Executive White Paper > Quest Software

The Five Key Attributes Backup Software Needs to Possess to Automate and Simplify VM Data Protection
By DCIG Lead Analyst Jerome M Wendt

More application servers are being virtualized every day which dictates that organizations identify backup software that automates and simplifies the backup and recovery of these VMs. This makes it imperative that organizations identify virtual backup software such as Quest Software vRanger that satisfies the five key new criteria for successfully protecting and recovering these environments.

Company Quest Software 5 Polaris Way Aliso Viejo, CA 95626 800-306-9329 Founded 1987
www.quest.com

In a little over ten years server virtualization has resulted in organizations virtualizing their application servers in growing numbers. However, these same organizations are still coming to grips with the emerging complexities associated with protecting and recovering their virtualized applications. Rectifying this calls for companies put in place software specifically tailored for virtual machine (VM) protection that automates and simplifies backup without re-introducing its costs and complexities back into the mix.

This has led to an untenable situation. On one hand, organizations have a pool of VMs that grows every day. On the other, legacy tools used to protect VMs are slow in delivering needed new forms of data protection while not doing enough to sufficiently automate, simplify and lower the cost of protecting these VMs.

The Five Key Attributes Backup Software Needs to Possess to Automate and Simplify VM Data Protection
This is why more organizations are looking for an alternative solution to backup and recover their virtual environments. As they do, there are five key attributes they should verify backup software possesses to ensure it automates and simplifies data protection in their virtualized environment.

Server Virtualization: Deep Reach, Undeniably Complex

Server virtualizations penetration into organizations is undeniable. Gartners Thomas Bittman recently stated that virtualization hit 50% penetration in companies and now views it as saturated. 1 His estimate may even be low as other studies find 80% or more of enterprises already use virtualization in some way. These levels of adoption are changing corporate attitudes toward server virtualization deployments. A separate survey of 250 IT professionals revealed a 68% increase in demand for high availability (HA) from 2010 to 2011 with 19% of them reporting all of their production servers are now virtual. The downside is that 75% of them also report increases in complexity.2 These increases in complexity highlight why companies need to select software that automates and simplifies VM management.

Industry Business Software Backup Software Challenges When Protecting VMs Fails to detect and protect new VMs Cause server overhead and contend for physical resources Slow to implement new VM data protection features Too Complex Too pricey Solution Quest Software vRanger Benefits Affordable Application aware tools Deduplicates backup data Scalable and efficient Simple to install and configure VMware certified

vRanger was one of the first on the market to specifically target VMware data protection and today remains at the forefront of providing the highest levels of protection for VMs.

 Jerome Wendt, DCIG Lead Analyst

Backup Softwares Rough Ride in Virtualized Environments

Among available software, backup software has had a particularly rough ride in virtual environments. As organizations implemented VMs, existing methods of backup and recovery came along for the ride with less than stellar results. Deploying host-based backup agents on VMs caused excessive overhead and contention for resources on the physical server during peak backup times. Also, the simple act of installing a backup agent on a server was no longer simple, as new VMs are neither easily seen nor detected, so they were not always protected. In an attempt to address these challenges, VMware introduced APIs to detect new VMs, expedite VM backups and reduce physical server overhead. Unfortunately, many legacy backup software products are not implementing these new features as quickly as many users expect or, in cases where they are available, are priced beyond what an organizations budget allows.

1. Simple to Install and Configure. IT administrators are expected to manage more VMs even as they incorporate backup management into their day-to-day responsibilities. This puts the onus on backup software to adapt to meet this new corporate reality. As such, virtual backup software should be available as an applianceeither physical or virtualto first simplify and accelerate its initial install. Once in place, it should auto discover both new and existing VMs and then configure them for backup based upon pre-existing policies. To accomplish this, integration with available APIs in VMware vSphere and vCenter Server and Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) are prerequisites. VMware integration provides for the automated discovery and management of VMs while support for Microsoft VSS ensures the creation of application consistent backups when snapshots are taken of guest VMs. 2. VMware Certified. The best way to ensure that backup software is up-to-date with the latest advancements in VM protection is to verify it is VMware certified. VMware vSphere includes new
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APIs for Data Protection (referred to as VADP) that accelerate and simplify VM protection. Due to the number of data protection challenges that exist in virtual environments, products that support and are certified with these APIs as soon as they are released should be given preference, as they put organizations on a fast track to resolving their data protection challenges. 3. Application Aware. Virtualizing business and mission critical applications is already well under way in many organizations. But the need to create application consistent backups becomes more acute which changes the role of backup tools. These tools must facilitate readying the application so an application consistent backup may be completed on a VM during a snapshot. Advanced backup software even may quiesce applications that span multiple VMs residing on more than one physical machine so a snapshot may occur across all VMs at the same time. 4. Scalable and Efficient. Backup software has to evolve so IT administrators may be more efficient in these new roles. This requires that backup software aggregate the management and reporting of backup jobs on a central console to which this single team has access. To achieve this objective, the backup software should provide a lightweight architecture that minimizes or eliminates the need for it to compete for resources on physical server while giving it the flexibility to scale efficiently with minimal or no overheard. IT administrators also prefer to use just one backup software solution to fully and quickly protect their VMs. This requires that the virtual backup software leverage vSphere 5s full capabilities (jobs, memory, backup streams) as well as offer a catalog so VMs may be indexed and searched to accommodate eDiscovery requests. 5. Affordable. One would think that backup software providers would grasp that companies want to pay less not more for backup software to protect their VMs after they just lowered their physical infrastructure costs. Since this is not always the case organizations need to document how backup software is priced and licensed. Agents, media

servers and even capacity are all ways that software may be licensed so they should be closely examined to avoid unexpected costs down the road.

Quest vRanger at the Forefront of VM Data Protection

It is as organizations look for a backup software solution that meets these five criteria that they should put Quest Softwares vRanger on their short list of products for consideration. vRanger was one of the first on the market to specifically target VMware protection and today remains at the forefront of providing the highest levels of protection for VMs. vRanger is VMware certified and leverages all of the latest data protection features found in vSphere 5 to include its VADP APIs. vRanger also provides resource allocation controls to minimize the impact of one VMs backup on other production VMs running on a physical server. Using vRanger, administrators may adjust the data protection operation resource utilization and have their choice of I/O paths such as LAN-free backup if it is available. vRanger also supports the wizard-based deployments of virtual appliances (VA) instances for low-impact, centrally-controlled, and scalable VMware data protection. With Quest now backing vRanger, it has moved up into protecting enterprise virtualized environments. Through its integration with NetVault SmartDisk and EMC Data Domain DD Boost, enterprises may leverage it to protect VMs by first compressing data with vRangers native Active Block Mapping feature and then deduplicating it with these other two products. VMs are the de facto way organizations deploy all of their applications. But to keep this highly virtualized environment as simple and easy to backup and recover as it was to implement, they now need to put the right tools in place to make this a reality. Quest vRanger provides this next generation of backup and recovery software that organizations seek. Using it, organizations get the key new features they need to confidently automate, consolidate and simplify the protection of their virtualized environment without breaking the bank or the backs of their IT administrators tasked with managing it.

DCIG analyzes software, hardware and services companies within the storage and ESI industries. DCIG distributes industry, company and product analysis by way of viral marketing and community building using the burgeoning blog infrastructures created worldwide.

About Quest

Established in 1987, Quest Software provides simple and innovative IT management solutions that enable more than 100,000 global customers to save time and money across physical and virtual environments. Quest products solve complex IT challenges ranging from database management, data protection, identity and access management, monitoring, user workspace management to Windows management.

1. Bittman, Thomas J. Top Five Server Virtualizations Trends 2012. Top Five Server Virtualization Trends, 2012. Gartner, 21 Mar. 2012. Web. 09 July 2012. http://blogs.gartner.com/thomas_bittman/2012/03/21/top-five-server-virtualization-trends-2012/ 2. Vizard, Mike. Virtualization Adoption Expands to Mission-critical Applications. CTO Edge. N.p., 8 Aug. 2011. Web. 09 July 2012. http://www.ctoedge. com/content/virtualization-adoption-expands-mission-critical-applications?slide=2

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July 2012