Storage vendors push data protection at VMworld

By Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer 15 Sep 2008 | SearchDataBackup.com

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Backup software streamlines recovery for virtual machines

Symantec's process of sharing intellectual property between its NetBackup and Backup Exec product teams began bearing fruit earlier this year, and now Backup Exec 12.5 has drawn from NetBackup's access to VMware APIs to offer VMware backup without the need for separate agents on each guest host. Backup Exec's Granular Recovery Technology (GRT) also allows customers to make full-machine and file-level restores from a single-pass backup.

Hewlett-Packard is integrating the Zero Downtime Backup and Instant Recovery features in its Data Protector software with VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) to offer backup from EVA clone images of data, rather than production servers. Like Symantec's Backup Exec, Data Protector previously required agents on each virtual machine.

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"You're going to see all backup vendors doing this, and many of them already have it done," said Taneja Group analyst Eric Burgener of increased integration with VCB. Backup Exec 12.5 also contains what Burgener termed "incremental improvements," such as snapshot integration with SQL 2008 and support for remote Linux servers. Backup Exec System Recovery (BESR) 8.5 has new features including "cold imaging" for nonbootable or corrupt file systems and support for the latest versions of ESX server.

Cutting disaster recovery hardware costs with virtual offerings

Vendors in the replication, hosted backup and disaster recovery space are simplifying offerings using virtual servers, rather than physical ones. Double-Take is rebranding its Server Recovery Option software for physical and virtual machine system restore as LiveWire and positioning it as a separate product. LiveWire will allow customers to restore data and system images to virtual servers without requiring them to have a preinstalled copy of the Windows operating system, which is still required for recovering servers to physical hardware.

Managed service provider Consonus announced a new partnership with backup software maker Asigra and Symantec for BESR that will allow it to offer a turnkey disaster recovery service to users that recovers data and systems to virtual machines, minimising hardware compatibility issues.

Virtual appliances and VMware-compatible SANs

With version 6 of its IPStor software suite announced earlier this year FalconStor Software said its software will run on any type of server hardware or operating system, including as a virtual machine. The virtual version of its Network Storage Server (NSS) storage virtualisation appliance was positioned as a target for remote office backup and disaster recovery because the storage server with replication and application-aware snapshots could be run on the same server as other applications.

At VMworld, FalconStor disclosed VMware has certified this approach to ROBO disaster recovery and data protection. NSS snapshots are also integrated now with Virtual Center to quiesce applications for transaction consistency.

LeftHand Networks, which certified its Virtual SAN Appliances (VSA) with VMware last year, positions its product in much the same way. But according to Gartner analyst Dave Russell, the two companies are approaching their offerings from different sides of the storage infrastructure; LeftHand by extending its replication among clustered storage nodes to virtual SANs based on internal server storage and FalconStor by certifying backup-specific technologies, such as continuous data protection (CDP) and snapshots with VMware.

"If users are really concerned about traditional backup and recovery -- the ability to pull single files out of backups and perform recovery in a consistent, quiesced state through server-based software agents -- the FalconStor product will probably be a better fit," Russell said. "For LeftHand, a user might use Symantec for that kind of functionality but extend their SAN cluster for disaster recovery and distance replication."

LeftHand is also rolling out version 8 of its SAN/iQ software that turns servers into SANs with an emphasis of optimisation for VMware. One of the new features is called SmartClone, which creates space-efficient clones of virtual machine and desktop images, otherwise known as a "golden copy." Customers can specify SmartClone volumes when provisioning storage for virtual machines and desktops, and then make separate clones for testing and development. Or, they can store changes made by individual VMs with pointers back to the golden image of unchanged data. This, along with the clusters' parallelisation of data, helps maintain system performance during boot storms when many virtual machines are started up at once during the beginning of the business day.

LeftHand is also introducing SAN/iQ 8 Virtual Connection Manager to make it easy to provision SmartClone volumes and SAN/iQ 8 Integrated Performance Manager to identify performance bottlenecks and map connections between virtual machines, iSCSI HBAs, physical machines, data paths and SAN volumes.

LeftHand is packaging its NSM hardware nodes into three new packages for easier deployments. The Starter SAN, a $30,000 package starting at 9 TB SATA disk; Virtualisation SAN, starting at $90,000 with 10.8 TB of 15,000 rpm SAS disks and Multi-Site SAN, starting at $170,000 for 21.6 TB 15,000 rpm SAS disks and includes LeftHand's Multi-Site HA/DR Solution Pack software and active-active site failover. All packages also include two seats for SAN/iQ basic or advanced training.

NetApp Inc. rolled out a package of software, hardware and services called the NetApp Storage Solution for VMware VDI to help customers with virtual desktop deployments on NetApp filers. NetApp also updated FlexClone software with the ability to clone and restore individual files, enabling the restoration of individual virtual machines from their VMware VMDK files; the ability to store virtual machine images in its 16 GB performance acceleration module cards; a plugin to Virtual Center for the SanScreen VM Insight software NetApp acquired with Onaro; and integration of NetApp cloning, snapshot and replication with VMware Site Recovery Manager.

Another vendor joining the virtual appliance fray is Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) backup appliance maker STORServer. While its V-Series virtual appliances are priced similarly to its hardware appliances, the V-Series software will support the addition of capabilities, like replication, without requiring separate hardware -- saving money in the long run.

Beyond VCB

Burton Group analyst Chris Wolf said data protection for VMware environments has grown more advanced, but eventually storage vendors and VMware will have to collaborate beyond VCB. "If I'm a storage vendor, I don't want an API telling me how to deal with data – that's my expertise," Wolf said. "VCB is fine, but VMware also needs to continue opening up its infrastructure for data protection and offer things, such as snapshots, for virtual machines independent of VCB."

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