Actifio: Your Last Backup Modernization, Ever.

Transcription

1 Actifio: Your Last Backup Modernization, Ever

2 Actifio: Your Last Backup Modernization, Ever. Data is the lifeblood of your business. Protecting that data and accessing it when you need to, as fast as you need to is still harder than it should be. For decades, organizations have tolerated the pain of backup as a business necessity; an insurance policy paid for in significant capital outlays, tedious maintenance requirements, and limited flexibility. Today, as the pace of business accelerates and the scale of data increases, more and more companies are looking to modernize their backup processes, in hopes of both improving performance and reducing cost. Many are actually engaged in a third, fourth, or even fifth attempt at modernization, with each successive generation promising long-term benefit in and delivering near-term disruption. Why is this? The short answer is the lure of incrementalism. The same storage vendors roll out their new offerings, shiny new interfaces on architectures developed for tape in the 1980 s. Their idea of modernizing a horse is to provide a younger horse. That sets up the need for a new horse down the road great if you re the guy selling horses, but bad if you re a customer looking to buy an automobile. Actifio is that automobile a break with the past, a next-gen data management model designed from the ground up to protect, access, and move data through it s full lifecycle, and not just for the comparatively short time it lives in production. Actifio virtualizes the data that s the lifeblood of businesses in more than 30 countries around the world. Its Virtual Data Pipeline technology enables businesses to protect, access, and move their data faster, more efficiently, and more simply by decoupling data from physical storage, much the same way a hypervisor decouples compute from physical servers. For enterpriseclass backup modernization, self-serve instant data access, or service provider business transformation, Actifio is the first and only choice for radically simple copy data virtualization. Traditional Backup Think about it. Today s legacy backup vendors were architected decades ago, for a slower-moving world focused on infrastructure, and for holding data on magnetic tape. Tape was a cost effective medium, but it led to slow restores, a high percentage of backup and restoration failures, and high operational costs. As disk-based deduplication appliances began replacing tape, data was locked into proprietary formats, and recovery time objectives slowed. Storage-based snapshots helped customers achieve faster restores in their primary data centers, but as applications rose in importance so did the need for disaster recovery, and remote locations multiplied. Storage replication and host based replication technologies were added to replicate native format data into Disaster Recovery (DR) sites, and then into the cloud. As virtualization took hold, still more new technologies were bolted on. DR orchestration tools were added, then WAN Optimizers, then SLA Managers. As customers realized they needed access to data for analytics, compliance, and application testing, still more licenses were piled on, along with more copies, more storage, more certifications, more complexity, and more failure points to be obsessed over by more people whose time could be better spent advancing the goals of the business instead of administering to the needs of the technology. Now this painfully complex, siloed, and broadly distributed tangle of technology is what you need to modernize. Odds are you already know they way you ve done things for the last 30 years won t work for the next 30, no matter how much the UI has improved. The road to a new approach is paved with an understanding of what the business need today, its emerging requirements and not just its legacy infrastructure. To understand what makes Actifio different, you first need to look at how providers of traditional backup are really all the same. Architected for the Cloud World RAID System Netbackup TSM Bill Clinton Elected Saddam Captured YouTube Launches Founded actifio.com Actifio: Your Last Backup Backup Modernization, Ever. 2

3 Requirements for the Next Generation of Data Protection With hundreds of enterprise customers across verticals from manufacturing and healthcare to finance and government, Actifio understands the multiple facets and needs of data protection. Scalability, consistency, data control, and ease-of-use are all fundamental needs while being able to efficiently and effectively recover data and applications. There are many key requirements that need to be satisfied projects that will truly improve data protection: 1 Short Backup Windows 2 Low Impact on Production Apps 3 Storage Efficiency 4 Point-in-Time Recovery 5 Fast, Efficient Restorations Minimize the time it takes to capture and copy data from your application to the data protection appliance Need to keep production applications running at top performance, even during backup windows Deduplicate and compress as much as possible without sacrificing data access times Recover data from a past point-in-time Ability to restore anything from a lost file to the entire datacenter from the same platform 6 Low RTO Downtime exponentially costs money. Need to minimize the time it takes to recover applications with complete automation When organizations are looking to modernize their backup and DR, they don t want to collect and use numerous point tools from multiple vendors; they want to satisfy all of the above needs with one platform from one vendor. Modernize with Actifio s Copy Data Virtualization Actifio s enterprise-class Copy Data Virtualization platform delivers the resiliency your business needs across all the different ways you need it: backup, snapshot, DR, and test/dev, all with enterprise-class performance and scalability. Actifio Virtual Data PipelineTM (VDP) technology delivers application-centric, SLA-driven automation to data protection in which VDP consolidates all of the copies used for data protection and all of the tools used into a single, easy to use interface. The result is a single, radically simple solution efficiently virtualizing all copies of production data for data protection, application development and test, analytics, and more. Actifio VDP manages all of your data protection and recovery through a single platform, from only one golden copy of your production data. Actifio s approach to properly Capture, Manage, and Use data is Radically Simple. Capture Actifio VDP performs a deep discovery of applications, databases, Virtual Machines (VM), volumes, and file systems. Actifio uses the most efficient way possible to capture the data. Data is captured only incrementally and at the block level. Actifio then offers you the option to transport the data over LAN or SAN. This technology is the industry s fastest, most efficient and scalable method of data capture, significantly reducing the traditional backup window while delivering efficiencies previously impossible using traditional technology. 7 Compliance Many industries have specific regulations that may require the organization to stand-up a database or application at a past point-in-time for analytics or forensic analysis or retain data for multiple years 8 Leverage Cloud Economics Organizations are looking to leverage cloud to vault data and recover applications. CAPTURES Oracle DBs and apps Microsoft SQL Virtual Machines File systems Business applications Volumes Physical or virtual Popular or custom DB SAP From Oracle Exadata or Dataguard FIGURE 1 Actifio Radically Simple Data Virtualization actifio.com Actifio: Your Last Backup Backup Modernization, Ever. 3

4 FIGURE 2 Architectural Overview Manage Actifio VDP manages changed blocks in such a way that, even though it does incremental forever backups, a point in time full virtual copy can be synthesized in a near instant fashion for instant recovery. Based on user driven SLAs, Actifio will retain data for the specified duration in primary and remote data center, deduplicate the data for long term retention, and replicate the data to a remote site for disaster recovery. Use Actifio VDP delivers the unique capability of enabling applications to immediately use point-in-time copy data, without the need for a traditional restore operation. Data from any available point-in-time can be accessed on any authorized system for recovery of lost data or restore applications and its data to its original location or migrate and recover to a new location. Architectural Overview Each of the 7 steps in Figure 2 is explained in detail below. 1. Actifio offers data protection for wide variety of platforms such as: a. Physical servers including Windows, Linux, AIX, Solaris, HPUX b. Applications including Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint, SAP, Oracle E-Business Suite c. Databases including Microsoft SQL and Oracle d. Virtualization platforms such as VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, Amazon AWS. e. Such a wide platform support ensures that organizations can replace multiple point tools (one for VMware, one for physical, one for AWS) with a single Actifio platform. 2. Actifio performs incremental forever backups using the most appropriate method possible depending on the application/server type. Examples include: database native APIs, VMware VADP (for Change Block Tracking - CBT), or Actifio connector filter driver based CBT. The incremental forever approach applies for multi TB databases as well. This ensures that mission critical database systems have a drastically reduced backup window, storage IO, network IO, and less CPU and memory utilization during backups. This method allows the production databases to operate at optimal performance and becomes more scalable. 3. Actifio stores data in the data s native format in VDP s snap pool (a storage area carved out from the storage LUN that you allocate to the Actifio appliance). Actifio VDP synthesizes a virtual full image from each of the incremental backups. Thus, when you need to access a multi-tb database, volume or a VM, Actifio VDP can provision the data instantly by mounting data over Fiber Channel (FC) or iscsi. 4. Based on administrator SLAs, Actifio VDP can retain data for days, weeks, months, or even years. This is done through data deduplication globally across all data within that Actifio appliance. Actifio VDP stores the deduplicated data in a dedup pool. This is a storage area carved out from the storage LUNs that you allocate to Actifio. 5. SLAs can also determine how often to replicate. Actifio VDP then replicates deduplicated and compressed data over WAN with encryption to another Actifio appliance at a remote site. The remote site could be a remote data center, an Actifio powered Managed Service Provider, or Amazon AWS using an Actifio appliance. Multiple sites can replicate to a single Actifio appliance at remote site further optimizing global deduplication. 6. At the remote site, based on administrator SLAs, Actifio can efficiently store data for days, weeks, months, and years on disk. You could also choose to restore data from the dedup pool at remote site or perform disaster recoveries from this dedup pool at DR site. However, in this case data will have to be rehydrated from the dedup pool to DR servers / VMs. 7. To achieve low RTO DR, the administrator can specify a policy that will automatically rehydrate data so that it is in ready state in the snap pool at DR site. Thus every time an incremental backup happens at primary site, when those incremental blocks reach dedup pool at DR site, they will also be rehydrated automatically as an available image in the snap pool. This ensures that you not only achieve low RTO DR since the data is in a ready state; but the data is transported over WAN only once. This process can eliminate storage based replication and WAN acceleration products. For VMware environments, Actifio Resiliency Director allows users to create custom DR plans and with click of a button hundreds or thousands of VMs are automatically recovered. This modernized architecture ensures that you solve your data protection needs for a wide variety of platforms with a single tool in the most efficient manner. actifio.com Actifio: Your Last Backup Backup Modernization, Ever. 4

5 FIGURE 3 Data Protection for VMware Data Protection for Microsoft SQL and Oracle Databases The Figure 4 outlines the process of how Actifio protects multi-tb databases efficiently with an incremental forever approach. Actifio VDP uses Oracle RMAN Level 1 Incremental Merge to perform incremental forever data capture. For Microsoft SQL, a lightweight Actifio connector with filter driver keeps track of changed blocks in the database. Microsoft VSS is leveraged to endure application consistent backups. Even though Actifio capture is ESX VM VM' VM" incremental forever, it synthesizes a point in time virtual full for instant use. This approach, even for multi-tb databases, ensures that the backup window is small, CPU and memory utilization is low, storage and network IO is low on mission critical production database servers. Actifio also offers the flexibility to do backups and restores over fiber channel or LAN. FIGURE 4 Data protection for Microsoft SQL and Oracle Databases Even though each backup is incremental, Actifio synthesizes a PIT (point-in-time) virtual full. 1. Take VMware snapshot 2. First backup is a full backup 3. Actifio takes an internal snapshot DB DB' DB SERVER 4. Release VMware snapshot. Incremental Forever begins 5. Take VMware snapshot 6. Incremental Backup happens 7. Incremental Merge happens 8. Actifio takes an internal snapshot. PIT Synthetic Full is ready Even though each backup is incremental, Actifio synthesizes a PIT (point-in-time) virtual full. Data Protection for VMware The Figure 3 outlines the process of how Actifio performs Agentless VMware based backup. Actifio VDP leverages VMware VADP API s to perform application consistent snapshots and changed block tracking. After an initial full (one time only) ingest, only changed blocks are sent, updating the golden image. Even though Actifio capture is incremental forever, it synthesizes a point in time virtual full for instant use. Actifio can be deployed as a physical appliance or a VMware virtual appliance to protect VMware virtual machines. 1. Mount staging disk on DB server 2. Snapshot using DB API (VSS for SQL, RMAN for Oracle) 3. Copy and merge changed blocks. Changed blocks are tracked using Actifio Driver for SQL Oracle RMAN Image Copy + Incr Merge 4. Un Mount staging disk on DB server 5. Actifio takes an internal snapshot. PIT Synthetic Full is ready Actifio eliminates recurring full Backups for multi -TB DBs; This frees up CPU, memory, storage IO, network IO on your mission-critical production applications. actifio.com Actifio: Your Last Backup Backup Modernization, Ever. 5

6 Near Instant Recoveries for Multiple Use Cases Actifio VDP creates and updates a single golden image of data, tracking each point-in-time based on an SLA. Actifio provides data virtualization technology that can synthesize and mount a virtual full image nearly instantaneously. Actifio presents a writable virtual copy to any virtual machine or physical server using iscsi or Fiber Channel protocol. It does not matter whether it s a 200 GB file system or an 80 TB database; Actifio VDP makes those data sets accessible in a near instant fashion. See Figure 5. Multiple IT users can leverage Actifio in a self-service fashion to provision multiple re-writable virtual copies of production data sets instantly. These virtual copies can be leveraged for multiple use cases such as restores, data integrity checks, run business analytics, reporting, pre-production\ staging testing for new patches, and dev-test. These writable virtual copies are storage efficient and scalable for the various use cases mentioned in customer s data centers or public cloud such as AWS or Actifio and VMware powered cloud service providers. Data Protection for Large NAS Servers Actifio Big Data Director (BDD) brings a new level of copy data virtualization scalability and protection. Protecting large-scale NAS servers with Actifio, saves money and gains operational efficiency with the ability to rapidly recover data to the individual dataset. BDD provides Actifio customers with an efficient platform for capturing, archiving, moving, and recovering large file systems from NAS servers, which have large unstructured datasets that can scale to PBs. Datasets have the ability to be instantly mounted from BDD giving organizations nearly immediate recovery of lost files, while saving money by eliminating a need for expensive system redundancy. See Figure 6. Actifio BDD is simply the fastest and easiest way to recover your unstructured data when and where you need it. This appliance is an on-premise solution to protect and instantly recover data locally or to your remote office with the click of a button. FIGURE 5 Near Instant Virtual Copies FIGURE 6 Data Protection for Large NAS Servers CLIENT HOSTS Multi-TB DB recovered instantly, writable and scalable BDD POINT IN TIME ISILON OR NETAPP NAS CHANGED FILES CDS FIGURE 7 Long-Term Data Retention LOCATION INDEPENDENCE All restores are submitted from here independent of where data exists FLEXIBLE RETENTION Retain Daily, Weekly, Monthly, and even Yearly backups LTDR Retain data for multiple years APPLICATIONS PRIMARY SITE REMOTE SITE B/W EFFICIENT RESTORES Only blocks that don t exist at Primary site are pulled from remote site actifio.com Actifio: Your Last Backup Backup Modernization, Ever. 6

7 Long-Term Data Retention Data is typically stored in a ready to use state for fast, efficient access. This data can also be deduplicated and compressed for long-term retention locally. Based on your Service Level Agreements, images will be stored as a storage efficient point-in-time image and stored for as long as needed based on the organization s needs or compliance obligations. Due to global deduplication, blocks of data are only stored once. If they already exist, there is no need to compress and store those blocks again increasing storage efficiency further. See Figure 7. Data can be replicated and vaulted to a remote location, or to an Actifio compatible cloud such as Amazon or a VMware based Cloud Service Provider. Disaster Recovery Automation With Actifio Resiliency Director, you can achieve non-disruptive, automated recovery and have the ability to test your recovery plans. Executing a full-scale application and associated VM recovery is a complex task that spans data, network, and compute. Application dependencies, timing and sequence of recovery, and large scale datasets create enormous pressure on recovering within a required timeframe, with assurance of an ability to resume operations. Businesses of all sizes require a solution that can simply automate the most complex application recovery operation, while helping reduce operating and capital costs associated with delivering business resiliency. Actifio Resiliency Director, delivers rich automation and orchestration across storage, server, and network. The result: peace of mind and assured recovery for even the most complex application environments. See Figure 8. FIGURE 8 Disaster Recovery Automation DR PLAN COLLECT VM METADATA Collects CPU, memory, network, port group info; and replicates metadata to RD at remote site CREATE DR PLANS Web browser login to RD. Create one or more DR plans RD COLLECTOR RESILIENCY DIRECTOR PRIMARY SITE REMOTE SITE Actifio CDS / Sky does the actual replication. RD is primarily a DR orchestration tool EXECUTE DR PLAN Login. Choose a DR plan. Execute. Recoveries are completely automated actifio.com Modernize Your Backup Once and for All 7

8 COPY DATA VIRTUALIZATION BENEFITS Organizations no longer have to live with the pain of backup and backup restoration when implanting a better approach Copy Data Virtualization from Actifio. By taking a fresh look at data protection and implementing new advanced technology methods, organizations can achieve: 1 Near Instant Access Actifio has the data virtualization technology that can synthesize and mount a virtual full image nearly instantaneously. 2 Incremental Forever Full backups are never again required after initial injest. Only changes made are captured and merged with the golden image. Your Data Protection Before and After Actifio DATABASE PROTECTION BEFORE AFTER Backup Window for Multi TB DBs Large Small DB backup mode duration Large Small CPU & Memory utilization Large Small Storage IO Large Small Network IO Large Small Data movement LAN only Log backups Maybe Option for FC or LAN 3 Changed Block Tracking VDP will track changes made to your data in the most efficient way possible depending on the application an/or database type and based on administrator defined Service Level Agreements (SLAs). 4 Point-in-time Full Images When you need to restore lost or corrupt data, you can accomplish this immediately by selecting the image of a known good point-in-time. There is no need to restore a full backup, and then roll the changes from an incremental. 5 Writable, Scalable Images Mounted images are all read / writable with capability to have many images operating simultaneously. Production can be run from the Actifio appliance allowing for very fast PTO. INSTANT RECOVERY BEFORE AFTER Access time for a multi TB volume, DB, VM Multiple copies of DB, VM, volume instantly Are instant virtual copies writable? Are instant virtual copies scalable? Large Not Possible Maybe No Instant Instant virtual copies Protect virtual copies instantly Not Possible VMWARE PROTECTION BEFORE AFTER 6 Heterogeneous Environments Downtime exponentially cost money. Need to minimize the time it takes to recover. Scales to hundreds, thousands of VMs Maybe 7 Low RTO DR Actifio VDP can work in your environment whether your applications are physical, virtual, running in the cloud or most likely mixed environments using the same appliance. 8 Storage Efficiency Actifio VDP keeps a single golden image of your data and only tracks the changes between points in time. This results in very little storage usage as duplicate data is only stored once. Global Deduplication Maybe Policy / SLA based Maybe Agentless Maybe Option to have DB specific agents Data Transport Mechanism Maybe LAN; Maybe FC (Actifio Connector) LAN, iscsi, and FC Option 9 Global Deduplication Data can be deduplicated and compressed for long-term retention locally or at a remote location meeting your data protection and compliance needs. DISASTER RECOVERY RTO BEFORE AFTER Another point tool needed for low RTO DR via replication product No WAN Optimization Dedup Async Replication technology is an efficient way to move or migrate data between locations or Another point tool needed for DR Orchestration No to the cloud. All data is deduplicatyed and compressed before replication. Bandwidth Usage 2x - backup and replication products Low Change Notification when VM config changes No actifio.com Actifio: Your Last Backup Backup Modernization, Ever. 8

9 Leverage Cloud Economics Actifio VDP can be delivered as a virtual appliance, a physical appliance. As a result, organizations can take advantage of the economics of cloud for data protection, long-term retention, vaulting, application retirement or to even protect your cloud-based data center with an enterprise-scale backup and data protection solution from Actifio. For example, Actifio VDP can be delivered within Amazon Web Services (AWS) as an appliance to backup AWS based compute environments, or as a replication target for DR or backup to the cloud. Similarly, organizations can use one of the many VMware based service providers that power their DR services with Actifio. Actifio customers gain benefit from Actifio powered cloud environments: About Actifio Actifio virtualizes the data that s the lifeblood of businesses in more than 30 countries around the world. Its Virtual Data Pipeline technology enables businesses to protect, access, and move their data faster, more efficiently, and more simply by decoupling data from physical storage, much the same way a hypervisor decouples compute from physical servers. For enterpriseclass backup modernization, self-serve instant data access, or service provider business transformation, Actifio is the first and only choice for radically simple copy data virtualization. For more, visit actifio.com, or follow us on 1. SPEED: Spin up a multi TB Vault & DR environment within few hours 2. ZERO CAPEX: Actifio and cloud Infrastructure and on-demand recoveries 3. SECURE: Encryption at rest, in transit, dedicated Actifio instance MSP NETWORK: Choose any of over 50 service providers who have Actifio powered vault and DR services Summary Actifio is the last backup modernization you ll ever need. It delivers foreseeable future-proof data protection application-centric but use case- and infrastructure-agnostic data management to solve an exasperating problem in a totally new way. It will dramatically accelerate RTO while reducing total cost of ownership and ongoing operational complexity, eliminating the need for point tools piled on point tools across vendors of backup software and servers, specialized deduplication systems, disaster recovery orchestration, and archive repositories. Managing copy data on a single, dedicated system of record will improve control and accelerate the performance of your production environment, freeing up expensive primary storage, bandwidth, and man-time. The time has come for a new approach. Virtualizing your copy data will save you time, money, and complexity by creating a single golden copy available anywhere instantly, streamlining IT infrastructure and operations. Replace your legacy data protection methods with a radically simple system and allows data management to function at unprecedented scale and performance levels, and you ll fix your backup problem once and for all. Or you can go buy a new horse, and hope for the best. The choice is yours take charge, with Actifio. For additional information, visit Actifio at actifio.com or contact Actifio at info@actifio.com or actifio.com Actifio: Your Last Backup Backup Modernization, Ever. 9