This ESG Solution Showcase was commissioned by Veritas and is distributed under license from ESG.

© 2016 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Introduction

Arguably, nothing in the last decade has been more transformative to how IT is delivered than server virtualization. As

Figure 1 illustrates, the industry has evolved from simply installing hypervisors on traditional servers, through deploying

blades and chassis, and most recently, to leveraging what many consider epitomes of the IT infrastructure building block:

the hyperconverged appliance and the converged-systems rack architecture.

FIGURE 1. The Evolution of Server Virtualization Infrastructure

Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2016

But the journey toward a more agile, virtualized state isn’t complete. Increasing the use of server virtualization remains one

of the most-cited IT spending priorities among ESG survey respondents (see Figure 2).1

1 Source: ESG Research Report, 2016 IT Spending Intentions Survey, to be published.

Data Protection Considerations for Converged Infrastructure – and the Veritas Solution Date: February 2016 Author: Jason Buffington, Principal Analyst

Abstract: “When you modernize production, you must modernize protection.” That claim is true in most IT transformational discussions. But it’s especially true when you’re trying to determine how your data protection strategies and methods should evolve as you embrace converged infrastructure and hyperconverged (CI/HC) systems.

Solution Showcase

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Solution Showcase: Data Protection Considerations for Converged and Hyperconverged Systems 2

© 2016 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

As Figure 2 also shows, improving backup and recovery is another consistently top-cited priority. In fact, in ESG’s 2012,

2013, 2014, and 2015 IT spending intentions research, increasing server virtualization and improving backup were both

always in the top-five most-cited IT priorities lists.

FIGURE 2. Top Ten IT Spending Priorities for 2016

Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2016

When You Modernize Production, You Must Modernize Protection

If your environment is only 20% virtualized, you can likely protect it with any mediocre backup approach you might still

have running. When you’re 50% virtualized, you may start feeling encumbered by those older backup approaches. By the

time you’re 70% or more virtualized, mediocre approaches to backup will probably hinder your virtualization

infrastructure. Said another way, as the density of virtual machines per host increases, such approaches to backup will

negatively impact the VMs being protected and the underlying hosts and storage systems. This assertion is not conjecture;

it reflects a difference in architectural approach known to affect IT systems significantly:

Legacy-style, agent-based technologies running within each OS (physical or virtual) responsible for gathering and

transmitting data to and from the backup server create significant spikes in CPU and storage within the OS when

backup operations are in progress. Physical servers are often underutilized and therefore tolerate the spikes without

ramifications. OSs within virtual servers do not have spare capacity. In dense environments such as converged or

hyperconverged (C/HC) systems, CPU, storage, and memory can be oversubscribed because the underlying resources

allocate and share them dynamically. Spikes that rapidly require resources within one VM can strain the remaining

available resources for all other VMs in that host, as well as the host’s own resources.

Modern host-based technologies protect VMs from the host’s perspective instead. By interacting with mature APIs

within the host hypervisor—i.e., VMware vSphere API for Data Protection (VADP) or Microsoft Hyper-V Volume

Shadow Copy Services (VSS)—VMs can be reliably protected without creating huge spikes that impact the

environment. Some kind of agent, helper, or assistance module running in each VM may still be required to ensure

that the data in the VM is ready to be backed up (often invoking VSS calls within each VM or other application-centric

operation). The difference centers on whether the data is then transmitted from within the virtualized OS using an

agent approach (“bad agent”) or the VM is protected as a whole from the host’s APIs (“good agent”).

18%

19%

20%

20%

20%

20%

21%

22%

23%

37%

Business continuity/disaster recovery programs

Improving collaboration capabilities

Desktop virtualization

Increasing use of server virtualization

Major application deployments or upgrades

Improving data backup and recovery

Data integration

Managing data growth

Business intelligence/data analytics initiatives

Cybersecurity initiatives

Top 10 most important IT priorities over the next 12 months. (Percent of respondents, N=633, ten responses accepted)

Solution Showcase: Data Protection Considerations for Converged and Hyperconverged Systems 3

© 2016 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

To Be Clear, You Will Modernize Your Protection

Unless you are using a version of a unified data protection solution that is currently shipping (i.e., with a shipping date of

2014 or later), you will almost undoubtedly be updating your data protection solution as part of your embrace of C/HC

systems. The only two questions are when and how.

Proactive protection modernization means that selecting and modernizing your data protection tools supports your

broader IT strategy—enacted as part of modernizing your production infrastructure. Being proactive enables vAdmins,

backup specialists, and IT architects to communicate and collaborate on what SLAs are required and what kinds of recovery

agility are needed by the business units. Once those specifications are identified, a plan is developed and executed, which

includes deploying data protection solution(s) as part of the virtualization infrastructure deployment.

Reactive protection modernization is when an organization attempts to use its mediocre outdated backup solution for its

highly virtualized environment, causing significant I/O impact among the VMs and dissatisfaction among the vAdmins, IT

architects, and end-users. IT is then forced to deal with that issue via a hastily upgraded backup implementation, which can

affect other data protection scenarios until the entire environment is upgraded to a new solution. Considering the urgency

and the anxiety likely present across the broader IT team, an organization may find itself faced with two drastic choices:

Option 1: Upgrade the mediocre outdated backup solution to its currently shipping version, which almost certainly

utilizes the modern VADP and VSS APIs that enable reliable backups of VMs from their hosts.

Option 2: Deploy a VM-specific data protection tool to complement the existing unified protection tool.

Each of the reactionary tactics has its own set of challenges and benefits:

Option 1 (upgrade the unified solution) enables the IT team to continue to use the framework and solution

architecture that it is familiar with, leveraging whatever scale, agility, or heterogeneous considerations that originally

drove it to adopt that platform. However, it may cause “change control” or other unseen aftereffects throughout the

environment depending on both the hardware and software being used.

Option 2 (deploy a VM-specific solution) introduces a separate UI, toolset, schedule, and storage scenario(s), but the

efficiency impact will vary based on who is managing the VM backups, e.g., vAdmin versus backup admin, and

performance may vary based on how much the environment is virtualized

For many organizations with potentially aging unified solutions today, the best possible option is the proactive one.

What to Look for in Modern Virtualization Protection

According to recent ESG research, five of the top six reported challenges in protecting virtualized environments are

visibility related (see Figure 3).2 The implication is that many data protection tools (mostly those using antiquated

approaches) are not virtualization savvy.

Aside from the most-mentioned challenge (recoverability of data), the next five most-cited challenges appear to indicate

that many backup tools can’t discern whether backup/recovery operations are successful or not. They can’t see where

problems are occurring. Or they can’t depict how the backups are affecting the virtual infrastructure (and vice versa).

2 Source: ESG Research Report, Trends in Protecting Virtualized Environments, August 2015.

Solution Showcase: Data Protection Considerations for Converged and Hyperconverged Systems 4

© 2016 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

In other words, even if the VMs are being backed up successfully, IT operators won’t know it, and therefore they’ll have

doubts. Those doubts will eventually lead them to replace the solution with one that not only performs better, but also

communicates its effectiveness.

FIGURE 3. Top Ten Challenges in Protecting Virtual Environments

Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2016

A key differentiator to look for is the VM/host savviness of the backup policies, dashboard, and workflow integration with

whichever hypervisor or systems management framework(s) is in use or planned.

ESG research (see Figure 4) also reveals the most important virtualization-specific features sought by responding

organizations assessing new data protection solutions, including unified solutions and VM-specific solutions.3

3 ibid.

29%

29%

30%

31%

31%

32%

32%

39%

39%

45%

6%

8%

6%

5%

6%

6%

7%

8%

9%

15%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50%

Ensuring application consistency

Response time for troubleshooting backup failures, policyviolations, etc.

Gaps in protection

Understanding the impact of backup operations on theperformance of applications sharing physical resources

Simplified views across virtual infrastructure

Tracking capacity trends and consumption

Identifying inefficiencies and bottlenecks in the backupprocess

Validating recovery success

Validating backup success

Recoverability of data

Primary virtualserver dataprotectionchallenge

All virtual serverdata protectionchallenges

Which of the following would you characterize as challenges for protecting your organization’s virtual server environment? Which would you consider to be your organization’s primary virtual server data

protection challenge? (Percent of respondents, N=375)

Solution Showcase: Data Protection Considerations for Converged and Hyperconverged Systems 5

© 2016 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

FIGURE 4. Primary VM-specific Capabilities Important for Choosing a New Data Protection Product

Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2016

Interestingly, both the top-cited challenge protecting virtualized environments (shown in Figure 3) and the most-cited

important feature for choosing a data protection product (shown in Figure 4) relate to recovery of data.

In contrast, the next five most-cited challenges relate to management/monitoring, which can cause dissatisfaction. But the

next five most-cited sought-after features all deal with functionality (i.e., cloud integration, replication, deduplication, and

overall efficiency). Pragmatically speaking, Figure 4 provides some of the key features to look for:

Instant or Rapid VM Recovery—gone are the days when business leaders would wait for “restores” before IT could

begin to “recover” the business process.

Ability to Use Cloud Services—for data survivability in non-regulated industries, BC/DR preparedness, etc.

More Continuous Protection—to reduce data loss between backup windows. It is often achieved by combining

snapshot, replication, and backup policies under a single management framework.

11%

13%

13%

14%

14%

14%

15%

16%

17%

17%

18%

19%

22%

27%

29%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%

Granular recovery of data objects (e.g. SharePoint/Exchange)from VM-backup

Granular recovery of files from within VM-based backups

Ability to recover one hypervisor’s VM into a different hypervisor

Integration with hardware-based deduplication arrays

Integrated protection with storage-snapshots

Ability to protect IaaS-hosted VMs (e.g. Amazon or MicrosoftAzure)

Ability to use tape for long-term retention of VM-centric data

Management of backups/recoveries from within Hyper-V/SysCtr UIs

Management of backups/recoveries from within vCentermanagement UIs

Application consistency within VMs

Ability to use cloud-services for BC/DR (e.g. DRaaS)

Built-in software-based deduplication

Continuous or near-continuous data protection (i.e.,journaling/replication)

Ability to use cloud services for offsite protection

“Instant” or rapid recovery of VMs directly from the backup server/appliance

Which virtual machine-specific protection capabilities are primary factors for choosing new data protection product considerations? (Percent of respondents, N=375, three responses accepted)

Solution Showcase: Data Protection Considerations for Converged and Hyperconverged Systems 6

© 2016 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

These features align with the broader data protection mandates set by IT leadership in 2015 as reported by ESG survey

respondents (see Figure 5).4

FIGURE 5. Top Five Data Protection Mandates from IT Leadership in 2015

Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2016

How Veritas NetBackup Addresses Protection and Recovery of CI/HC Environments

Veritas, one of the long-standing leader brands in enterprise data protection, continues to address the needs of

organizations that demand heterogeneous protection and recovery at true enterprise scale. By fully utilizing the VMware

APIs for Data Protection (VADP), Microsoft Volume ShadowCopy Services (VSS), and the Microsoft System Center Virtual

Machine Manager (SCVMM), NetBackup 7.7 continues Veritas’ vision to ensure that all IT platforms are protected with the

same rigor for data retention and recoverability. Additionally, it continues to still ensure an optimized (VMware) platform

experience that should assure both vAdmins and data protection specialists that their VMs are as well protected and

reliably recoverable as the rest of the heterogeneous enterprise (see Figure 6).5

FIGURE 6. Overview of Veritas NetBackup 7.7 Backup Mechanisms Utilizing VMware VADP

Source: Veritas, 2016

4 Source: ESG Research Report, Trends in Protecting Virtualized Environments, August 2015. 5 ibid.

18%

20%

22%

23%

28%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%

Reduce data protection software costs

Improve long-term retention (using tape, disk or cloud)

Increase speed or frequency of backups

Increase speed/agility of recoveries

Increase reliability of backups or recoveries

What are the top data protection mandates from your organization’s IT leadership? (Percent of respondents, N=375, three responses accepted)

Solution Showcase: Data Protection Considerations for Converged and Hyperconverged Systems 7

© 2016 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The Veritas NetBackup platform is designed to leverage the same VADP mechanisms that some VM-only solutions utilize,

while still providing the same NetBackup policy/management framework, diverse media options, and enterprise-scale

catalog, deduplication, and monitoring benefits that NetBackup users are accustomed to. That being said, NetBackup 7.7

does boast several VM-specific capabilities, including:

Live protection of both Windows VMs (utilizing VSS) and Linux VMs (using SYMCquiesce).

Granular recovery of data from within VMware VM virtual disks.

Deduplication at both the backup host and within the NetBackup Media Server to significantly reduce storage

requirements when protecting numerous, yet similar, virtual machines.

Integrated use of VMware Change Block Tracking to significantly reduce backup times, while still ensuring flexible

recovery via synthetic full backups, utilizing NetBackup Accelerator.

Rapid resumption of functionality by using Veritas’ Instant Recovery for VMware (IRV) to mount VMs from within

the NetBackup storage and then utilize VMware Storage vMotion to relocate the running, restored VM to a

production host after the users have resumed productivity.

Additional benefits of the Veritas NetBackup platform are its Appliance offerings, which enable a turnkey solution for

efficient, storage-optimized data protection for the data center, remote offices, and virtual environments. The NetBackup

Platform and Appliances ensure that organizations have modern data protection for their converged infrastructure or

hyperconverged environment.

The Bigger Truth

Improving data protection continues to be one of the most commonly cited IT spending priorities among IT decision

makers, year after year—it is a priority often spurred by the deployment of new IT workloads that demand modern

protection and recovery approaches. One of the key drivers for a “new” level of data protection is server virtualization.

Virtualization (storage, compute, and networking) is often best achieved through converged or hyperconverged platforms

because of their pre-integration, ease and consistency of deployment, and their ability to increase the VM density,

resulting in more efficiency and agility.

Virtualization’s transformative impact on IT cannot be overstated. But the same virtualization mechanisms that boost the

agility of production IT environments can create unreliability or hinder backup and recovery endeavors. The answer to this

problem is to proactively plan on modernizing protection mechanisms and strategies as part of the larger planning and

implementation effort to create a modern production infrastructure.

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Enterprise Strategy Group is an IT analyst, research, validation, and strategy firm that provides market intelligence and actionable insight to the global IT community.

© 2016 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.