Integrating Data Protection Manager with StorTrends itx

Integrating Data Protection Manager with StorTrends itx INTEGRATING DATA PROTECTION MANAGER WITH STORTRENDS ITX 2 1. Introduction 2 2. Test Environment 2 Requirements 2 3. Setting up the Application Servers 3 4. Configuring DPM Protection Groups using StorTrends itx Custom Replica Volumes 4 5. Recovering using DPM 12 APPENDIX A: DEMONSTRATING MS EXCHANGE DATA BACKUP & RECOVERY 17 APPENDIX B: DEMONSTRATING SQL SERVER DATA BACKUP AND RECOVERY 21 APPENDIX C: DEMONSTRATING SHAREPOINT DATA BACKUP AND RECOVERY 25

Integrating Data Protection Manager with StorTrends itx 1. Introduction Data Protection Manager (DPM 2007) brings in a fully-integrated, application consistent approach to data protection for Windows application environments. This document explains the setup created in AMI Labs to demonstrate the integration of DPM with StorTrends itx storage server based on the guidelines provided in the document titled Protecting Enterprise Data with Microsoft DPM 2007 [1]. 2. Test Environment The test environment is illustrated by Fig. 1. It consists of 3 application servers Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, SQL Server 2005 and SharePoint Server 2005. The data (and the log) volumes of these servers are being hosted in StorTrends itx iscsi volumes. All these servers belong to the same Active Directory domain the AD server also sits in the same network as the application servers and the DPM server. The DPM server is responsible for protecting the data on the application servers. It achieves this by communicating with DPM agents on the application servers. All the servers are connected using Gigabit Ethernet links using a Gigabit Ethernet switch. Requirements 1. Hardware requirements: a. 5 servers with Windows 2003 SP2 b. 1 itx StorTrends 1100i box c. 1 Gigabit Ethernet switch 2. Software Requirements: a. Exchange server 2003 + SP1 b. SQL server 2005 + SP1 c. Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition + SP2 d. SharePoint server 2007 e. DPM server 2007 Tools used for generating Load to the application servers. 1. LoadSim: load generating tool for Microsoft Exchange server. 2. Benchmark factory: load generator for Microsoft SQL server.

Exchange server SQL server SharePoint Server ADS server itx Box Exchange Volume SQL Volume SharePoint Volume itx StorTrends Clone volume Clone volume Clone volume DPM Exchange Volume DPM SQL Volume DPM SharePoint Volume DPM Exchange Recovery DPM SQL Recovery DPM SharePoint Recovery Exchange Protection Group SQL Protection Group DPM server SharePoint Protection Group Figure 1: Test Environment 3. Setting up the Application Servers The following are the steps, in brief, to setup the Microsoft Exchange Server 2003: 1. install exchange server 2003 + SP1 2. Mount the itx SAN volume for storing exchange data.

3. Move the exchange data (mailbox and public store) to the itx SAN volume. 4. Install the DPM agent in the exchange server machine from the DPM server 5. Start the DPMRA service and VSS service in the exchange server machine. SQL server 2005 server is setup as follows: 1. install SQL server 2005 + SP1 2. Mount the itx SAN volume for storing SQL database and log files. 3. Create a database in the mounted itx SAN volume. 4. Install the DPM agent in the SQL server machine from the DPM server 5. Start the DPMRA service, VSS service and SQL VSS writer service in the SQL server machine. SharePoint server initial setup is as follows: 1. install SQL server 2005 + SP1 2. install SharePoint server 2007 3. Mount the itx SAN volume for storing SharePoint farm and site database. 4. Create the SharePoint site in the itx SAN volume. 5. Install the DPM agent in the SharePoint server machine from the DPM server 6. Install Knowledge Base article 941422, "Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0" 7. Start the DPMRA service, VSS service and SQL VSS writer service in the SharePoint server machine. 8. On the SharePoint server, at the command prompt, change the directory to <DPM installation location>\bin\. 9. Type ConfigureSharePoint -EnableSharePointProtection. 4. Configuring DPM Protection Groups using StorTrends itx Custom Replica Volumes The very first task that has to happen after defining protection groups is to perform initial synchronization of protected Production Server volumes to the DPM Server storage pool. This is typically done by the DPM Server which interacts with the agents running in the Protected Servers. The data is taken out over the LAN transport stressing CPU utilization in the Protected Servers as well as in the DPM Server. Also, the traffic over the LAN infrastructure interferes with the LAN traffic for the production I/O load. StorTrends with its efficient snapshot architecture and volume clone capability offers an elegant and time saving approach in performing this initial synchronization. DPM allows the creation of Custom Volumes to achieve this end [1].

1. Once the Application servers are configured with the itx volumes, Clone the App server volume using the local replication feature in the itx box. Figure 2: Creating Custom Replica Volumes using StorTrends Volume Cloning << 2. After the cloning is completed delete the replication pairs and mount the volume in the DPM server. 3. For creating protection group in the DPS server using Custom volume, we need two volumes for each protection group one is the replica volume and another is the recovery volume. The replica volume is the previously cloned iscsi volume. So create recovery volumes accordingly. 4. Before protecting the server make sure that DPM agent is installed in all the protected servers and running properly. This can be verified by clicking the agent tab on Management. 5. Adding disk to the DPM Storage pool a. Click Management in the DPM system management consol and click the disk tab. b. Choose the add option the Action panel in the Right side.

c. Add disks to Storage Pool wizard appears listing all iscsi volumes in the left side, add the required volumes to the right side and click ok. Figure 3: Add disks to Storage Pool d. Once the disks are successfully add it will be listed in the disk tab under management with green icon. Figure 4: Management Tab

6. Creating protection group a. Click on the protection tab and choose the create new protection group from the action panel. b. Create new protection group welcome page appears, click to continue c. Select the group member for protection, for example choose SharePoint as show below and click next Figure 5: Selecting Group Members d. Specify short term goals, select the synchronize frequency and time for taking full backup (for SharePoint there is no synchronize frequency and recovery point is based on the full express backup). And click next. Microsoft Exchange Server and SQL Server have options to specify frequency of recovery points. Recovery points are incremental snapshots from the previous Express Full Backup and can be configured to be as frequent as every 15 minutes. Figure 6: Specify Short-term Goals

e. Next is the disk allocation page click on the Modify button and choose custom volumes in storage type and appropriate replica and recovery volumes. Important select do not format Figure 7: Selecting Custom Volume option for the Custom volumes and click ok and then click next. [NOTE: There is an option to select only one custom volume. Hence in cases of Application servers such as Microsoft Exchange both the data and the log partition must be mapped to the same StorTrends itx volume].

f. Once custom volume option is selected, in the choose replication method page the Figure 8: Choose Replication Method automatic option is disabled, manually option is only available, click next. g. Click create group in the summery page. Figure 9: Summary Page

h. The status of the protection group is shown in the status page, click close to complete i. Note: The procedure of creating the protection group for all protected server(exchange, SQL and SharePoint) are same. 7. Manual Replication a. Once the protection group configuration is completed a folder structure is created in the replica volume. Example b. And the folder is empty; we have to move all the application server data from the volume root to the appropriate folder. Eg : for SharePoint protection group after moving the data., the folder 0d2f72f7-e27b-44cb-8d96-5a14bb0eb441/Full/F-Vol contains data like this Figure 10: Restructuring Replica Folders 8. Perform consistency check a. After moving the application server data on to the appropriate folder in the replica volume right click the protected member under protection tab and click perform consistency check

Figure 11: Performing Consistency Check b. Once the consistency check started, the status change to replica inconsistent, verification in progress Figure 12: Consistency Progress

c. After the check is completed the status change to ok with green icon. And you can view the details by selecting jobs under the monitoring tab. Figure 13: Consistency Check Status 5. Recovering using DPM DPM creates periodic Express Full Backups and in the case of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 periodic recovery point images (delta images). Recovery can be performed from any recovery point - the base replica volume (created using custom volume), delta synchronization points (incremental) or express full backups.

1. For any protection group, List of recovery points will be available as per the user scheduled. this can be view by selecting the particular protection member under the recovery tab. Figure 14: Selecting a recovery point 2. Choose the particular recovery point, right click it and select recover. Figure 15: Initiating Recovery Wizard 3. Recovery wizard appears; click next after review the recovery selection information. 4. Next is Select the recovery type page, select the location where to recover, it may be a network location or to the original protected server location or to the tape drive if connected, in addition application server specific option, below are the screen for different

application server protection members. Figure 16: Selecting Recovery type for MS Exchange Note: for Exchange server Recover to original Exchange server location is enabled only if the latest available recovery point is selected. Figure 17: Selecting Recovery Type for SQL Server For SQL server you can see some more options like recover to any instance.

Figure 18: Recovery Types for SharePoint For SharePoint, recover to original location, network folder and to tape drive options are available. 5. Choose appropriate option and continue the wizard, finally click recover in summary page

Figure 19: Recovery Summary Page 6. After the recovery is completed you can see the status in the recovery status page, click close to complete. Figure 20: Recovery Status

Appendix A: Demonstrating MS Exchange Data Backup & Recovery The following screenshots demonstrate the data backup and recovery for MS Exchange. 1. Initially before creating any user the default mailbox is look like this. 2. Create 10 users using the LoadSim tool. Figure 21: Initial Mailbox Figure 22: Configuring LoadSim

The LoadSim creating 10 users and required public stores Figure 23: Creating users and public stores 3. After creating users and mailboxes, the total items in each mail box is 4. Figure 24: Mailbox after IO Load

4. Now dismount both the mailbox and public store for cloning the exchange data volume in itx box Figure 25 Dismounting stores for cloning 5. Create protection group using custom volume by following the steps to configure protection. 6. After creating protection, run the LoadSim in the exchange server to create more mails and public folders, now the total item in each mailbox increased to 23. Figure 26: Additional LoadSim load after base backup

7. After some time restore the recovery point from the DPM server Figure 27: Recovering to original base backup 8. After recover from the recovery point the mail count in the mail box is less that the original state, ie the total items in each mail box changed from 23 to 4 the old state. Figure 28: State after Recovery

Appendix B: Demonstrating SQL Server Data Backup and Recovery 1. Initially the database SAN_databse has no user tables. Figure 29: Initial Database 2. Create the protection group for the SQL SAN_database in DPM server using custom volumes. 3. Generate load to the SAN_database using benchmark factory. Figure 30: Running Benchmark Factory 4. After creating tables the database has the following table content.

Figure 31: After Load Creation 5. Now format the entire SQL database volume in the SQL server(like disaster loss of data) [NOTE: Recovery points would have been created for the database with benchmark factory generated data]. Figure 32: Destroy the SQL data 6. Now recover the latest recovery point from the DPM

Figure 33: Recovery to original SQL instance 7. After the recovery is completed the status in DPM is as follows. Figure 34: Successful Recovery in DPM 8. After recovery, check the database volume in the SQL server, now it shows the latest state of the database.

Figure 35: After recovery, SQL data is restored

Appendix C: Demonstrating SharePoint Data Backup and Recovery 1. Initially there is only one document is in the shared documents. Figure 36: Initial Document Portal 2. Configure DPM Protection for the SharePoint Server. 3. Add some more file to the shared documents. Figure 37: Adding more documents

4. Restore a old recovery point from the DPM (note: for SharePoint there is now incremental backup feature is available in the DPM, only full express is available). Figure 38: Recovery using DPM 5. Select the recover to the original location option the restore. Figure 39: Recovering to original location

6. After restore the content of the shared document is reverted to the old state. Figure 40: After Rollback to the recovery point