Offsite Backup Solutions

Justin PaulSenior Virtualization Engineer / VMware vExperthttp://jpaul.me – jpaul@smsprotech.com

What is Offsite Backup?

• Traditional Tape• Software Replication• Appliance (Hardware) Replication• Virtualization Replication for DR

Considerations

• What problem are you trying to solve?– Need better RTO/RPO?– Eliminate possibility of stolen/lost tapes?

• Are your servers virtualized?• Can you get adequate bandwidth?• Do you need a DR site?

– Or can you send your data to a cloud?• Do you have enough disk space for retention?

Other Considerations

• How far away is far enough?• What are your RPO and RTO requirements?• How many times a day do you backup?• How long of retention periods are needed?

Traditional Tape

Positives• Low cost• Familiar Process• Somewhat Simple• Long Retention• Supported by most

backup software

Negatives• Prone to Breaking• Slow• Can be stolen/lost• Requires people• Tapes go bad• Requires a compatible

tape drive for future restores

Software Replication

Positives• Disk to Disk based• Fast Backups and

Restores• Hardware agnostic• Can work with

Hardware Appliances*• No user intervention

required to replicate• Fairly Cheap

Negatives• Requires Bandwidth• Can be complex• Resource Intensive• May effect other

services like VoIP, Remote workers etc

Software Examples with Replication

• Veeam*• Appasure Replay• Quest vRanger*• Acronis

*Virtual Machines only

Appliance (Hardware) Replication

Positives• Disk to Disk based• Fast Backups and

Restores• Software Agnostic (in

some cases)• No user intervention

required to replicate• Deduplication and

Compression

Negatives• Requires Bandwidth• Still Requires Backup

Software• Can be complex• Expensive• Can be vendor specific• May effect other

services like VoIP, Remote workers, etc.

Appliance (Hardware) Examples

• Exagrid• DataDomain• HP StoreOnce• Dell PowerVault

Virtualization Replication

Positives• Quick DR Recovery• Integrated• Snapshot Technology• Change Block Tracking

Negatives• Requires Bandwidth• Can be complex• Expensive• Can be vendor specific• May effect other

services like VoIP, Remote workers, etc.

Virtualization Replication Examples

• Veeam• Zerto• VMware Site Recovery Manager

Minimizing Bandwidth Needs

HyperIP by Netex

Minimizing Bandwidth Needs

Helps reduce WAN load by 60%

Tips

• Without adequate bandwidth replication will never work– Consider a dedicated circuit just for replication if your have a lot of

data or a lot of daily change data• Even with dedupe and compression you will need a

massive amount of disk space!– Retention will require as much storage space as your backing up

times the number of weeks you want to retain that data• Deduplication and Compress is resource intensive. Get a

good backup server or a hardware appliance

Questions?

Justin PaulSenior Virtualization Engineer / VMware vExperthttp://jpaul.me – jpaul@smsprotech.com

Slide deck located at http://jpaul.me/ under the Presentations section