Tangible Differences Persist Among Leading Virtual Machine Backup Software Solutions
To say "All virtual machine (VM) backup software is the same" is like saying "All birds can fly." While VM backup software solutions can and certainly do protect VMs, the techniques they use, what hypervisors they support and how they manage backup and recovery vary greatly between them. Understanding and quantifying these differences becomes especially important for those organizations looking to select the best solution to protect the growing number of VMs in their environment.
DCIG's fall 2012 evaluation of backup software found that over 70% of these products provide support for the VMware APIs for Data Protection (VADP) and use it in specific ways to better protect VMs. Features these products almost universally support include doing snapshots of VMs, performing agentless backups, encapsulating the VM (the guest operating system to include its application and data) in a file and completing backups using VADP's Changed Block Tracking (CBT) feature.
Key VM Backup Software Differentiators
Despite the wide adoption of VADP by backup software providers, tangible differences persist in terms of both how they implement VADP's features and what other techniques they use to protect and recover VMs. Together they substantially impact the backup software's ease of deployment, its cost and its long term ease of management.
Virtual Backup Appliances (VBAs)
Making the backup software available as a virtual backup appliance (VBA) is one area where backup software differentiation persists. VBAs remove the need for organizations to procure and/or dedicate a physical machine to host the backup software as the VBA may be added as a guest to an existing ESX server. This approach facilitates faster, more economical deployments of the backup software with VBAs available from approximately 50% of those backup software providers who support VADP.
Yet one should not assume that VBAs are created equal as each has its own caveats. For instance, some use Windows as their underlying OS platform while others use Linux. While this may seem like a nit, Windows-based VBAs require a Windows operating system license as well as the need for 3rd party software such as anti-virus software that add extra costs and overhead to VBA deployment. Linux-based VBAs avoid these.
VBAs may also manage storage in different ways. Some only use virtual machine disks (VMDKs) so the most data they can store and protect is 2 TBs. Others may support raw disk mappings (RDMs) to achieve larger LUN sizes and support different tiers of storage. But these become more complex to manage plus organizations lose the vMotion flexibility that VMDKs provide.
PHD Virtual Backup is a particularly good example of a virtual backup solution that provides the best of what VBAs have to offer without their drawbacks. Using Linux as its guest OS, the PHD Virtual VBA is available as a fully packaged VM file. This minimizes time organizations need to spend configuring the VBA as they only need to enter the hypervisor credentials as well as optional custom firewall settings and trusted security certificates so the VBA may be quickly setup in their virtual environment.
PHD Virtual's use of Linux already eliminates the performance hit that anti-virus software incurs. However, since Linux is also multi-threaded, PHD Virtual capitalizes on this feature to support up to eight (8) concurrent backup streams (though this can be throttled down if needed to preserve CPU cycles.)
To cap it off, PHD uses Virtual Storage Pools (VSPs) to manage the VBA's storage. Using VSPs, PHD Virtual can put multiple VMDKs or VHDs into a single pool of storage. In this way a PHD Virtual VBA can still take advantage of the vMotion feature only available on VMDKs, offer the higher LUN capacities and various storage tiers that RDMs offers. PHD can also backup to any network share, thereby effectively using whatever storage organizations have available.
Deduplication
Deduplication is almost an imperative to effectively backup VMs. A great deal of duplicate data residing within VMs coupled with their low data change rates makes deduplication and backup a perfect fit.
The trick now becomes finding backup software with the right form of deduplication to meet these VM backup demands. DCIG finds that while over 90% of backup software supports deduplication in some form, only about 70% of them support client-side deduplication which is the most effective form for VM backups. Further, some only deduplicate across specific backup jobs and not across the entire backup data store.
PHD Virtual illustrates how deduplication is effectively done in VM backups. In addition to doing client side deduplication and deduplicating all data in its data store, it also offers a second backup mode that optimizes performance for target-side deduplication. These modes give users the flexibility to choose the right deduplication method for their VM protection strategy.
Multi-Hypervisor Support
As hypervisors from Citrix and Microsoft mature, their adoption in organizations grows as a recent survey shows over 50% of organizations running more than one hypervisor. This makes it imperative that backup software offer support for hypervisors in addition to VMware. PHD Virtual highlights this trend of backup software protecting multiple hypervisors by already offering support for Citrix XenServer and VMware vSphere with support for Microsoft Hyper-V coming soon.
Recovery and Replication
Easy, fast recovery is one of most desirable aspects of virtualization with one IT shop recently citing that once it had implemented virtualization it could complete recoveries in half the time with one third as many people. However this does not mean all backup software products deliver equally well on recovery.
Some require that a VM first be mounted before it or its data may be recovered. Others even support recoveries of the VM on the physical backup server and then use vMotion to move the VM to the production ESX server. Further, more organizations are looking to recover their data offsite or even in the cloud.
To deliver on these requirements, PHD Virtual uses its Dynamic Recovery feature that does recoveries as granular as files, emails and database tables as well as more holistic full VM recoveries. But what PHD Virtual also does is expose data in its backup stores.
In this way, other applications such as eDiscovery software can access or search data in its backups. This includes applications residing on other servers (physical or virtual) that may access this data via common network block or file protocols. These capabilities coupled with its tested and proven replication capabilities position users of PHD Virtual to recover VMs locally, remotely or even in the cloud.
Hard and Soft Backup Software Costs
One of the biggest reasons organizations implemented virtualization in the first place was to drive costs down so the last thing they want is costs (hard or soft) to creep back in. VM backup software can result in that scenario unless organizations take steps to mitigate the possibility of that occurring.
Keeping hard costs under control requires they understand how backup software is licensed and developed. Some license by total protected capacity, others by total capacity under management and still others on a per physical socket basis. Those that protect physical environments also have development and support costs to pass along that organizations who are purely virtual may not wish to bear.
On the soft cost side of the equation, the less time administrators spend managing backup software, the more it frees them to focus on other tasks. In this regards, many administrators look to use either the hypervisor console or vCenter as their console to manage the backup software.
The challenge they encounter is that backup software integration with hypervisor consoles varies in feature functionality. Some provide no integration and those that do may only provide limited management, monitoring and reporting capabilities. This requires administrators to still use the backup software's console to fully administer the product.
PHD Virtual avoids these hard and soft costs that other products incur. On the hard cost side, PHD Virtual is solely focused on virtual backups so there are no costs for physical backup to bear plus in competitive analysis, its list price is up to 40% less even though it provides as many or more features. On soft cost avoidance, using its plug-in administrators have full management capabilities from either the hypervisor or vCenter console so managing backup does not become a separate task consuming ever more time.
All VM backup software products may "fly" in terms of their ability to do VM backups. However the real question becomes, "Which ones enable you to soar in the protection of your virtual environment?" As DCIG's examination of all backup software products reveals, significant differences remain in how well they deliver on protecting VMs.
PHD Virtual distinguishes itself from competitive products by leveraging existing virtual infrastructure needing no new hardware, it takes advantages of existing management interfaces and it uses existing storage. This combination of techniques serves to keep backup costs low even as its level of data protection for VM environments remains high so that PHD Virtual rises above its competitors in this space.
DCIG's fall 2012 evaluation of backup software found that over 70% of these products provide support for the VMware APIs for Data Protection (VADP) and use it in specific ways to better protect VMs. Features these products almost universally support include doing snapshots of VMs, performing agentless backups, encapsulating the VM (the guest operating system to include its application and data) in a file and completing backups using VADP's Changed Block Tracking (CBT) feature.
Key VM Backup Software Differentiators
Despite the wide adoption of VADP by backup software providers, tangible differences persist in terms of both how they implement VADP's features and what other techniques they use to protect and recover VMs. Together they substantially impact the backup software's ease of deployment, its cost and its long term ease of management.
Virtual Backup Appliances (VBAs)
Making the backup software available as a virtual backup appliance (VBA) is one area where backup software differentiation persists. VBAs remove the need for organizations to procure and/or dedicate a physical machine to host the backup software as the VBA may be added as a guest to an existing ESX server. This approach facilitates faster, more economical deployments of the backup software with VBAs available from approximately 50% of those backup software providers who support VADP.
Yet one should not assume that VBAs are created equal as each has its own caveats. For instance, some use Windows as their underlying OS platform while others use Linux. While this may seem like a nit, Windows-based VBAs require a Windows operating system license as well as the need for 3rd party software such as anti-virus software that add extra costs and overhead to VBA deployment. Linux-based VBAs avoid these.
VBAs may also manage storage in different ways. Some only use virtual machine disks (VMDKs) so the most data they can store and protect is 2 TBs. Others may support raw disk mappings (RDMs) to achieve larger LUN sizes and support different tiers of storage. But these become more complex to manage plus organizations lose the vMotion flexibility that VMDKs provide.
PHD Virtual Backup is a particularly good example of a virtual backup solution that provides the best of what VBAs have to offer without their drawbacks. Using Linux as its guest OS, the PHD Virtual VBA is available as a fully packaged VM file. This minimizes time organizations need to spend configuring the VBA as they only need to enter the hypervisor credentials as well as optional custom firewall settings and trusted security certificates so the VBA may be quickly setup in their virtual environment.
PHD Virtual's use of Linux already eliminates the performance hit that anti-virus software incurs. However, since Linux is also multi-threaded, PHD Virtual capitalizes on this feature to support up to eight (8) concurrent backup streams (though this can be throttled down if needed to preserve CPU cycles.)
To cap it off, PHD uses Virtual Storage Pools (VSPs) to manage the VBA's storage. Using VSPs, PHD Virtual can put multiple VMDKs or VHDs into a single pool of storage. In this way a PHD Virtual VBA can still take advantage of the vMotion feature only available on VMDKs, offer the higher LUN capacities and various storage tiers that RDMs offers. PHD can also backup to any network share, thereby effectively using whatever storage organizations have available.
Deduplication
Deduplication is almost an imperative to effectively backup VMs. A great deal of duplicate data residing within VMs coupled with their low data change rates makes deduplication and backup a perfect fit.
The trick now becomes finding backup software with the right form of deduplication to meet these VM backup demands. DCIG finds that while over 90% of backup software supports deduplication in some form, only about 70% of them support client-side deduplication which is the most effective form for VM backups. Further, some only deduplicate across specific backup jobs and not across the entire backup data store.
PHD Virtual illustrates how deduplication is effectively done in VM backups. In addition to doing client side deduplication and deduplicating all data in its data store, it also offers a second backup mode that optimizes performance for target-side deduplication. These modes give users the flexibility to choose the right deduplication method for their VM protection strategy.
Multi-Hypervisor Support
As hypervisors from Citrix and Microsoft mature, their adoption in organizations grows as a recent survey shows over 50% of organizations running more than one hypervisor. This makes it imperative that backup software offer support for hypervisors in addition to VMware. PHD Virtual highlights this trend of backup software protecting multiple hypervisors by already offering support for Citrix XenServer and VMware vSphere with support for Microsoft Hyper-V coming soon.
Recovery and Replication
Easy, fast recovery is one of most desirable aspects of virtualization with one IT shop recently citing that once it had implemented virtualization it could complete recoveries in half the time with one third as many people. However this does not mean all backup software products deliver equally well on recovery.
Some require that a VM first be mounted before it or its data may be recovered. Others even support recoveries of the VM on the physical backup server and then use vMotion to move the VM to the production ESX server. Further, more organizations are looking to recover their data offsite or even in the cloud.
To deliver on these requirements, PHD Virtual uses its Dynamic Recovery feature that does recoveries as granular as files, emails and database tables as well as more holistic full VM recoveries. But what PHD Virtual also does is expose data in its backup stores.
In this way, other applications such as eDiscovery software can access or search data in its backups. This includes applications residing on other servers (physical or virtual) that may access this data via common network block or file protocols. These capabilities coupled with its tested and proven replication capabilities position users of PHD Virtual to recover VMs locally, remotely or even in the cloud.
Hard and Soft Backup Software Costs
One of the biggest reasons organizations implemented virtualization in the first place was to drive costs down so the last thing they want is costs (hard or soft) to creep back in. VM backup software can result in that scenario unless organizations take steps to mitigate the possibility of that occurring.
Keeping hard costs under control requires they understand how backup software is licensed and developed. Some license by total protected capacity, others by total capacity under management and still others on a per physical socket basis. Those that protect physical environments also have development and support costs to pass along that organizations who are purely virtual may not wish to bear.
On the soft cost side of the equation, the less time administrators spend managing backup software, the more it frees them to focus on other tasks. In this regards, many administrators look to use either the hypervisor console or vCenter as their console to manage the backup software.
The challenge they encounter is that backup software integration with hypervisor consoles varies in feature functionality. Some provide no integration and those that do may only provide limited management, monitoring and reporting capabilities. This requires administrators to still use the backup software's console to fully administer the product.
PHD Virtual avoids these hard and soft costs that other products incur. On the hard cost side, PHD Virtual is solely focused on virtual backups so there are no costs for physical backup to bear plus in competitive analysis, its list price is up to 40% less even though it provides as many or more features. On soft cost avoidance, using its plug-in administrators have full management capabilities from either the hypervisor or vCenter console so managing backup does not become a separate task consuming ever more time.
All VM backup software products may "fly" in terms of their ability to do VM backups. However the real question becomes, "Which ones enable you to soar in the protection of your virtual environment?" As DCIG's examination of all backup software products reveals, significant differences remain in how well they deliver on protecting VMs.
PHD Virtual distinguishes itself from competitive products by leveraging existing virtual infrastructure needing no new hardware, it takes advantages of existing management interfaces and it uses existing storage. This combination of techniques serves to keep backup costs low even as its level of data protection for VM environments remains high so that PHD Virtual rises above its competitors in this space.
Leave a comment