Tbv Vranger 5techtips Us Eh Final

TECHNICAL BRIEF

Written by

Quest Software, Inc.

Five Tech Tips for Effective Backup and Recovery in Virtual

Environments using vRanger

Five Tech Tips for Effective Backup and Recovery in Virtual Environments using vRanger 1

Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................................................... 2

Five Tips for Effective Backup and Recovery ................................................................................................................. 3

1. Use vRanger to minimize the amount of data protected. ........................................................................................ 3

2. Maximize backup speed and shrink your backup window using vRanger. ............................................................. 6

3. Take advantage of intelligent, image-level restore. ................................................................................................ 8

4. Protect to fit your needs and SLAs. ........................................................................................................................ 9

5. Minimize the performance impact to the virtual platform environment. ................................................................. 11

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................................... 14


Abstract Virtualization is being adopted rapidly in many IT infrastructures, bringing significant time, money, and labor savings

to procurement, administration, deployment, operation, reliability and recoverability. But like any new technology,

virtualization has introduced new challenges despite solving critical problems—particularly in smaller organizations

where time and money are always at a premium.

This tech brief discusses five key areas to help you better protect your virtualized data and restore the benefits of

virtualization for your IT infrastructure using vRanger.


Five Tips for Effective Backup and Recovery Quest’s data protection experts have five technical tips for effective backup and recovery in virtual environments

using vRanger. These tips will help you avoid the growing pains and challenges that keep you from fully protecting

your virtual assets and infrastructure.

1. Use vRanger to minimize the amount of data protected vRanger can reduce the amount of data you back up by using technologies that filter out unchanged and deleted

data. While tools that utilize VMware Change Block Tracking (CBT) eliminate the need to scan to find changed

blocks, CBT does not prevent the backup and restore of deleted data. The Windows operating system never fully

removes the space that is occupied by deleted data; the data is not deleted until it’s overwritten to make space for

new data, or is overwritten with zeros.

Unfortunately, those files are seen as changed data blocks, and backup tools using only CBT will back up that

deleted data. VMs hosting applications with frequently changing data may hold gigabytes of deleted data, resulting in

longer backup windows and large backup archives.

vRanger has a patent pending technology called Active Block Mapping (ABM). ABM allows vRanger to map the

contents of the Windows file system to the outside of the virtual disk. This mapping allows vRanger to understand

which blocks of a virtual disk make up deleted data and skip these blocks. The process to create this mapping is 100

percent agentless, does NOT require login access to the running VM, and takes less than 10 seconds to complete.

The steps to using ABM in vRanger are:

1. Create a vRanger backup job.

2. Check the ABM option on the Options selection of the vRanger job, as shown in the figure below.

Note that you must be running ESX and your file system must be basic and of MFT type.


Figure 1. Selecting the ABM option in vRanger

Storage Footprint and Backup Time Results

The following figure shows the archive footprint for backups of 35 VMs with and without ABM:

Figure 2. Using ABM reduces archive size significantly.

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

ABM Enabled ABM Disabled

Archive Size Archive Size in GB


The figure below shows the backup times for backups of 35 VMs with and without ABM:

Figure 3. Using ABM reduces backup times.

1:06

1:09

1:12

1:14

1:17

1:20

1:23

1:26

ABM Enabled ABM Disabled

ABM ON|OFFBackup Time


2. Maximize backup speed and shrink your backup window using vRanger Another strategy to increase backup speed and shrink backup windows is to use vRanger to perform simultaneous

backup and restore.

Many backup applications on the market today only perform a single task for one job at a time. For example, if you

create a job of 35 VMs, these products will perform only one task at a time. The vendors tell you that if you want to do

more, just create more jobs. However, this leaves you with two problems:

More management overhead

No control should these jobs over run your environment

vRanger’s Resource Manager, on the other hand, enables you to do many or just a few backups and restores at one

time, regardless of whether you have one job or 10 jobs. The following figure shows the Resource Manager

configuration options:

Figure 4. vRanger Resource Manager configuration options and their default values

Maximum number of tasks running on vRanger (default: 100) – This controls how many backups, restores and

replications run at one time. It’s unlikely that you will ever need to raise the default.

Maximum number of tasks running off a LUN (default: 3) – This controls how many backups, restores and

replications run at one time from a single datastore. This is important because you don’t want to cripple your storage

with too many reads or writes. Also, because vRanger uses VMware snapshots to back up and replicate VMs, you

don’t want to open too many snapshots on a single VMware datastore. If you have SAS storage or fiber storage, you

could raise this value to 5; if you’re running iSCSI, you should leave this setting at 3. Just remember this setting is

global for all datastores; use the setting appropriate for your slowest datastore.


Maximum number of tasks running on a host (default: 1) – This controls how many backups, restores and

replications run from a single host. The safe maximum number is 2.

Maximum number of tasks running per repository (default: 3) – This controls how many backups and restores

happen at one time from a single repository. This setting is important because vRanger can send data very quickly to

your repository and you need to know how much data your target is able to handle. For example, when you’re not

using iSCSI, vRanger can send a single backup stream about 20-40 MB/s. So if your target only has a single 1 GB

network card, how many backups would it take to full the entire pipe? A 1 GB NIC is 1024 Mb/s and a single backup

stream can send 160 Mb/s – 320 MB/s. vRanger default settings allow between 480 Mb/s – 960 Mb/s. If you want to

do more, the best approach is to bind two network cards for speed on your target repository. You should do this by

binding two 1-GB NICs on the repository and in your network switch. If you do this correctly in Windows, the network

status indicator will show 2 GB. This will allow for twice as many backups at one time, so you should be able to raise

the setting from the default of 3 to 6 tasks per repository.

Maximum number of tasks running locally (default: 3) – This setting controls the number of backups that run

locally, such as LAN-free from a physical host, LAN-free in a VM, ESXi network backups, or using vRanger’s

HOTADD to a network target. The rule of thumb here is to take the number of CPUs you have and subtract one for

the vRanger service and OS. You can perform one backup per core when backing over fiber on a physical host.

When performing LAN-free in a VM or HOTADD to a network target, you can get two backups per core.

Backup and Restore Time Results

The figure below shows how vRanger reduces the backup time by performing multiple backups at once:

Figure 5. By performing multiple backups at once, vRanger reduces backup times dramatically.

0:00:00

0:28:48

0:57:36

1:26:24

1:55:12

2:24:00

2:52:48

3:21:36

3:50:24

4:19:12

1 @ a time 6 @ a time

Backup TimeBackup Time


The figure below shows similar results for restore time:

Figure 6. vRanger can perform multiple restores at one, reducing restore time.

3. Take advantage of intelligent, image-level restore Incremental backups have a bad rap because most backup products have to restore the full backup entirely, and then

restore each incremental over the top of the full. This way of using incremental backups is flawed: if your full backup

is, say, 10 GB and your incremental backups comprise 5 GB of changes, they will replace 5 GB of the full. That

means you have 15 GB of total network transfer and 15 GB of disk writes.

vRanger enables you to avoid this problem completely and make good use of incremental backups. vRanger knows

where all of the blocks are located in each archive file. When a restore is done as per the preceding example,

vRanger will send only 10 GB total of network transfer and 10 GB of disk writes. Because of this technology,

vRanger’s incremental restores have overhead than a normal full backup and restore.

0:00:00

0:14:24

0:28:48

0:43:12

0:57:36

1:12:00

1:26:24

1:40:48

1:55:12

2:09:36

1 @ a time 6 @ a time

Restore TimeRestore Time


The figure below shows the overhead of a restore using a typical backup solution, and then using vRanger, which has

no overhead.

Figure 7. vRanger’s optimized restore has no overhead, reducing bandwidth use and restore times.

4. Protect to fit your needs vRanger uses VMware snapshot process to perform image-level backup of VMs. Unlike other solutions, this enables

vRanger to back up virtual machines without interruption,

Let’s review the snapshot process that allows for image-level backup. When a VM is running, its virtual disks are

locked by the hypervisor and cannot be read. When a snapshot is added to the VM, VMware unlocks the VM’s virtual

disks by sending all the writes to the virtual disk to a delta file on the datastore. This freezes the base virtual disk to a

point in time; now the VM is reading from both base virtual disk but is writing all changes to a delta file.

At this point, the base virtual disk can be read by vRanger. After it is done with the base virtual disk, vRanger will

send a commit commend to VMware to close the open delta. VMware will then add another delta and commit the first

delta that grew during the backup window. Once the first delta is committed to the base disk, the second delta is

closed very quickly because it was open only for the length of time it took for the original delta to close.

vRanger also has safeguards in place in case something stops vRanger from closing the open snapshots. If vRanger

sees a snapshot that had not been newly created, it will be closed so that the open snapshot does not harm the

running VM.


The figure below shows a VM’s file layout before a snapshot is opened:

Figure 8. A VM’s file layout before a snapshot is opened

The figure below shows the VM’s file layout after a snapshot is opened:

Figure 9. A VM’s file layout after a snapshot is opened shows increased resource need

To help with snapshot health on VMware, you should commit a set of sources to the ESX(i) host to ensure it has the

resources needed to close snapshots in a timely manner. You should give the ESX(i) host ―System Resource

Allocation‖ 800 MB of RAM and 1500 dedicated. This will ensure that no matter how big your VM density gets, your

host will have the resources it needs to manage itself, including snapshots. Without this allocation, your VMs could

freeze and drop off the network when snapshots are opened and closed.


The figure below shows where to set dedicated resources for a host to ensure snapshot health:

Figure 10. Setting dedicated resources for a host to ensure snapshot health

5. Minimize the performance impact to the virtual platform environment When you have physical hosts, using an agent-based approach to backup and recovery is fine because the agent

uses only a small amount of resources on that single physical host. But when you run multiple VMs on a single

physical host, each VM has its own agent, and each agent uses CPU cycles and memory. This causes significant

management overhead and resource usage on the physical host.

Accordingly, vRanger takes an agentless approach to backup and recovery. Image-level backup, image-level restore,

file-level restore from an image, and mailbox- and message-level restore are all 100 percent agentless. Therefore,

the vRanger server does not need to talk to running VMs over the network, nor does it need guest credentials.

vRanger only needs accounts and IP access for Virtual Center and ESX(i) hosts to perform image-level backup and

image-level restore.

The charts below illustrate the performance gains from eliminating agents.


This figure shows a host with just 10 idle VMs without agents installed:

Figure 11. A host with just 10 idle VMs without agents installed


This figure shows a host using greater CPU cycles with just 10 idle VMs with agents installed:

Figure 12. A host with 10 idle VMs with agents installed


Conclusion When you virtualize your physical infrastructure, you will find your data accumulation and network bandwidth

utilization growing even faster than before. This can result in longer backup windows and overloaded networks. The

five tips in this paper for effective backup and recovery in virtual environments, gleaned from the experience of

Quest’s vRanger experts, will help you backup and restore as fast as possible.


© 2011 Quest Software, Inc.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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purpose without the written permission of Quest Software, Inc. (―Quest‖).

The information in this document is provided in connection with Quest products. No license, express or implied, by

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If you have any questions regarding your potential use of this material, contact:

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UPDATED: February, 2011

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If you are located outside North America, you can find local office information on our Web site.

TECHNICAL BRIEF

About Quest Software, Inc.

Quest Software (Nasdaq: QSFT) simplifies and reduces the cost of managing IT for more

than 100,000 customers worldwide. Our innovative solutions make solving the toughest IT

management problems easier, enabling customers to save time and money across physical,

virtual and cloud environments. For more information about Quest solutions for application

management, database management, Windows management, virtualization management,

and IT management, go to www.quest.com.

Contacting Quest Software

PHONE 800.306.9329 (United States and Canada)

If you are located outside North America, you can find your

local office information on our Web site.

E-MAIL [email protected]

MAIL Quest Software, Inc.

World Headquarters

5 Polaris Way

Aliso Viejo, CA 92656

USA

Contacting Quest Support

Quest Support is available to customers who have a trial version of a Quest product or who

have purchased a commercial version and have a valid maintenance contract.

Quest Support provides around-the-clock coverage with SupportLink, our Web self-service.

Visit SupportLink at https://support.quest.com.

SupportLink gives users of Quest Software products the ability to:

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View the Global Support Guide for a detailed explanation of support programs, online services,

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© 2011 Quest Software, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Quest, Quest Software, the Quest Software logo and vRanger are registered trademarks of Quest Software, Inc. in the U.S.A. and/or other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners. TBV-vRanger-5TechTips-US-EH

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