One Size Never Fits All Optimizing your Organization with Backup Built for Your Business Abstract Data is the new currency: If you re putting your data at risk, then you re putting your business at risk. As your IT infrastructure grows in complexity and your data explodes in volume, ensuring that vital data is available wherever and whenever it s needed is now an expectation. Unfortunately, many vendors offer only a one-size-fits-all approach to data protection, providing one approach to back up and recover all data, despite very different requirements for different types of data. As this white paper explains, these solutions not only force you to overpay to overprotect your non-critical applications and under-protect your critical ones, but they also compromise your organization s ability to prevent delays, downtime and disaster risks businesses can no longer afford. Now, however, you have another option. Dell Backup & Disaster Recovery Suite bundles together three data protection solutions to fit your distinct needs, with pricing flexibility that lets you purchase what you need today and then add capacity as your business grows. Introduction Coping with current complexity Nowadays, IT drives business growth. You re being asked to solve new problems and support new customers. You re driving results, staying attuned to new opportunities and making sure that IT anticipates the needs of your organization. How does that look, day to day? Perhaps you re rolling out new virtualized or cloud-based applications. Maybe you re supporting thin client deployments in new locations. Maybe you re rolling out a new data center in a remote part of the world. Or perhaps you re coping with the complexities of a merger, or an acquisition.
You don t have to over-pay or underprotect. Pick the right tool for the job, and don t ever settle for a onesize-fits-all data protection solution. But at the same time, you re working hard to keep the lights on. Do you have legacy workloads on legacy platforms? Do you have to manage the complexity of many workloads, on many operating systems? Do you have dozens, or hundreds of workloads scattered around, some of which are essential, some of which are nice to have, and some of which are often ignored until they re needed? The common underlying element: data Your IT is a complex place, with endless change, exponential complexity, and emerging pressures that are hard to predict and respond to. But there s a single unifying element that underlies every single IT challenge: data. Data is your organization s currency. You probably already have dozens or hundreds of terabytes to manage, and as you adapt to business opportunities, data explodes often with double-digit annual growth rates. That s a big problem. After all, you must ensure that data is available wherever and whenever it s needed. And that s hard because delays, downtime and disasters occur without warning, causing added complexity, complication and challenges that affect everyone, from the customer to the CEO. Without data, your organization won t stay alive. How do you cope? The one-size-fits-all approach to data protection You re always protecting your data, of course. You have data protection plans that are tailored for your unique business complexity. You have backup strategies attuned to different platforms, different operating systems, different locations and different levels of criticality. Or do you? According to a recent Forrester survey, many organizations take a one-size-fitsall approach to their data protection. What s wrong with that? Well, if you ve ever used a screwdriver to hammer a nail, you know that the right tool for the job is an essential part of doing good work. But that s a fact many backup vendors don t appreciate. To extend the analogy, instead of providing a hammer, a screwdriver, a ruler and a chisel, typical backup vendors give you a knife with a bunch of gizmos like a compass, a corkscrew and a magnifying glass. It s a compromise. Yes, you can work with the knife but it s hard to get the job done effectively or efficiently. Moreover, you re also being charged for a bunch of widgets that you ll never use, don t value and resent paying for. A better approach: the right tool for the task at hand Every task is different, and you need the right tool for the task at hand. For example, does it really make sense to use the same tool to back up: Both cloud and UNIX environments? Virtual and physical workloads? Mission-critical and archival workloads? No. You want a solution that fits your unique backup requirements. A onesize-fits-all compromise simply doesn t enable effective and efficient backups across today s environments. Moreover, settling for a one-size-fitsall approach puts your business at risk because there s a cost to compromising. That same Forrester study indicates that many organizations are missing out on optimal business protection because of the one-size-fits-all approach. Because they re not using the right tool for the job, they re overprotecting their non-critical applications and under- 2
protecting their critical ones. They re trying to back up virtual applications and legacy workloads with the same tool, even though the tool isn t ideal for both requirements. And they re not seeing how this approach compromises their ability to cope with delays, downtime, or disaster until something horrible happens and business success becomes a business nightmare. What should you do? Other vendors ask you to compromise your backup. But you don t have to overpay or under-protect. Pick the right tool for the job, and don t ever settle for a one-size-fits-all data protection solution. Tailored tools for better business resilience Dell Backup & Disaster Recovery Suite At Dell, we have what you want, and we ve stripped out complexity and higher costs along with the compromises you ve accepted in the past as a part of your backup strategy. Dell offers several data protection platforms built for distinct requirements. But for the first time, we re addressing the need for tailored business resilience by bundling all the data protection software you need with a simple, capacity-based pricing model. We call it the Dell Backup & Disaster Recovery Suite, and it lets you fit backup and recovery capabilities to your business. Flexible solutions In the Dell Backup & Disaster Recovery Suite we include three approaches that that let you protect across physical, virtual and cloud workloads and nearly any operating system. You get full access to the Dell data protection software portfolio AppAssure, NetVault Backup, and vranger licensed by front-end terabyte. Working together, those solutions deliver unparalleled flexibility, scalability and high availability. AppAssure Unified backup, replication and recovery in one software solution. Designed for virtual, physical and cloud environments, AppAssure continually checks your backups to ensure they will be ready when you need them. AppAssure uses the AppAssure Smart Agent to meet stringent recovery point objectives (RPOs), and its replication, virtual standby and Live Recovery features provide extremely fast recovery methods for meeting stringent recovery time objectives (RTOs). NetVault Backup Highly scalable, comprehensive backup and recovery that covers both legacy and contemporary workloads for enterprises that need to unify backup across diverse IT environments. It supports the widest variety of operating systems and applications including Informix, DB2, PostgreSQL and SAP while simplifying data backup and recovery. vranger Backup software built for small and large virtual environments that is easily deployed to one or many hypervisors across your enterprise. It has a simplistic architecture with a unique set of features that supports both VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V to better cope with heterogeneous data center virtualization. Key features With our all-inclusive suite of products, you can protect across legacy, physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure with products built for your unique business requirements. Dell Backup & Disaster Recovery Suite: Scales to protect thousands of VMs via agentless technology, active block mapping, compression and dedupe Provides high availability through 288 snapshots/day, virtual standby and Live Recovery Ensures that critical workloads are restored in minutes, not hours Protects the enterprise with scalable, unparalleled ease of use Reduces data storage footprint by up to 90 percent Delivers cost savings of up to 55 percent for large environments of over 250 TB Dell Backup & Disaster Recovery Suite lets you fit backup and recovery capabilities to your business. 3
You can implement any product from our backup software portfolio without compromising or dealing with conflicting licensing schemes. You choose what s best. What s included? The suite includes the latest releases of AppAssure, vranger and NetVault, which deliver all the capabilities detailed in Table 1. Scenarios The flexibility to align the solution to your business needs But why should you care? Basically, it comes down to using the right tool for the right job. Leveraging all the capabilities of these three products allows you to align their protection capabilities to your business requirements. You can implement any Product family AppAssure Components and capabilities AppAssure Core Sever product from our backup software portfolio without compromising or dealing with conflicting licensing schemes. You choose what s best. For example, you can use tools specifically designed for your operating system, application and platform. You don t have to accept that your backup tool is good at protecting physical workloads on Windows and Linux, but isn t so good at protecting HP-UX or Sybase. You can also be more flexible, determining which product ought to AppAssure Agent (which includes Windows, Linux, MS Exchange, SQL Server and SharePoint support) AppAssure Central Management Console Granular recovery for MS Exchange and SharePoint Universal Recovery Archiving to the cloud In-line deduplication NetVault Backup Backup of Windows, Linux, Unix and Mac OS NetVault plug-ins for VMware, Hyper-V and database applications such as SAP, Oracle, DB2 and more Deduplication with NetVault SmartDisk and duplication appliances (appliances are not included) Backup to a variety of tape devices Cataloging vranger VM replication Deduplication with NetVault SmartDisk and deduplication appliances (appliances are not included) Agentless backup for VMware and Hyper-V Cataloging Table 1. Capabilities and components of the solutions comprising the Dell Backup & Disaster Recovery Suite 4
be used for each data set by business relevance. You could classify the criticality and value of your data and applications, and use the suite product that best matches that classification, in effect, mixing and matching the solution to meet your precise RPO and RTO requirements. In one scenario, you might decide to snapshot and replicate eight business critical workloads using AppAssure, but push virtual file server content to a deduplication appliance using vranger. Or you could even combine products, leveraging unique capabilities to create a hybrid solution. For example, you might use AppAssure to perform a snapshot every fifteen minutes on a mission-critical workload. But then as those snapshots age and become less important, you might move them to tape with NetVault Backup, saving valuable disk space while allowing each product to deliver a unique benefit. Let s explore these ideas in more detail. Where would you use each product? Scenario A: Using AppAssure and NetVault Backup (NVBU) to deliver enterprise application support and unparalleled system availability Scenario A is ideal for the medium to large environment that require enterprise-level application support, scalability and unparalleled system availability. In this use case, AppAssure is used to protect systems with the most aggressive RPOs and RTOs the ones that need to be recovered as quickly as possible in the event of a failure, while NetVault Backup is used to protect the other systems (see Figure 1). Every minute that business-critical systems such as Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and SQL Server are down, your business can be losing customers, productivity and money. With AppAssure, you can protect these systems with backups multiple times per day (as often as every five minutes) Together, AppAssure and NetVault Backup deliver enterprise application protection and unparalleled system availability. Figure 1. Using AppAssure to protect mission-critical systems and NetVault backup to protect the rest 5
Pairing vranger and AppAssure creates the perfect marriage between agent-based and agentless backup technology protecting physical, VMware and Hyper-V machines with one solution. to prevent data loss, and ensure quick restores with Live Recovery and virtual standby. Additionally, AppAssure provides automatic applicationspecific backup validation testing for Microsoft applications. NetVault Backup is the perfect complement to AppAssure, protecting the systems that do not require aggressive RPOs and RTOs. NetVault Backup supports a wide range of different applications, operating systems and processor architectures. It can scale to protect environments with thousands of clients and petabytes of data. Systems can be backed up to disk and tape, as well as to Dell DR Series and third-party deduplication appliances. For those who need advanced backup capabilities, backups can be done LAN-free or through Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP). Database application-aware protection is provided through NetVault Backup plug-ins for database applications such as SAP, Sybase, Oracle, PostgreSQL and DB2. These plug-ins ensure that these applications are protected with the care and thoroughness they need and deserve. Last, NetVault Backup supports a large variety of clustered applications, ensuring that NetVault Backup can protect nearly everything in your environment. Combining AppAssure and NetVault Backup together in the same environment ensures that you have the right tools for the job. AppAssure will protect the RPO- and RTO-constrained systems while NetVault Backup protects the larger portion of the environment, scaling to thousands of machines. Scenario B: Using AppAssure and vranger to protect large-scale, mixed physical/virtual environments Scenario B is ideal for any small to medium environment that needs to protect mixed physical-virtual environments at scale while meeting the most stringent service level agreements (SLAs). In this use case, AppAssure agent-based technology protects systems with aggressive RPOs and RTOs, while vranger s agentless technology delivers scalable virtual protection (see Figure 2). AppAssure is used to protect all physical Windows and Linux machines, VMs that require aggressive RPOs and RTOs, and machines that have Microsoft clustered applications. Protection intervals for RPO-constrained machines can be set to as little as every five minutes with AppAssure. Machines that require less aggressive RPO targets can be set to protection intervals of once or a few times per day with either AppAssure or vranger. AppAssure provides protected machines with changed block tracking (CBT), bare metal restore (BMR), Universal Recovery, replication, and high-availability features like Live Recovery and virtual standby. Additionally, vital applications like Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and SQL Server are given special care with automatic backup validation testing. Advantages of vranger include the following: vranger uses vstorage APIs for data protection, VMware CBT and active block mapping (ABM). vranger can tie into vcenter and Hyper-V, which enables it to automatically detect any changes to the virtual environment without administrator intervention. Any VMs that have database applications that are Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) aware are quiesced to ensure application-consistent backups. Flexible storage options give you the choice of writing to network shares, local disk, or Dell DR Series or third-party deduplication appliances. Global cataloging makes file-level recovery easy, since you can search multiple repositories as once. 6
Figure 2. Using AppAssure and vranger for large-scale, mixed physical/ virtual environments Pairing vranger and AppAssure creates the perfect marriage between agentbased and agentless backup technology protecting physical, VMware and Hyper-V machines with one solution. If needed, NetVault Backup can be added to write AppAssure archives and the vranger repository to tape. be used to protect the majority of the virtual environment (see Figure 3). NetVault Backup can protect massive amounts of clients it supports Windows, Linux, Mac and UNIX, as well as Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices. Together, NetVault Backup and vranger provide mixed physicalvirtual protection that is both simple and scalable. Scenario C: Using NetVault Backup and vranger to deliver easily managed, scalable data protection for VMware and Hyper-V, as well as site-wide enterprise protection Scenario C is ideal for the medium to large environments that require scalable protection of mixed physicalvirtual environments with enterprise functionality. In this use case, NetVault Backup and vranger work in tandem to provide you with flexible and easy-touse protection. NetVault Backup can be used as the primary protection for physical machines, while vranger can vranger uses virtual appliances (VAs) to make protecting hundreds to thousands of VMs easy you simply add VAs where needed. Install a NetVault Backup agent on VMs that contain applications such as Oracle, Informix, SAP or clusters. Backups for both NetVault and vranger can be sent to a Dell DR Series deduplication appliance to leverage Dell s Rapid Data Access (RDA) technology for super-fast backups and reduced network utilization, or to third-party storage targets. For those who need advanced backup capabilities, 7
Combining all of the products in the suite yields a highly scalable and flexible solution that can meet the needs of any medium to enterprise organization. Figure 3. Using NetVault Backup and vranger for scalable protection in a mixed physical-virtual environment backups can be performed LAN-free with both NetVault Backup and vranger. Together, NetVault Backup and vranger provide mixed physical-virtual protection that is both simple and scalable. Scenario D: Using AppAssure, vranger and NetVault Backup together for full flexibility, scalability and high availability Combining all of the products in the suite yields a highly scalable and flexible solution that can meet the needs of any medium to enterprise organization (see Figure 4). In this scenario, baselayer protection is provided by NetVault Backup. NetVault Backup is installed on physical and virtual machines that have database applications such as SAP, Informix, Sybase and PostgreSQL, and on machines that have certain types of clustered applications. NetVault Backup is also used to provide robust operating system and tape support for large servers that have hundreds of terabytes or more of data. AppAssure provides protection for physical and virtual systems that require aggressive RPOs and RTOs. These systems include those with businesscritical applications like Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server and SharePoint, which benefit from AppAssure s automatic application-specific backup validation. vranger and its virtual appliances provide highly scalable virtual machine backup. Simply by adding more appliances to distribute the workload, you can enable vranger to easily handle thousands of virtual machines. Technologies such as VMware Change Block Tracking (CBT) and Active Block Mapping let vranger quickly and efficiently process its backups. NetVault Backup, AppAssure and vranger work together to provide your environment with the type of protection you need when you want it. NetVault Backup can be used to send AppAssure archives and vranger backups to tape for 8
Figure 4. Using AppAssure, vranger and NetVault Backup to create a highly scalable and flexible solution long-term archiving. If you re using Dell DR Series or third-party deduplication appliances, both NetVault and vranger can write to them, saving space and reducing backup windows. Licensing and cost savings We have made a strong case for the value, versatility and benefits of Dell s Backup & Disaster Recovery Suite. By now, you re probably wondering whether we drove down the costs. Yes, we did through our front-end terabyte capacity license with built-in volume discounting. There are seven licensing tiers, starting at 1-5 TB capacity in Tier 1 and going up to more than 250 TB capacity in Tier 7. Your licensing costs per terabyte decrease as your data grows. An organization that needs to back up more than 250 TB receives an effective 55 percent discount over the cost of licensing each product separately. Licensing is cumulative; as long as you maintain maintenance, you will never fall back to a lower (higher priced) tier. A Dell Backup & Disaster Recovery Suite capacity license for 1 TB allows you to back up 1 TB of front-end server data using any of the software capabilities in the suite. In addition, you can use any product features of the suite software to manage that data after it is backed up. Conclusion Data is the new currency. Putting your data at risk puts your business at risk. Every other vendor in the market today requires you to compromise when committing to a backup solution, causing you to either over-pay or underprotect your environment. These tool limitations require many organizations to treat data with the same degree of criticality across the board, resulting in a one-size-fits-all approach to data protection. But one size never fits all, and you don t have to settle for compromises. Let Dell help you make your business more resilient through a compelling, tailored solution, using the best tools for your requirements, built for your unique circumstances. Dell believes in defining recovery requirements and tiering based on how vital the data is to your business. We help you fit your backup to your business requirements. Let us help you make your business more resilient through a compelling, tailored solution, using the best tools to meet your needs, built for your unique circumstances. The Dell Backup & Disaster Recovery Suite offers three types of data protection for flexibility and resiliency. You get full access to the Dell data protection portfolio without complexity or compromise. Mix and match the rich capabilities of those products to meet your RPO and RTO requirements. Purchase what you need today, and then grow that capacity as your business grows, for backup that s built for your business. 9
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