High Speed Server Backup and Rapid Recovery for SMB and Departmental IT Infrastructure. [January 2006]

Transcription

1 High Speed Server Backup and Rapid Recovery for SMB and Departmental IT Infrastructure [January 2006]

2 Preface IT departments, and especially those within Small-Medium Businesses/Enterprises (SMB/SME), do not always protect all the information on all their servers all the time. Survey evidence shows that IT organizations are not always confident that they could restore lost data or a deleted file in a timely fashion. Much worse, these same support personnel lack tools that would allow them to quickly recover from more severe failures, such as a server hard drive crash. Downtime consequences depend upon what data is unavailable to those servers and the length of time it is unavailable. When a server is down, employees are sitting on their hands and executives are wringing their hands. User downtime is a cost-incurring loss of productivity. That is bad enough, but executives have to consider other consequences that could range from: 1) continued productivity loss; 2) loss of revenue or market share; or 3) loss of the business itself. No one could have foreseen both the rise of server-based application demands from , to always on online applications and the ever-increasing torrent of data that those applications voraciously devour to keep them going. Unfortunately, existing data protection technology has not always been able to keep up with the changes. That is because of inherent limits in tape technology, and the processes and procedures to deal with it have become unmanageably complex. Fortunately, a sea of change is taking place in data protection using disk-based data protection technology that better protects the data for all servers while at the same time protecting the wallet. Unitrends is one of the companies leading the way in this new era of disk-based server-data protection. This Analysis describes Unitrends system for high speed server backup and rapid recovery that delivers data protection assurance the data preservation and availability that any size enterprise must have. But, a Unitrends system is also an investment, as it delivers dividends through enabling better use of IT resources and vital corporate information assets, such as enabling better use of information in the hours saved by reducing backup windows. A Unitrends solution can serve in both centralized and distributed environments to solve local operational data-protection problems as well as disaster recovery problems. In fact, enterprises with as few as five (but typically many more) servers may benefit from a Unitrends solution. Executive Summary Until recently, few options were available to reconfigure and modify the data protection infrastructure as necessary to meet service level requirements for servers and applications. This lack of flexibility was due to backup/restore software and tape-based technologies evolving less rapidly than business conditions require. Numerous data-protection problems have resulted from an over-dependence on tape-based technology. Among them are: On the backup side excessive backup times due to relatively slow tape that can affect application availability; and On the backup side not protecting all key data and not knowing that the data is not protected, because of the complexities of tape backup and the difficulty of finding all key enterprise data; [ Page 2 ]

3 On the restore side excessive recovery times (a day or much more is possible) due to having to scan through multiple tapes; and On the restore side exposure to the risk of permanent loss of data (if the data was not backed up in the first place, or if recovery cannot be carried out [typically because of the complexities of tape-based recovery], because of lost tapes, tape media failure, or human error); and On the restore side for hard drive failures, the inability to quickly restore a server to operational status until the OS, applications, patches, passwords, permissions, registry and settings have been installed, applied or reset. Unitrends offers a comprehensive solution consisting of a line of disk-technology-based rapid (i.e., quick and complete) recoveryappliances. Data Protection Units (DPUs) deliver fast backup and rapid recovery for local application servers. Data Protection Vaults (DPVs) are networked DPUs that hold disaster recovery copies of server data at on offsite location. Among the many benefits that a Unitrends solution can deliver are: Performance disk-based I/O instead of tape-based I/O coupled with added features, such as RX9 hardware-based compression, cuts the time to create a data protection copy significantly over what a tape solution would take. Availability the flip side of backup, is restore and a DPU can give back data as fast as it got it; moreover, the bare-metal function provided with a DPU solution Puts an organization back in business recovering the entire system, that is, the OS, the application and the data (without the separate time-leaching process for rebuilding the OS that is otherwise required). Data Preservation incremental point-in-time copies of the data can be taken throughout the day, whereas with tape an incremental copy is typically taken once a day; this gives a much better recovery point for the data before having to apply any journals. Rapid Server Recovery a single IT appliance that easily and fully restores a server within minutes across any of more than 20 operating systems (from Linux to Windows NT to various flavors of Linux to SCO and Solaris to Windows Server 2003) utilizing a common user interface. Manageability administrators can regain their sanity, as the processes and procedures for managing a solution to capture all key data from designated servers are straightforward and automatic. Disaster Recovery Unitrends enables electronic vaulting, which is a fast, secure way to transmit data over distance, compared to having to physically transport tape cartridges. In other words, a Unitrends data protection and rapid recovery solution changes the way that an organization does data protection. [ Page 3 ]

4 Unitrends Data Protection Solution: A New Way to Do Data Protection Business continuity is the lessening of the risk of business problems and disasters caused by interruption to normal enterprise activities and processes. Data protection is a key component of business continuity. Yet existing data protection technologies, such as tape systems using standard backup and restore software, have not always been able to keep up with the management stresses caused by ever-more-demanding application requirements as well as relentless data growth to accommodate those applications. Until recently, IT organizations did not have any alternative but to tough it out and make do as best they could. The introduction of cost-effective disk-based data protection technologies has changed all that. Customers recognize the advantages of disk, as evidenced by the rapid rise in popularity of disk-based data protection technologies in a number of surveys, including customer reports that they are not only planning for disk-backup implementation, but also actually using it. Unitrends is one of the leaders in this new era of disk-based data protection. A data protection solution is an integrated software/hardware combination whose sole purpose is data protection and rapid recovery. Servers back up their data to a Data Protection Unit. Unitrends uses a lightweight agent (one not tied into the kernel nor locked into a specific application), and uses minimal resources to avoid impacting server performance. Data from each server is transferred over a network to a DPU. (This is the same approach that standard backup/restore software uses.) The secret sauce in the solution is the software that makes it go. Unitrends has a number of features in its software that start with point-in-time copy support. Getting to the Point A key piece of the Unitrends data protection solution is point-in-time copy ( snapshot ) software. A Unitrends DPU holds this point-in-time copy for a single or a number of servers. Since the copy is a full physical copy of the data, the data has to be physically copied from its production location to the solution over a network. That takes time, but because the transfer is disk-to-disk, the time (in conjunction with the RX9 compression feature) is much less than the transfer time typical of traditional tape-based backup or many Virtual Tape Libraries with traditional back-up processes. Note that multiple servers can stream data to the DPU simultaneously allowing administrators the ability to run their backups at times convenient to their businesses. The DPU s catalog keeps track of what has already been written to the DPU and what data remains to be written to it. Incremental Copies. In the Unitrends solution, a full copy only has to be taken once. After that, Unitrends software has the ability to take incremental point-in-time copies that only move the changes since the last time the DPU was updated. This means that the DPU holds what can best be termed a synthetic full copy of the data at a point in time that is, a set of data plus logs that can be rapidly processed to yield any point-in-time copy needed. Organizations accustomed to making a full copy of their data from time to time can make another full copy from scratch, but the need for full backups is greatly diminished with this Unitrends approach. Unitrends claims that this incremental or delta changes backup function can cut the required time of a full backup by 90% or more when compared to a full backup. This allows organizations to maintain up to the minute system and data snapshots with minimal impact on business operations. [ Page ]

5 Moreover, Unitrends can do a data sweep of one or multiple servers journal logs (which should be stored on a separate system) frequently (say, every 10 minutes) to significantly reduce the potential for lost data by 30% according to Unitrends. Unitrends states that the impact on network performance from running these data sweeps (incremental backups) over a network is minimal. The distinction between what a DPU can do and what a tape system can do for a full restoration is critical to Unitrends value-add. With the DPU, the restoration is from a single point. With tape, restoration requires not only the last full copy tape, but also all the incremental copies since that time. Not only is that a time-consuming drain on server and application availability, but the process is subject to human error, as tapes are not always applied in the correct sequence. Down to the Bare Metal Embedded as part of the Unitrends Appliance software is bare metal copy capability Bare Metal Plus. A bare metal copy means that the point-in-time copy includes not just the operating system and system settings, but can also include file system and database data. Having a bootable copy avoids several problems which can occur during a full server restoration process, e.g., having to have to recreate an OS from a CD and having to re-enter system settings (such as passwords) and apply updates/patches. With Unitrends, everything that a server needs to resume its normal operations is available on the DPU, and a durable, resilient, and consistent point-in-time copy is created, saving hours of manual work. This means a server can be back in business in a fraction of the time of other common alternatives which backup data only. The bare-metal copy process does not affect normal processing, even when files and databases are open. When a full restoration is done, nothing appears out of order to any database or to any application. Thus, the server(s) can resume as if nothing had happened. This characteristic of the Unitrends solution is very important in a restoration process, as no DBA has to intervene and minimizing the need for manual intervention minimizes the chances for error. Unitrends also delivers flexibility: its software accommodates both partial and full restores. Files can be selectively brought back. (Of course, caution has to be taken with open files or files linked to other files in this situation, because system state at the time that the file was saved and the current state of the server are different.) When Insurance Is Also an Investment Data protection is an insurance policy against excessive risk of data loss and downtime. Heretofore SME s have not focused on rapid recovery the ability to recover everything necessary to run an application quickly, but instead more on the processes of protecting the information in the first place Among the processes that can be used to protect their important IT information assets are the following: Data backup/data protection schemes with backup and restore software. Tape media as well as fast disk-to-disk, SANs and mirrored disks. Manual OS installation processes. Manual applications processes. Different approaches for different OS and applications due to varied support. [ Page ]

6 Snapshot technologies, most requiring a system to be offline. Offsite electronic vaulting services. All of these are excellent for data protection but may be difficult and costly for an SME on a limited budget to integrate into an automated rapid recovery system. Moreover, a predictable ability to recover quickly from inevitable server failures and the resultant data inaccessibility translates into avoidance of revenue loss and lost productivity costs. That leads to a return on investment case for the affordability of a Unitrends data protection solution. In addition, simply shrinking backup windows may enable more productive use of online application assets. The Unitrends software can do the bare metal point-in-time copy to a spare storage system as if it were restoring the original system. That copy is a fully usable replica (since the OS and applications are part of the copy process). Users can now employ the bare-metal copy for testing, usually speeding the development process (and thus saving time and money) as well as improving software time-to-value. Moreover, the copy may be used for analysis directly, or may serve as the starting point for building either an operational data store or data warehouse for business intelligence purposes. Those are only a few examples. How an IT organization turns an insurance policy into a dividend-yielding investment is up to the imagination. Good Housekeeping Unitrends attends to the details. But what appears to be simply a detail can be very important to administrators. Administrators do not want to have to baby-sit (i.e., monitor) storage capacity when software can automatically perform that housekeeping task. Unitrends has a software feature called automatic data purging so a backup job cannot fail because of an out-of-space condition. When an administrator turns on automatic data purging, the DPU disk space allocated for holding backup images for a client server or group of client servers is automatically managed. Necessary room is created by deleting the oldest backup image of the server requesting space for a new backup. An automatic catalog cleanup process will then update the necessary indexes to purge the deleted backup image from the catalog. A Prescription for Performance Performance (fast backup and fast restore) is typically a key goal (as the running-out-of-time syndrome affects many backup jobs). Naturally, the network that the data goes over limits the speed of data transfer. Unitrends typically sees 600MB/minute on a 100baseT (Fast Ethernet) link and between 2-3GB/minute on a gigabit Ethernet link. Unitrends uses its RX9 hardware-based compression to speed up both backup and restoration processes and make sure that the DPU is not the bottleneck. Compressing at the DPU end means that more data can be written or read using the same storage I/O bandwidth in the same period of time. Unitrends customer experience suggests at least a 70 to 90% reduction in time for either backup or restore over what customers have typically been experiencing with their current tape systems. [ Page 6 ]

7 Supports a Range of Operating Systems Every IT organization would like to say that it only has one operating system to support. That is an unrealizable dream, as business reasons have led to the installation of multiple operating systems that support a heterogeneous mix of servers. Moreover, one or more of those operating systems is likely to be seriously behind in release level, no longer supported or out of the mainstream. Making do what is available is a necessity. Unfortunately, products that support data protection also have to support all of those operating systems and OS versions. Look carefully at the list of operating systems that a product can support. Most have a very short list, but Unitrends can support over 20 flavors of operating systems, with an emphasis on UNIX, Linux, and Windows operating systems. Why can Unitrends do this? Unitrends is not a newcomer to the data protection market, as it has been in business for seventeen years and developed CTAR. CTAR is now the de facto standard for Linux. Customer requirements over the years have led it to support an increasing number of operating systems. Unitrends can now provide backup support any application which operates on a x86 compatible platform. Tape or Disk for Additional Protection the Choice is Yours A DPU can hold at least one copy of all production data from all protected servers. That copy represents one degree of data protection, but more copies are typically needed (a minimum of three is recommended). At least one of those copies should be offsite. Traditionally, the way to do this has been to use tape systems. Unitrends does not interfere with current tape backup/restoration processes for these additional copies if that is the direction that an enterprise wants to take. However, a tape system can access data in a DPU directly without the need and cost of using traditional backup/restore software if an organization wishes to do so. Unitrends offers another alternative. That feature is the ability to use removable disks to take a disk rotation (instead of a tape rotation) copy offsite. A DPU can be divided say into two parts one group of disks represents the full bare metal point-in-time copy of all server production data and the second group represents a spare copy. The spare copy can be synchronized locally from the principal copy. The disk or disks in the spare copy can be physically removed and taken offsite. Unitrends call this its hot swapping capability. In essence, each group is a mirror of the other and one mirror is decoupled from the other for removability. (If this option is not selected, all the data is RAID protected.) Because Unitrends uses a Winchester-class drive that integrates both the disk drive and disk media into a sealed package, the SATA drives that Unitrends uses in its data protection appliances are not thought of as removable in the same sense as a tape cartridge, but they really are. And, yes, the removable drives should be handled carefully to avoid unnecessary shock, but that is easily doable. This may well very result in improved manageability for branch offices, for dedicated critical applications, and for perhaps even broader use. The DPU always contains a primary data protection copy as well as a secondary copy and a third copy (albeit not as current) kept offsite. Ease of [ Page 7 ]

8 administration and higher application availability as well as savings in tape equipment and the backup/restore software necessary to use the tape equipment are the biggest benefits. Of course, this is not a full disaster recovery solution in and of itself, but it can surely help with even crippling (although not totally destructive) physical operational data protection problems. Into the Data Protection Vault for Disaster Recovery Protection No business continuity plan is complete without a data protection strategy to recover from a disaster. And that strategy requires in some form or another the ability to move data processing from a primary site to a secondary site. From an IT perspective, a disaster occurs only when processing at the original site cannot resume within a specified period of time. Now the second site may be a company-provided site or it may be a site provided by a service provider. From a data protection perspective, Unitrends makes sure that the data is available at the second site on a data protection vault, but the individual organization will have to make sure that servers, networks, and people who can use the applications are also available. Naturally, a DPU has to be present at the primary site and either a DPU or a DPV at the disaster recovery site. The copy on the production site has to be transmitted (i.e., electronically vaulted) to the offsite data protection vault. Secure Data Sync is the software capability that takes care of this task using automated lights out management tools. Think of the advantage of having a bare metal copy in a disaster recovery scenario and being able to manage the restoration process virtually from where you are physically (not necessarily the DR site) over the Web. No more need to worry about an OS CD or figuring out how to restore system settings in an already stressful (and thus human error prone) situation. Rolling Your Own as an Alternative For comparison purposes, it s illustrative to review the alternatives to Unitrends DPU/DPV system. In order to build a system with roughly the same capability, an IT organization would have to assemble the following disparate components: Traditional data backup and restore software. Disk-to-disk backup/restore capability with servers that can scale to meet the needs for onsite data and OS protection Similar disk backup/restore capability at a remote site for disaster protection purposes using an encrypted offsite electronic vaulting capability Snapshot software for taking a point-in-time copy for multi-os application data, underlying operating system and application software as well as passwords, permissions and settings. isk storage that provide application access to production data. Export to tape for extra onsite data protection as well as for transportation to a third party site for disaster recovery protection. Unitrends saves the need for traditional backup/restore software, simplifies the process for capturing OS and application-related dated through its bare metal restore process, and can even reduce the need for tape support onsite through a removable disk option. [ Page 8 ]

9 Unitrends Data Protection Solution vs. Alternatives Typically, a Unitrends data protection solution would compete with a tape system, but it also competes with another form of disk-based data protection a virtual tape library (VTL). A VTL is software that runs on disk to emulate a tape library. A VTL may be able to match up on backup and restore performance, but a DPU/DPV has some capabilities that typically a VTL does not have (Table 1). Table 1: Comparing Alternative Data Protection Technologies DPU/DPV VTL Tape System Downtime exposure Typically the time to find a restore target and the time to restore to it (minutes) Typically the time to find a restore target and the time to restore to it (hours) Hours if lucky, but possibly days or even longer Exposure to data loss Only from the last time a data sweep or from an incremental run more frequently than a VTL. Same as for a tape system (except that chances for failure, such as media, are reduced From the last full or incremental (unless journals can be applied) if everything goes right Full data image restore Full bare metal restores everything, thus is easier and less error prone Typically, OS and system settings have to be recovered, resulting in slower recovery and more risk. Typically, OS and system settings have to be recovered, resulting in slower recovery and more risk. DR capability Fast electronic vaulting and flexibility with removable disks None intrinsically Time-consuming and exposed physical transportation Source: Mesabi Group October 2005 Note that both a VTL and a tape system can use bare metal software, but that is not common practice on either. [ Page 9 ]

10 Where the Unitrends Data Protection Solution is Most Effective Unitrends focuses on the SMB/SME departmental market. The range of companies in that space ranges from very small to actually fairly large in terms of data processing needs (because data intensity is a function of type of business rather than size in terms of people or revenue). Therefore, Unitrends offers a family of DPUs that range from a small 250GB up to 8.8TB native [before compression] capacity. All but the smallest DPU model are rack-mountable units and except for the smallest DPV are capable of adding expansion units (called DPSUs), With the maximum number of expansion units, depending on model the total capacity can go to 40TB or more. One model of DPV has a native capacity of 4.4TB and the other model s maximum capacity is 8.8TB. Both can accept expansion units providing for XTB of data capacity. SMBs/SMEs tend to have the following IT characteristics that differ from the large enterprises typically using business-compliance and backup/recovery solutions: SMBs/SMEs may use non-technical personnel for some administrative tasks and hence need not only to minimize administrative costs, but also administrator time and expertise. Unitrends ability to automate key backup/recovery tasks and to avoid tape technology unfamiliar to many SMBs is a plus in this market. While large enterprises have typically devoted significant resources to creating complex and comprehensive business-compliance solutions, SMBs/SMEs are new to the game. A Unitrends solution that provides a straightforward disaster-recovery solution is therefore welcome news to these SMBs/SMEs especially since a Unitrends DPU/DPV appliance can grow as needs change. SMBs/SMEs and the VARs that supply them are less concerned with the brands of systems and software that support an application, and more with in the box scalability that requires little VAR and user intervention. Unitrends solution approach is therefore a good fit. Mesabi Group Conclusions SMB enterprises that have one, or more, of the following data protection symptoms may find a Unitrends data protection solution attractive: Backup windows that are a perpetual source of administration frustration, and anxiety, and instead of getting better are creating more stress as time goes on. The uncomfortable knowledge that all vital data on all servers is not backed up all the time. The realization that, due especially to new regulatory requirements, the risk of exposure to data loss and excessive downtime is higher than is acceptable. Recognition that second-site disaster recovery protection is nonexistent, inadequate, or costing too much. Awareness that too much is being spent on data protection and the level of data protection is still not satisfactory. Manual recovery processes that are too slow. [ Page 10 ]

11 If an honest examination reveals a change is necessary to treat those data protection symptoms, Unitrends might very well be on the short list of companies to consider turning to for a solution. About Mesabi Group Mesabi Group () focuses on the revolutions around storage networking and storage management that dramatically change the ability of storage and infrastructure managers to zero in on key data in near real time. Mesabi Group LLC aims to provide thought leadership and sound advice to both vendors and users of information technology. This document is the result of research performed by Mesabi Group LLC. Mesabi Group LLC believes its findings are objective and represent the best analysis available at the time of publication. This Analysis is sponsored research. the analyst: davidhill@mesabigroup.com Mesabi Group LLC LLC All rights reserved USA January 2006 [ Page 11 ]

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