Converged Virtual Infrastructure
Integrated VMware Data Management with EqualLogic and CommVault® Simpana® Software
Jeff Junker Shwethan Shetty Zahid Ilkal
A CommVault® White Paper
Contents
Integrated and Scalable Data Protection for Microsoft and Linux Applications 3
Converged Virtual Infrastructure Building Block 3
EqualLogic PS Series Arrays 5
EqualLogic PS Array Features and Benefits 6
Data Protection Challenges in a Virtual Environment 8
CommVault® Simpana® Software: New Approach to Data Management 9
Integrated Data Protection for the Converged Virtual Infrastructure 10
Snapshot-based Protection With SnapProtect™ for Virtual Servers 11
Incremental Forever Backups with DASH Full 14
Application Integration 17
Multiple Recovery Options 19
Automatic VM Discovery and Automated Data Protection 20
Reference Architecture for Virtualization Building Block 21
Performance Summary 24
Summary 27
A CommVault® White Paper
3Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Data centers continue to evolve from an environment based on physical servers and storage to one based on
virtual platforms. Such modern data centers based on converged infrastructure (servers, storage, networking
and applications) demand an integrated approach to deploying, managing and protecting critical business
resources within a consolidated virtual environment. Due to unprecedented scale and consolidation afforded
by VMware® vSphere, today’s data centers have begun to resemble private clouds where the physical
infrastructure complexity is completely hidden from users and application owners to such a high degree
that protecting and managing the data for each user and each application has become challenging to say the
least. A proven tool and a simple approach are needed to provide agility and automation to how individual
application and user data is protected and managed in modern data centers.
Integrated and scalable data protection for Microsoft and Linux applications
Too often in a super virtualized cloud-like data center with converged infrastructure, data protection and
management are an afterthought, addressed with limited-purpose external tools leading to sub-optimal results
and poor resource utilization. The critical and ever more complex task of data management within virtual
machines—including protection, recovery and long-term retention—in a densely populated data center with
multiple applications like Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange and multiple databases like Oracle and MS-SQL,
needs a more integrated and flexible approach.
CommVault® Simpana® software is a proven solution that provides an integrated, unified, and robust end-to-
end data management solution that seamlessly enables data protection policies in physical as well as virtual
environments. Simpana software natively integrates with VMware vStorage APIs and EqualLogic PS Series
APIs for agile and automated data protection and recovery, while minimizing impact on production systems.
Organizations that use VMware and EqualLogic virtualization infrastructure can confidently transition to a
modern data center knowing that they can bridge the same level and granularity of protection as in physical
environments, but optimized to deal with the unique challenges of virtualization.
Converged Virtual Infrastructure Building Block
Dell and CommVault introduce an integrated converged virtual infrastructure that combines the best of Dell
servers, storage and networking components with industry leading CommVault® Simpana® software. The
combined solution forms the core building block for IT departments looking to build scalable VMware-based
private clouds.
A CommVault® White Paper
4Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
The building block includes all components needed to build a truly agile and responsive virtual data center,
ranging from very small environments to the very large data centers with agile and automated data protection
and recovery.
Key components of the converged virtual infrastructure building block are:
■ Dell PowerEdge M1000e Blade Enclosure
■ Dell PowerEdge M610, M610x, M710 or M910 blade servers
■ Dell PowerConnect M6220, M8024, 8024F Switches
■ Dell EqualLogic PS 6510X or PS 6010XV for primary storage
■ Dell EqualLogic PS 6510E for tier 2 secondary storage
■ CommVault® Simpana® 9 Software for Data Protection and Management
■ Optional Dell PowerEdge DL2200 with MD1200 enclosures for tier 3 and offsite storage
■ Optional Dell DX Object Store Platform for long-term granular retention and archiving
Figure 1: Converged Virtual Infrastructure with Dell and CommVault® Simpana® Software
A CommVault® White Paper
5Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Integrated and robust end-to-end data protection for the virtual machines on this converged virtual infrastructure
is provided by CommVault® Simpana® software. Automated protection and recovery can be delivered using
the Simpana® software integration with VMware vStorage APIs and EqualLogic PS APIs, while also minimizing
impact on production systems. Organizations can confidently shift to a converged modern data center knowing
that they get the same level of protection as in physical environments, but optimized to deal with the unique
challenges of virtualization.
Key Benefits of the Converged Virtual Infrastructure
■ Flexible: Supports workloads for the smallest virtual environments to very large and
dense virtual data centers
■ Linearly scalable: Simply add identical virtualization blocks enabling predictable and
manageable growth
■ Highly available and reliable: Built-in redundancy for all key components ensures
there is no single point of failure in the entire block
■ Integrated Data Protection and Recovery: Includes all components necessary for
end-to-end data protection and recovery
EqualLogic PS Series Arrays
The key to any successful VMware deployment is the underlying storage system. The EqualLogic PS Series
storage arrays form the backbone of the Converged Virtual Infrastructure Building Block, delivering consolidated,
highly-available and scalable iSCSI storage. At the core is the peer storage architecture that allows multiple
arrays to function as a single virtualized pool of highly-available storage. This enables businesses to shift and
grow storage resources as needed with minimal disruption to existing production workloads, a flexibility that is
critical to a successful VMware deployment. By using Ethernet as the underlying networking protocol, EqualLogic PS
Series arrays also enable IT groups to avoid the cost and complexity of specialized storage networks and allow them
to capitalize on their existing investment in, and knowledge of, server networking infrastructure.
The PS series is available in a wide variety of flavors for differing workloads. For instance, the Converged Virtual
Infrastructure includes the 10K RPM SAS based PS6510X for hosting VMs with moderate workloads, the 15K RPM
SAS based PS6010XV (or SSD based PS6010 XS) for VMs with high I/O requirements and SATA based PS6010E for
hosting backup copies. Each of these PS series arrays have the inherent benefit of the peer storage architecture,
allowing capacity and performance to increase seamlessly, linearly and on demand.
A CommVault® White Paper
6Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
EqualLogic PS Array Features and Benefits
Peer storage architecture
The EqualLogic PS Series is based on a unique, peer storage architecture. In this context, peer describes
the collaboration and equal partnership of a single, simple architecture—components and arrays function
as peers, working together to share resources, evenly distribute loads, and collaborate to help optimize
application performance and provide comprehensive data protection.
The result is an intelligent storage array that can deliver rapid installation, simple management and seamless
expansion. Using patented, page-based data mover technology, members in a storage area network (SAN)
work together to automatically manage data, load balance across resources, and expand to meet growing
storage needs. Because of this shared architecture, enterprises can use PS Series arrays as modular building
blocks for simple SAN expansion.
This architecture provides the basis for numerous features and capabilities, including peer deployment,
control, provisioning, protection and integration.
Peer deployment is a SAN configuration technology that can sense network topology, automatically build
RAID sets and conduct a system health check to help ensure that components are fully functional. Peer
deployment enables IT staff to potentially install, configure and deploy most EqualLogic arrays in minutes.
Peer control offers virtualized storage management with a single view. PS Series arrays are designed to
be self-managing—systems are designed to continuously monitor storage resources and automatically load
balance data across controllers, network connections and disk drives to help deliver optimal performance.
Peer control automates key functions for configuration, management, storage pooling and data distribution,
helping minimize the complexity of storage administration.
Peer provisioning enables administrators to dynamically provision resources to meet application
requirements—including not only disk space, but also connectivity, security, performance and data
protection. When application requirements change, the storage configuration can change seamlessly. Peer
provisioning is designed to simplify expansion while systems remain online—new arrays can be automatically
added to the group and automatically connect to the SAN. Expansion is linear, enabling administrators to
scale not only disk drives but also controllers, ports, cache and performance as the environment grows.
Peer provisioning enables enterprises to purchase storage on demand, which facilitates efficient use of both
capital and storage resources. Advanced thin provisioning capabilities are included, giving administrators
A CommVault® White Paper
7Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
additional flexibility in providing storage to applications. Administrators can also allocate virtual storage
to volumes up to preset limits and add physical capacity on demand. In both physical and virtual server
environments, cloned volumes can be rapidly assigned to different servers to help meet changing needs.
Peer protection starts with a robust design that avoids single points of failure and is designed to provide
greater than 99.999 percent availability. It also includes built-in features such as application-aware snapshots
for quick recovery and remote replication for disaster protection. These features enable administrators to
quickly create end-to-end solutions that can help provide comprehensive protection against multiple types
Performance Summary of failure or outage.
Peer integration provides a comprehensive software toolkit to facilitate the deployment, ongoing
management and protection of EqualLogic SANs in Microsoft® Windows® OS environments and VMware®
environments.
vStorage API for Array Integration
Organizations can confidently shift to a converged modern data center knowing that they get the same
level of protection as in physical environments, but optimized to deal with the unique challenges of
virtualization. Dell and VMware collaborated in the development of the VMware vStorage APIs for Array
Integration (VAAI) to help improve the scalability of a virtualized environment while enhancing business
agility. These APIs provide native integration between the hypervisor hosts and the storage arrays, enabling
the VMware vSphere software to work directly with the Dell EqualLogic PS Series arrays. These APIs enable
administrators to offload certain storage workloads from the host servers to the SANs. These offloading
operations can dramatically accelerate VM deployment tasks by avoiding the requirement to read the data
all the way up the storage stack and write it back down the storage stack. Instead, this operation occurs
within the storage array. Administrators can deploy VMs even faster than before, enhancing the agility of IT
and the business. Helping to reduce processor, memory and network burdens also makes the environment
increasingly efficient—there are additional server and network resources available for running an increased
number of VMs. These APIs also enable administrators to scale the virtual environments to higher densities
than before through the use of increasingly granular protection of VMFS metadata provided by Hardware
Assisted Locking. This command enables administrators to increase the number of VMs in each data store
that can now utilize increased volume sizes.
Some additional key features for VMware include:
Storage Adapter for Site Recovery Manager (SRM): Enables VMware SRM to take advantage of PS Series
replication for full SRM integration.
A CommVault® White Paper
8Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Multipathing Extension Module for VMware® vSphere: Enhances VMware multipathing functionality with
connection awareness of PS Series network load balancing.
PSAPI Services: For high level of automation and coordinated operations, most of the PS-Series tools and
controls are available via the PS-API, enabling closer integration with Simpana® software to customize and
automate many of the EqualLogic snapshot and administrative functions.
Built-in monitoring: Includes management tools and consolidated monitoring of individual volumes, arrays,
pools and tiers of storage. SAN HQ enables detailed historical reporting and analysis.
Data Protection Challenges in a Virtual Environment
Traditional data protection solutions use resource-intensive agents to physically collect and move data from
production storage to a backend disk or tape target. This legacy method of using brute processing power
to move data from one place to another is not sufficient. Moreover, the traditional practice of depending on
previous night’s backup is simply no longer acceptable for modern Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Daily
change rates are too high to make this a reliable recovery strategy.
With the shift to virtualized data centers and round the clock operations, there is a need to rethink the
traditional data protection techniques. Data protection and data recovery must have minimal front end impact
and cannot exclusively rely on copying from the production to the backend. An effective solution minimizes
the load on production systems, minimizes administrative effort and eases the transition to a virtualized and
eventually a cloud-based data center. Some key challenges for data protection in a virtual environment are:
Not enough time to move data for backup: High server consolidation and high VM density concentrates
data ownership to a small number of ESX servers with most resources dedicated for production workloads.
There are little resources, if any, left for traditional backup tasks that move data nightly. Moreover, high data
growth and round the clock operations are rapidly shrinking backup windows.
Multiple Recovery Points: With high data growth and change rate, relying on last night’s backup for recovery
is no longer sufficient. Organizations are demanding Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) of hours. In other words,
it is necessary to be able to recover to a few hours ago, not to last night, to minimize data loss as a result of
disruption. Creating frequent recovery points without disrupting production activity is a huge challenge.
Enforcing Data Protection policies: The ease of deploying new VMs leads to a virtual machine sprawl,
making it tedious and time consuming for administrators to keep track of new virtual machines and ensure
correct data protection and retention policies are applied to them. Administrators spend a significant part of
their day tracking down new VMs and manually applying data protection policies.
A CommVault® White Paper
9Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Application Integration: As more and more mission critical applications are virtualized, it is necessary to
provide the same level of protection and recovery capabilities for these applications, while staying within the
bounds of constraints imposed by a highly consolidated VMware environment.
Multiple Recovery Options: Need to perform full VM as well as granular recovery from a single protection
operation.
Long-Term Retention: Moving data into virtual servers does not eliminate the need for long-term retention of
data. However, it makes the process more complicated since backup now involves full VM images. Retaining
full VM images for several months if not years is extremely wasteful, even with techniques like deduplication.
Businesses are looking for smarter ways to retain critical data, especially individual objects within applications,
for long duration independently of the VM backup images.
CommVault® Simpana® Software: New Approach to Data Management
CommVault® Simpana® software is a revolutionary data management solution that not only addresses the
challenges arising out of limitations in legacy data center environment, but more importantly, accelerates the
shift into virtualized and cloud-enabled data centers. With Simpana® software, businesses can start to realize
tangible benefits on day one of deployment as they transition from traditional environments to the modern data
center. More critically, using techniques that access data once, but reused for multiple operations, businesses
can reap the advantages of the modern data center immediately with Simpana® 9, bypassing many of the pitfalls
that arise from trying to force-fit legacy techniques or point solutions.
With CommVault® Simpana® software you can:
■ Protect hundreds of virtual servers in minutes with no impact on physical production servers
■ Protect very large VMware environments with thousands of virtual machines
■ Automatically discover new virtual machines for guaranteed protection with minimal administrator intervention
■ Use embedded source side deduplication for rapid creation of secondary DR copies
■ Create 100% application consistent protection copies
■ Rely on Granular Message level protection for granular restores, content search and eDiscovery
Customers can use Simpana® software to rapidly modernize their data centers into private clouds to take full
advantage of the advances in virtualization technology while continuing to meet all the data management and
data retention needs.
A CommVault® White Paper
10Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Integrated Data Protection for the Converged Virtual Infrastructure
Figure 2 illustrates an example of the converged virtual infrastructure using Dell blade servers, networking
and Dell EqualLogic storage with integrated Simpana® data protection software.
The production blade servers (highlighted in the green box) run VMware ESX and host the production virtual
machines. These virtual machines host their virtual machine disks on the primary EqualLogic group. This
group consists of one or more EqualLogic PS 6510 X or PS 6010XV storage arrays connected via 10 GigE
iSCSI to the production ESX servers.
A dedicated or lightly loaded utility blade server (highlighted in red) is responsible for end-to-end data
protection and recovery of all the VMs in the building block. The utility node runs an ESX server and a virtual
machine to which most of the physical resources are allocated. The virtual machine runs the Simpana®
Virtual Server Agent (VSA) and MediaAgent (MA) that executes data protection policies with no impact on
the production ESX blades or the virtual machines. Simpana® software drives the secondary copies on the
Secondary EqualLogic Group which contains Tier 2 EqualLogic PS 6510E SATA based storage. These backup
copies are deduplicated and indexed.
Also shown are optional components, the Dell DL2200 which functions as Tier 3 disk target for long-term
retention of data. The architecture also includes the Dell DX6000 object store which Simpana® software
utilizes to drive message level protection policies for long-term retention of messages from Exchange
mailboxes hosted on virtual machines.
Figure 2: Converged Virtual Infrastructure Example with Optional Components
A CommVault® White Paper
11Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
The integrated Simpana® solution on the single utility blade affords a variety of data protection solution for
this environment depending on recovery needs. These include:
Snapshot-based Protection With SnapProtect™ for Virtual Servers: Leverages snapshot capabilities in
the EqualLogic PS storage array to create persistent snapshot-based recovery copies on primary storage to
protect hundreds of virtual machines in minutes. Also supports creation of deduplicated and indexed copies
on secondary EqualLogic from the snapshot copies using vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP).
Incremental Forever Backup with vStorage API for Data Protection: Leverages VMware APIs and Change
Block Tracking (CBT) for incremental forever backups. Deduplication enhanced DASH Full to create full
secondary copies.
Snapshot-based Protection With SnapProtect™ for Virtual Servers
Embrace EqualLogic Snapshots with SnapProtect™ for Virtual Servers
Traditional data protection techniques for VMware such as vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP), or
VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) rely on an off-host agent to protect virtual machine images. As efficient
as VADP is, it is still a streaming method that moves the image files from the datastore to backup disk for
protection. This method suffices for small to moderate sized environments with reasonable backup windows.
For larger environments with ever-shrinking backup windows, there is simply not enough time or bandwidth
to move all the VM data. Moreover in a highly dense virtual environment, VADP backups could impose a
tremendous burden on the production ESX hosts and virtual machines each time backup job runs. With
an estimated average of 40% data growth rate every year, this method is simply not sustainable.
Figure 3: Virtual Server Protection Workflow using VSA, SnapProtect and Media Agent Comnbiation
A CommVault® White Paper
12Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
SnapProtect™ for Virtual Servers solves these issues by integrating with the EqualLogic PS APIs and the
native hardware snapshot capabilities in the EqualLogic PS array to create persistent snapshot-based
recovery copies for virtual machines.
SnapProtect™ for Virtual Servers using Virtual Server Agent and the Media Agent module are configured on
a Windows system. This system could be a virtual machine or a physical machine. In the converged virtual
infrastructure block, this is hosted on a single half height blade server or utility blade. This backup ESX proxy
can also run on the ESXi version of the hypervisor.
A SnapProtect™ job leverages VMware APIs to prepare VMs for backup. However, instead of using VADP to
copy data blocks, it executes a rapid hardware snapshot. The sequence is as follows:
■ Discover new VMs based on pre-defined criteria
■ Quiesce VMs in protection policy to ensure a consistent set of image files
■ Determine data stores associated with the VMs
■ Execute hardware snapshot using EqualLogic PS APIs, this takes a few seconds
■ Un-quiesce the VMs to resume normal operations
■ Index the snapshots and the VM list inside the snapshot
The SnapProtect™ operation takes only a few minutes, and the VMs themselves are made quiescent for a
very short time. The short duration with minimal impact on virtual servers allows the creation of multiple
recovery copies per day, enabling more aggressive recovery SLAS. Simpana® VSA software also includes
the Live Browse capability that allows users to browse and recover individual files from Windows virtual
machines directly from the hardware snapshot copy.
Extend Hardware Snapshots with Deduplication enabled copies
EqualLogic snapshots when used with Simpana® SnapProtect™ technology to allow rapid fire creation of
persistent and consistent snapshot copies. These snapshot copies are ideal for applications that require rapid
recovery and multiple recovery points per day. However, there are certain considerations to keep in mind
with snapshots:
■ Snapshots need reserve space to keep track of changed blocks. More snapshots
require more reserve space, leading to less disk utilization.
A CommVault® White Paper
13Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
■ Consequently, snapshots provide limited retention. Retaining snapshots for more
than a couple of weeks may require sizeable reserve space.
■ Since snapshots operate at the volume level, indexing contents of snapshots and virtual
machines is challenging. Applications running inside VMs add an additional layer of complexity.
■ Snapshots depend on the original volume—if the original volume is lost, dependent snapshot
are unavailable.
Most environments have longer retention requirements than what can be met only by snapshot copies. In
a typical environment with 30-90 days retention requirement, one would create snapshot based recovery
copies every 4-8 hours that are retained for 7-14 days. Longer term retention copies require conventional
backup techniques.
Simpana® 9 software extends the lifetime of a snapshot by creating offline, fully cataloged and deduplicated
backup copies on secondary disk targets from snapshots. The SnapProtect and Virtual Server Agent
combination (or SnapProtect™ for VSA) includes the ability to copy the contents of selective snapshots to
a deduplication enabled disk target. In the converged virtual infrastructure the secondary disk target could
be a secondary EqualLogic group or the Dell DL2200 appliance.
When this option is selected, VSA selectively mounts a snapshot to a proxy ESX server (the utility blade) and
uses VADP APIs to copy the contents of the snapshots to a deduplicated disk library. VSA also indexes the
contents of the VM images as they are copied. Since the snapshot already contains consistent VM images, no
interaction is needed with the production ESX servers and VM as the backup copy is created. Moreover, VSA
takes full advantage of Change Block Tracking (CBT) to support incremental backup copies from snapshots.
Figure 4: Creating Secondary Copy from snapshots.
A CommVault® White Paper
14Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
SnapProtect™ for VSA provides all the benefits of hardware snapshot based protection with the ability to
extend these capabilities to meet long-term retention objectives as well.
Benefits of SnapProtect™ for VSA
■ Extremely fast, reliable protection for data in virtual machines, with minimal production impact.
Allows critical systems to be virtualized for more rapid ROI from the shift to the virtual platform
■ Multiple recovery points per days allows users to recover from a point closer to the point of
failure, allowing recovery to a more recent point in time than simply last night’s backup
■ Retain snapshots on primary EqualLogic for 1-2 weeks, while also extending the contents
of the snapshots to secondary EqualLogic for long-term retention
■ Minimize the reserve space required for snapshots
■ Index the contents of the snapshots for granular file-level recovery from long-term copies
■ Since the backup copy is created from a snapshot, it has minimal impact on the production
ESX server and virtual machines
■ Leverage Change Block Tracking (CBT) while creating secondary copies
■ Embedded deduplication reduces the backup storage footprint significantly
Incremental Forever Backups with DASH Full
Figure 5: Virtual Server Protection Workflow using Incremental Forever Backup Approach
A CommVault® White Paper
15Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
In environments that do not require multiple recovery points per day or cannot support snapshot-based
protection, Simpana® software offers an alternate method to protect all VMs in the infrastructure without
overburdening production VMs and ESX servers.
VMware provides vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP), an API set for backup vendors to use for backing
up virtual machines using an external proxy. VADP eliminates the need for configuring backup agents inside
each VM. A key element of VADP is Change Block Tracking (CBT) which identifies only those blocks that have
changed since the last backup. Incremental backup jobs can use CBT to quickly identify changed blocks and
back them up.
The Simpana® VSA agent on the utility blade takes full advantage of the VADP and CBT to enable incremental
forever backups to the secondary EqualLogic pool. The distributed, self-protected, index ensures any
incremental job is capable of performing a single pass full VM recovery or granular file level recovery.
Incremental backups with CBT are a great way to create fully recoverable backup copies without
overburdening the VMs. However, it may be necessary to create a full backup set for exporting to an alternate
site or to offline media like tape. Running a periodic full backup can impose significant overhead on the
production VMs. An alternative is to create Synthetic Full backup copies.
A traditional Synthetic Full reads the last full backup and all incrementals that follow and writes back a new
consolidated full. On a deduplication enabled disk, this is a very expensive and wasteful approach. The
traditional Synthetic Full job reads all the data, thereby rehydrating it, creates a new consolidated full and
feeds this full backup to the deduplication engine for processing. However, since all the data blocks are
already on disk, the deduplication engine never writes these to disk. The net result is that the Synthetic Full
job wasted a lot of time and cycles reading and deduplicating data that resulted in only reference pointers
being updated on disk. This costly, time-consuming approach is illustrated in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Traditional Synthetic Full
A CommVault® White Paper
16Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Simpana® software solves the rehydration problem by including the option of Deduplication Accelerated
Synthetic Full or DASH Full. DASH Full provides a smarter way to create a consolidated full backup on
secondary EqualLogic disk storage pool. Since all the data blocks are already on the pool, DASH Full operation
does not waste time reading the data blocks and re-processing it for deduplication. Instead it merely creates
a new index that contains references to the appropriate data blocks and updates reference counts in the
deduplication database. As a result the DASH Full creates a new consolidated full in a much shorter time
than a traditional Synthetic Full. This dramatically more efficient approach to deduplicated, CBT enabled VADP
backup is illustrated in figure 7.
Simpana® software combines the power of CBT with DASH Full to enable an incremental forever strategy for
VMware backups. The incremental forever backup minimizes the impact on production virtual machines and
ESX servers and reduces the amount of data that needs to be read and moved from the production storage to
the backup disk. At the same time, DASH Full enables the rapid creation of a consolidated full backup with no
impact on the production ESX hosts, virtual machines or production storage.
Benefits of an Incremental Forever Backup with DASH Full Include:
■ Incremental forever with CBT minimizes the impact of backup in the production ESX
host, virtual machines and data stores, reading and moving only data that has changed
■ Each Incremental backup enables full VM recovery in a single pass
■ Allows multiple incremental backups per day for shorter RPO
■ Fast consolidated full for exporting weekly/monthly fulls to tier 3 disk or offline media,
like tape or cloud for long-term retention
■ Creation of consolidated Full has no impact whatsoever on the production ESX hosts,
virtual machines and data stores
Figure 7: DASH Full
A CommVault® White Paper
17Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Application Integration
Application Integrated Protection with SnapProtect™ for Virtual Servers
A critical consideration when virtualizing mission critical applications is the ability to protect data in a fully
application consistent manner. One solution is to treat VMs running applications as regular servers and configure
traditional backup agents inside the guest VMs to guarantee application consistent backup. While Simpana®
software does support this approach with source side deduplication for efficient processing, this method may
impose additional burden on the production hosts. Alternately, VADP provides a method to leverage Microsoft
VSS to create application consistent VM snapshots, but application consistency is not guaranteed in all cases.
Simpana® SnapProtect™ for Virtual Servers offers a unique solution to this challenge. VSA integrates with
applications inside virtual machines to ensure the applications are in a consistent state before creating an
EqualLogic snapshot-based recovery copy. This guarantees that the snapshot copy contains an application
consistent representation of the VM image. This is achieved without placing undue burden on the virtual
machine or the ESX host.
The image illustrates how SnapProtect™ for VSA integrates with applications running inside a virtual machine. It
utilizes a lightweight application aware, VSS aware and license free module inside the virtual machine hosting
the application. Before the SnapProtect™ job makes the VM quiescent it interacts with the lightweight module
to prepare the application for backup using VSS. Once the application is ready, SPE invokes PS API to create a
Figure 8: Application Integrated Protection with SnapProtect for VSA.
A CommVault® White Paper
18Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
hardware snapshot of the datastore on the primary EqualLogic storage array. Once the EqualLogic snapshot
creation is complete, the application is released for normal operations and the VM is made un-quiescent.
This whole operation lasts a few minutes. Secondary backup copy operation can then be used to copy the
contents of the snapshot, including the application consistent VM image, to the secondary EqualLogic group.
Applications can be recovered by recovering the application database files and using native application tools to
bring the application back online.
SnapProtect™ for VSA supports Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL and Microsoft SharePoint Database on
virtual machines for VSS consistent protection. In addition, Simpana® software supports log truncation for
Exchange Databases on inside virtual machines that are protected with SnapProtect™ for VSA.
The software module inside the application VM does not actually move any data and uses few resources, if
any, during the protection operation. It does not require special license can be remotely installed and updated.
In addition, it acts as a restore target allowing file-level restores directly to the virtual machine, without the
need to temporarily stage the files being recovered.
Message Level Protection for Exchange
Simpana® software includes ability to provide message level protection for Exchange on VMware virtual
machines. Message level protection for Exchange uses the snapshots created by SnapProtect for VSA as the
source for mailbox backup. This extends all the benefits of snapshot-based off-host protection to Exchange
Mailboxes hosted on virtual machines including:
■ Off-host processing for no impact Mailbox backup. Backup job mounts and extracts
contents from snapshots copies created by the SnapProtect™ jobs automatically
■ Supports message level Full, Incremental and Synthetic (DASH) Full backups
■ All recovery benefits of Mailbox backups including ability to recover individual messages
■ Separate retention for messages, snapshot copies and VMware images, leading to lower
overall storage consumption
■ Enables Content Indexing of e-mails for end-user and compliance search and information management,
without the need for agents inside the virtual machine
It is a common requirement within organizations to retain e-mail messages for significantly longer periods
than backup images. Most VMware backup tools that can only protect VMware images force retention of full
VM images for long periods of time to satisfy e-mail retention needs. This is a wasteful strategy and requires
lot more disks space for backups. As a result, most organizations either do not virtualize Exchange servers,
or if they do virtualize them, use traditional Mailbox backup agents inside the guest VMs, in addition to VADP
backups, imposing additional burden on the Exchange VMs and the underlying ESX servers.
A CommVault® White Paper
19Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
With Message level protection for Exchange, Simpana® software allows businesses to protect and retain
messages separately from the EqualLogic snapshot copies. For example, IT departments can retain snapshot
copies and the associated VM images for short duration (7-14 days) for VM level recovery. Message level
backups can be retained separately on secondary EqualLogic, DL2200 or DX6000 for several months or years,
without the need to preserve the full VM images for the extended duration, leading to significantly less space
overhead. Moreover, all the granular recovery capabilities of mailbox backups are available.
Multiple Recovery Options
Simpana® software enables several recovery options for virtual servers:
Recovery options from EqualLogic snapshots
Full VM Restore: Recover entire virtual machines from the EqualLogic snapshot copies. Simpana® software
automatically and seamlessly mounts the snapshot in question and recovers the selected VMs to the specified
location. The complexities of snapshot related operations (identify, mount, register, unmount) are completely
hidden from end-users.
File Level Restore with Live Browse: Recover files from Windows virtual machines directly from the
EqualLogic snapshot copies. Simpana® software mounts the appropriate snapshot copy and presents a
file-level view of the contents of the selected virtual machine. All storage complexities are masked from
end-users.
Application Level Recovery: Recover application database files using File-Level Live Browse from EqualLogic
snapshot copies.
Exchange Message Level Mining: Recover Exchange Database files to an alternate location using File-Level
Live Browse from an application consistent snapshot copy. Use Offline Mining tool to view and copy individual
messages.
SharePoint Document Level Mining: Recover SharePoint Database files with File-Level Live Browse from
an application-consistent snapshot copy. Use Offline Mining tool to view and copy individual documents.
Full Volume Restore: Recover the entire data store from a snapshot using native EqualLogic tools.
A CommVault® White Paper
20Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Recovery Options from Secondary EqualLogic Copy
Simpana® software supports a wide variety of restore options from secondary disk copies. SnapProtect™ for
VSA and Incremental Forever backups provide similar restore options:
Full VM Restore: Recover entire virtual machines to the original or alternate location.
File Level Restore: Recover individual files directly to the original VM or an alternate location. Supported
for Windows virtual machines and Linux virtual machines with ext3 file systems.
Message Level Recovery: When using SnapProtect™ for VSA and Message Level Protection, Simpana®
software allows message level recovery similar to recovery from traditional Mailbox level backups.
Application Level Recovery: When using SnapProtect™ for VSA and backup copy to secondary
EqualLogic, it is possible to recover application database files to original or alternate location.
The recovery experience is identical whether data is being recovered from a snapshot on the primary
EqualLogic or backup copy on the secondary EqualLogic. The end-user need not know where the data is
residing, only needs to know the data to be recovered. If the recovery point is a snapshot, Simpana® VSA
uses the appropriate PS API calls to mount the snapshots and recover the data. If the recovery point is on
the secondary EqualLogic, Simpana® software presents the same consistent recovery user interface.
Automatic VM Discovery and Automated Data Protection
Given the ease of creating virtual machines, new ones are created all the time, almost always without
the knowledge of the storage or backup admins. The admins, who are tasked with ensuring all data in the
environment is protected, have to spend an inordinate amount of time every day identifying new virtual
machines and their owners, determining their purpose and deducing their data protection and retention
policy. These manual tasks lead to tremendous loss of productivity and wastage of time that could otherwise
have been spent on projects that help drive business growth.
Simpana® VSA includes the ability to automatically discover new virtual machines based on pre-defined rules
and transparently add them to data protection policies. This ensures virtual machines are protected even
though administrators have no knowledge about their existence. Wide variety of auto-discovery rules are
available that, allow administrators to fine tune discovery policies that best meet their needs. There is even a
catch-all policy to ensure VMs that do not meet any of the pre-defined criteria are protected nevertheless.
With this option, administrators can set the discovery rules once and never have to bother spending a minute
on looking for new virtual machines to protect. This can save hours per person, a time that can be utilized for
more fruitful activities.
A CommVault® White Paper
21Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Figure 9: Automatic Discovery Rules
The most commonly used rule for SnapProtect™ is the Data Store Affinity rule that groups all VMs in
the datastore in a single data protection policy, or subclient. This ensures that when a datastore LUN
is snapped all the virtual machines hosted in that data store are in a consistent state, eliminating the
possibility of “dirty” VM image within the recovery copy. The data store affinity rules also allows the
backup copy process to distribute the workload of copying data blocks equally across all LUNs without
excessively over-burdening any particular LUN.
Benefits of Virtual Machine AutoProtection Include:
■ Increased IT staff productivity, freeing up more time for administrators to drive business critical
projects that drive revenue
■ Effective workload distribution ensures best possible use of storage LUNs without overwhelming
any single one, allowing production processes to run with minimal impact
Reference Architecture for Virtualization Building Block
This section describes 3 reference architectures for the Converged Virtual Infrastructure building block.
Each of the reference architecture provides a different level of scalability and capacity and can be
combined to build an environment of desired size. Each building block, regardless of the size, contains
an integrated data protection solution with Simpana® software.
Small Reference Architecture
Designed for the small data center that is in the initial stages of virtualization. Optimized to enable
virtualization of non-critical, non-application servers.
A CommVault® White Paper
22Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Possible Virtual Machine configuration
# of VMs per ESX Total # of VMs Avg. VM size (GB) Avg. VM Ram (GB) Description
28-35 200-250 60-100 2-4 Number of VMs is constrained by how much memory is available on each blade and the number of cores. Typical VMware environ-ments contain 4 server class VMs per core.
Server and Storage Configuration
Device Role Qty Configuration/Description
Server Configuration
MD1000e Blade Enclosure 1
PE M710 Production ESX Servers 7 48-9 GB RAM per blade
Primary ESX servers
PE M610 ESX Server/Utility Blade 1 96 GB RAM Optional vCenter, optional Simpana® CommServe®, SAN Management software (SANHQ)
PE M610 ESX Server/Data Protection Utility Blade
1 96 GB RAM ESX Proxy running Simpana® VSA and MediaAgent with integrated deduplication
Storage Configuration
PS 6510X Primary Storage 1 28.8 TB, ~24 TB usable
About 20% usable space (4 TB) is reserved for snapshots, VMware swap files and Simpana® DDB volume. This leaves about 20 TB of storage for VMs
PS 6010XV Alternate Primary Storage
2-3 19.2 to 28.8 TB, ~15 to ~24 TB usable
20% usable is reserved for snapshots, VMware swap files and Simpana® DDB. Use when VMs run critical apps demanding high IO performance
PS 6010E Secondary Storage 1 32 TB, ~28 TB usable
Used as backup target. Present 2 TB LUNs to Simpana® VSA/MA virtual machine
Medium Reference Architecture
Possible Virtual Machine configuration
# of VMs per ESX Total # of VMs Avg. VM size (GB) Avg. VM Ram (GB) Description
50-70 400-500 60-100 2-8 Number of VMs is constrained by how much memory is available on each blade and the number of cores. Typical VMware environ-ments contain 4 server class VMs per core
A CommVault® White Paper
23Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Server and Storage Configuration
Device Role Qty Configuration/Description
Server Configuration
MD1000e Blade Enclosure 1
PE M710 Production ESX Servers 7 144 GB RAM per blade
Primary ESX servers
PE M610 Alternate Production ESX Servers
14 48-96 GB RAM per blade
Alternative to the M710s. Can also use a combination of M610 and M710 depending on desired VM density
PE M610 ESX Server/Utility Blade 1 96 GB RAM Optional vCenter, optional Simpana® CommServe®, SAN Management software (SAN HQ)
PE M610 ESX Server/Data Protection Utility Blade
1 96 GB RAM ESX Proxy running Simpana® VSA and MediaAgent with integrated deduplication
Storage Configuration
PS 6510X Primary Storage 2 57.6 TB, ~48 TB usable
About 20% usable space (8 TB) is reserved for snapshots, VMware swap files and Simpana® DDB volume. This leaves about 40 TB of storage for VMs
PS 6010 XV Alternate Primary Storage
5-6 48 to 57.6 TB, ~42 to ~48 TB usable
20% usable is reserved for snapshots, VMware swap files and Simpana® DDB. Use when VMs run critical apps demanding high IO performance
PS 6510E Secondary Storage 1 48 to 96 TB, ~40 to 80 TB usable
Used as backup target. Present 2 TB LUNs to Simpana® VSA/MA virtual machine
PS 6010XV or PS 6010XVS
Deduplication Database storage (optional)
1 4.8 TB Used to store Simpana® deduplication database if primary storage capacity is constrained
Large Reference Architecture
Possible Virtual Machine configuration
# of VMs per ESX Total # of VMs Avg. VM size (GB) Avg. VM Ram (GB) Description
130-165 800-1000 60-100 4-16 Number of VMs is constrained by how much memory is available on each blade and the number of cores. Typical VMware environ-ments contain 4 server class VMs per core
A CommVault® White Paper
24Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Server and Storage Configuration
Device Role Qty Configuration/Description
Server Configuration
MD1000e Blade Enclosure 1
PE M910 Production ESX Servers 6 256-512 GB RAM per blade
Primary ESX servers
PE M610 ESX Server/Utility Blade 1 96 GB RAM Optional vCenter, optional Simpana® CommServe®, SAN Management software (SAN HQ)
PE M610 ESX Server/Data Protec-tion Utility Blade
3 96 GB RAM per blade
ESX Proxy running Simpana® VSA and MediaAgent with integrated deduplication
Storage Configuration
PS 6010XV or PS 6010XVS
Deduplication Database Storage
1 4.8 TB Used for hosting DDB for the multiple Simpana® MAs that participate in deduplication
PS 6510X Primary Storage 4 115.2 TB, ~96 TB usable
About 20% usable space (16 TB) is reserved for snapshots, VMware swap files and Simpana® DDB volume. This leaves about 80 TB of storage for VMs
PS 6010 XV Additional Primary Storage
2-3 19.2 to 28.8 TB, ~15 to ~24 TB usable
Use for VMs running critical apps that demanding high IO performance
PS 6510E Secondary Storage 2 96 to 192 TB, ~80 to 160 TB usable
Used as backup target. Present 2 TB LUNs to Simpana® VSA/MA virtual machines
Performance Summary
Dell and CommVault conducted extensive performance benchmark tests on the Medium Reference Architecture
to highlight the capabilities of the integrated EqualLogic and CommVault® solution for the Converged Virtual
Infrastructure. Some highlights include:
■ Protect 500 virtual machines in 30 minutes with SnapProtect™ and EqualLogic snapshots
■ A single Simpana® Virtual Server Agent can protect 500 VMs in a daily 8-hour window
(assuming incremental forever backups)
■ Deduplication accelerated DASH Full complete in 8 hours for all 500 virtual machines
Test Details
The tests were run for an environment equivalent to the Medium Reference Architecture described above.
The virtual machines were configured as follows:
# # of VMs per ESX Size of each VM # of Data Stores Total Data Size
500 30 GB 15 15 TB
A CommVault® White Paper
25Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Space on each virtual machine was about 90% full with representative data that was unique to the virtual
machine to simulate real world conditions. The only common content across all 500 virtual machines was
the operating system binaries.
Simpana® Virtual Server Agent (VSA) and MediaAgent (MA) are configured on a virtual machine on a dedicated
Utility Blade. This single Simpana® VSA is able to protect all 500 virtual machines in the converged infrastructure.
Simpana® VSA integrates with the PS APIs to create persistent snapshot based recovery copies in the Primary
EqualLogic Group. VSA also uses VADP to create backup copies on the secondary EqualLogic Group for longer
retention.
Test Results: SnapProtect™ for VSA
This sequence of tests measures the performance when using SnapProtect™ for VSA along with EqualLogic
snapshots to protect 500 virtual machines. This sequence also measures the time required and the throughput
to create deduplicated secondary backup copies on the secondary EqualLogic array. The following table
summarizes the results:
Job Type Time Average
Processing Rate
Description
SnapProtect™ for VSA 30 minutes - Make quiescent 500 virtual machines across 15 jobs, engage PS API to create a datastore level hardware snapshot and thaw the VMs. 15 jobs completed in 30 mins
Full Secondary Copy 24 hours 625 GB/hr Copy the contents of hardware snapshots to the secondary EqualLogic. Deduplication occurs inline. Usually done once a week or once a month
Incremental Secondary Copy
8 hours - Copy changed blocks from previously created hardware snapshots using VADP and CBT to the secondary EqualLogic
Test Results: Incremental Forever with DASH Full
This sequence of tests measures the performance when using Incremental forever protection strategy with
DASH full to backup 500 virtual machines to the secondary EqualLogic storage. Hardware snapshots on the
primary storage are not used in this case. The following table summarizes the results:
Job Type Time Average
Processing Rate
Description
First Full Backup 30 hours 500 GB/hr First full backup using VADP. Since the data has never been backed up (or deduplicated before) the throughput is relatively low
Incremental Backup 8 hours - The default backup policy, uses Change Block Tracking to backup only changed blocks from VMs
DASH Full 9 hours 1,667 GB/hr Creates a periodic consolidated Full. Can be run once a week to mimic the traditional weekend full, daily incremental schedule. Run bi-weekly or once a month, if at all. Typically used when selective Full copies are required on tier 3 disk media, on tape or on cloud
A CommVault® White Paper
26Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Beyond the Numbers
The intention of the performance tests described above is to identify resources sufficient to accomplish data
protection tasks for converged virtual infrastructure within a typical operating window. The results are not by any
means an indication of any performance limitations of the EqualLogic PS arrays or Simpana® software. If higher
performance is desired, the peer storage architecture of EqualLogic arrays ensures additional storage controllers
can be added seamlessly and easily without any disruption.
Similarly, the modular and linearly scalable nature of Simpana® software allows you to dramatically improve
performance by simply introducing additional Simpana® Virtual Server Agents (VSA) and MediaAgents (MA). For
instance, by adding a second VSA/MediaAgent in the converged virtual infrastructure building block, the average
processing rate can be doubled and the time take can be cut in half for an environment with 500 virtual machines.
Scaling it up
Each building block in the Converged Virtual Infrastructure is an independent entity with data protection
capabilities built in. By adding additional building blocks, not only do you increase the size of the virtual
environment but you also add means to protect the larger infrastructure. The Simpana® VSA included in each
converged infrastructure building block ensure that data protection capacity scales linearly along with the
infrastructure. With each Simpana® VSA protecting VMs in its own block and all the Simpana® agents working
in parallel, the time to protect the virtual machines within this stack remains constant. For example, 500 VMs
in a single block is backed up in 8 hours by a single Simpana® VSA. 1000 VMs in two blocks with two Simpana®
VSAs will also be backed up in 8 hours. The following table summarizes the effect of stacking multiple building
blocks and the time required for data protection.
1 Building Block 2 Building Blocks 3 Building Blocks 4 Building Blocks
# of VMs @ 30 GB 500 1000 1500 2000
# of VMs @ 50 GB 300 600 900 1200
Data store size 15 TB 30 TB 45 TB 60 TB
# of Simpana® VSA 1 2 3 4
SnapProtect™ for VSA
Snapshot Copy Time 30 mins 30 mins 30 mins 30 mins
Full Backup Copy Time 24 hours 24 hours 24 hours 24 hours
Full Backup Copy Throughput 625 GB/hr 1,250 GB/hr 1,875 GB/hr 2,500 GB/hr
Incremental Backup Copy Time 8 hours 8 hours 8 hours 8 hours
Incremental Forever with
DASH Full
First Backup Time 30 hours 30 hours 30 hours 30 hours
First Backup Throughput 500 GB/hr 1,000 GB/hr 1,500 GB/hr 2,000 GB/hr
Incremental Backup Time 8 hours 8 hours 8 hours 8 hours
DASH Full Time 9 hours 9 hours 9 hours 9 hours
DASH Full Throughput 1,667 GB/hr 3,333 GB/hr 5,000 GB/hr 6,667 GB/hr
A CommVault® White Paper
27Copyright ®2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
As the table indicates, additional building blocks increase the infrastructure required to host more
virtual machines. However, the time taken to protect this larger virtual environment remains constant.
This is because each building block contains its own Simpana® data protection capabilities built in. The
predictability of this model makes it extremely easy to plan for and deploy converged virtual infrastructure
that will scale to meet the virtualization requirements of the largest of environments.
Summary
The Converged Virtual Infrastructure Block includes all the components necessary to successfully and
reliably deploy a virtual data center. Each building block includes high level of hardware component
redundancy, built-in 10 Gb networking and EqualLogic Peer Storage architecture for unprecedented
availability. The fully integrated Simpana® software, with ability to protect hundreds of virtual servers
in minutes, provides level and scale of protection and recovery for the building block unmatched in the
industry. Each self-contained, self-protected and self-managed building block allows businesses the ability
to rapidly shift to a modern and agile data center.
www.commvault.com ■ 888.746.3849 ■ E-mail: [email protected] Worldwide Headquarters ■ 2 Crescent Place ■ e, NJ 07757 ■ 888-746-3849 ■ Fax: 732-870-4525 CommVault Regional Offices: United States ■ Europe ■ Middle East & Africa ■ Asia-Pacific ■ Latin America & Caribbean ■ Canada ■ India ■ Oceania
©1999-2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. CommVault, CommVault and logo, the “CV” logo, CommVault Systems, Solving Forward, SIM, Singular Information Management, Simpana, CommVault Galaxy, Unified Data Management, QiNetix, Quick Recovery, QR, CommNet, GridStor, Vault Tracker, InnerVault, QuickSnap, QSnap, SnapProtect, Recovery Director, CommServe, CommCell, RO-MS and CommValue are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems, Inc. All other third party brands, products, service names, trademarks, or registered service marks are the property of and used to identify the products or services of their respective owners. All specifications are subject to change without notice.