance that will manage the backup and recovery process. The sec-
ond component is the user interface plug-in for vSphere Web Client. The third and last compo-
nent is the deduplicated destination storage, which is a predetermined sized VMDK within the
VDP virtual backup appliance, with the available sizes being 0.5 TB, 1.0 TB, or 2.0 TB.
Once the VDP virtual backup appliance has been installed, using the vSphere Web Client,
select the Backup tab on the VMs that you want to protect. You can then schedule the backup
job and coni gure the data-retention policy. vCenter Server will then send the job information
to the VDP virtual backup appliance to start the backup process by initiating the point-in-time
snapshots of the protected VM. Like its predecessors, VDP frees up network trafi c on the LAN
by mounting the snapshot directly to the VDP virtual backup appliance. After the snapshot is
mounted, the virtual appliance begins streaming the block-level data directly to the destination
storage. It is during this streaming process, before the data gets to the destination disks, that the
VDP appliance will deduplicate the data to ensure that the redundant data is eliminated. After
all the data has been written to the destination disk, the VDP appliance will then dismount the
snapshot and apply the snapshot to the VM.
Backups are no good if you can't recover the data, naturally. With VDP, the recovery process
is a point-in-time i le-level or complete system restoration. The VDP virtual backup appliance
will retrieve and stream the specii c blocks of data that are needed for the restore. The virtual
appliance will efi ciently transfer only data that has changed. This speeds up and streamlines
the process. When restoring a single i le, or performing a i le-level restore, the process is initi-
ated from inside the VM console.
In the end, the method you use to provide data protection isn't what's important. What's
important is that you do provide data protection for your virtualized datacenter.
Using Your Storage Array to Protect Data
Many of the storage vendors have started adding the ability to do point-in-time snapshots of data
on the array. h e specifi cs of how the snapshots work will vary from vendor to vendor, and—as
with so many other aspects of IT—there are advantages and disadvantages to each approach. h e
result of this functionality is the ability to hold point-in-time views of your company's informa-
tion for a predetermined amount of time. h is time frame could be hours, days, weeks, or months
depending on the amount of disk space you have provided for this. h ese snapshots can serve as
