NETAPP UNIVERSITY

SAN Design
Module 4: Backup and Recovery
Date: 25 JAN 2011

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2011 NetApp, Inc. This material is intended for training use only. Not authorized for reproduction purposes.

ATTENTION
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
MODULE 4: BACKUP AND RECOVERY
MODULE OVERVIEW ............................................................................................................................... 4
MODULE OBJECTIVES............................................................................................................................ 4
SHARED OR SEPARATE SAN? .............................................................................................................. 4
SNAPSHOT COPY TOOLS....................................................................................................................... 5
BENEFITS OF IP SANS ............................................................................................................................ 5
RTO AND RPO .......................................................................................................................................... 6
BACKUP SCHEDULE EXAMPLE ............................................................................................................ 6
BACKUP BEST PRACTICES ................................................................................................................... 6
BACKUP BEST PRACTICES (CONT.)..................................................................................................... 7
BACKUP TO SECONDARY SYSTEM...................................................................................................... 7
DISASTER RECOVERY............................................................................................................................ 8
METROCLUSTER ..................................................................................................................................... 8
PLANNING A METROCLUSTER INSTALLATION .................................................................................. 9
SNAPMIRROR SOFTWARE ................................................................................................................... 10
SNAPMIRROR REPLICATION ............................................................................................................... 10
CHOOSING A REPLICATION MODE..................................................................................................... 11
LEARNING ACTIVITY INTRO................................................................................................................. 11
MODULE SUMMARY .............................................................................................................................. 11

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MODULE 4: BACKUP AND RECOVERY

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MODULE OVERVIEW

Welcome to the Backup and Recovery module. This module discusses backup
methods and recovery procedures. This module should take approximately 30
minutes to complete.

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MODULE OBJECTIVES

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

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Discuss shared and siloed SANs,

Recognize the benefits of Snapshot copies,
Determine backup schedules for secondary storage,
Identify if tape will be used,
Determine an acceptable Recovery Time Objective and Recovery Point
Objective, and
Describe how SnapMirror software and MetroCluster are used.

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SHARED OR SEPARATE SAN?

In a siloed SAN environment, storage is separated by application, resulting in

multiple SAN islands. For example, SAN Administrators may choose to have
dedicated servers and storage for their Exchange environment, and separate,
dedicated servers and storage for their Sales Enablement and technical
computing applications. Siloed SANs are less flexible, and often result in less
availability than shared SANs. In a shared SAN environment, servers share the
same storage system. Shared SANs generally provide greater storage utilization
and manageability.

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4
SNAPSHOT COPY TOOLS

You should already be familiar with the concept of Snapshot copies. There are
several things you must know about the environment in relation to Snapshot
copies to be able to design a SAN configuration. First, you must determine if
SnapDrive software will be used to create and manage Snapshot copies. NetApp
recommends using SnapDrive software for Snapshot copy creation and
maintenance because SnapDrive software creates consistent Snapshot copies.
Next, you should determine if any SnapManager software is currently being used
or if it should be used in the new design. SnapManager organizes information
into profiles and repositories. The profiles hold the information about the
database, including its credentials, backups, and clones. Repositories hold data
about the operations performed on the profiles. SnapManager software enables
efficient backups in a matter of seconds, providing application administrators
with greater flexibility to assign more frequent backups without disruption.
SnapManager also initiates full recovery to bring data back in minutes rather
than hours or days. Since data on NetApp storage remains online, adding
capacity and expanding volumes are more efficient, available, and streamlined.

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BENEFITS OF IP SANS

The RTO, or Recovery Time Objective, and RPO, or Recovery Point Objective,
help identify both the storage space requirements and the application availability
requirements. RTO defines, for a specific data center application, how quickly
the application must be back online in the event of an outage. This value can
range from zero minutes, to several minutes, to several hours. Think of the RTO
as the acceptable amount of downtime. The RPO defines, for a specific data
center application, how much data loss can be tolerated in the event of an
outage. These values range from no data loss, to a few minutes of lost
transactions, to hours of lost transactions. Think of the RPO as the acceptable
amount of data loss. These two measurements directly affect backup strategies,
which can directly affect storage space utilization. To meet shorter RTOs, the
most recent set of backups must be available immediately. To meet shorter
RPOs, frequent Snapshot copies are required to assure the most recent data is
backed up. When Snapshot copies are created frequently, and multiple versions
are being retained, storage utilization quickly increases.

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RTO AND RPO

First, you must determine how many Snapshot copies are needed. The number
of Snapshot copies needed is determined by the configuration and your
requirements for the RPO. Next, you must determine a Backup Schedule for the
Snapshot copies. This will be based on the RTO. A sample backup schedule is
shown here. Notice that the backup schedule is separated by data set. It states
RPO and RTO times for each age of data. Based on these values, backup
methods are recommended. The final column lists an inventory of threats from
which the data set is protected. For example, data in home directories up to
seven days old is expected to be recoverable in five minutes. The acceptable
amount of data loss is one day. For this situation, a backup method of local
Snapshot copies with off-site SnapVault software is recommended.

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BACKUP SCHEDULE EXAMPLE

SnapDrive software is recommended for implementation of NetApp Snapshot

copies. In addition, you should always use the SnapManager suite of products
when possible. When choosing a configuration, place the host and storage
system in the same broadcast domain. This alleviates the need for LUN I/O
commands to make router hops. NetApp recommends RAID-DP technology.
RAID-DP technology provides double parity RAID protection against data loss
with negligible performance overhead. It prevents data loss in the event of a
second drive failure without excessive redundancy costs. Its a standard feature
of NetApp Data ONTAP architecture.

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BACKUP BEST PRACTICES

Other backup best practices include the use of separate NetApp FlexVol
volumes to store Snapshot copies for separate applications. If possible, you can
help ensure consistency by placing all LUNs for an application in one NetApp
FlexVol volume. This may not be possible due to the RTO and RPO
requirements and the size of the LUNs. Dont make the volume too large or
performance will suffer.

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BACKUP BEST PRACTICES (CONT.)

The first step in designing a backup environment is to determine your data

protection requirements. There are several questions you need to answer: What
threats or problems are you protecting your data against? What do your users
want out of a backup and recovery infrastructure? How often do you expect to
restore single files or small groups of files? How often do you expect to restore
entire data sets? When a restore is requested, how quickly does it need to be
performed? This is known as the RTO. You also need to know how old "most
recent backup" is allowed to be at any given time. This is known as the RPO. In
addition you must understand how frequently you expect to restore very old data,
how long backups of the data should be kept, and where the data is located. For
example, is the data on NetApp equipment or on another vendor's storage?

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BACKUP TO SECONDARY SYSTEM

NetApp Snapshot technology provides near-instantaneous and space-efficient

full backups, but it does not provide full protection against system or site
outages. Backing up to secondary storage will provide the full backup protection
needed. NetApp recommends SnapVault software to replicate Snapshot copies
to secondary storage for backup protection. SnapVault enables hundreds of
Snapshot backups to be cost-effectively replicated to secondary storage for rapid
recovery. Depending on the requirements, however, you may choose another
method. Tape is another backup option. You must determine the appropriate
method for backing up to a secondary system. The option you choose depends
on your requirements and configuration.

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DISASTER RECOVERY

There are two categories of application downtime, planned and unplanned.

There are many causes of unplanned downtime, including operational failures,
application failures, component and system failures, site failures, user errors,
and regional disasters. You are already familiar with Snapshot copies,
SnapManager software, and SnapVault software, which assist with fast data
recovery. NetApp has two solutions that assist with disaster recovery of entire
sites, MetroCluster and SnapMirror software.

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METROCLUSTER

MetroCluster is a unique, cost-effective, integrated high-availability and disaster

recovery solution. It provides site protection and protection against hardware
outages, ensuring zero data loss and minimal downtime in the event of a
disaster. There are two kinds of MetroCluster: stretch and fabric. Stretch
MetroCluster supports a distance of up to 500 meters between two controllers.
Fabric MetroCluster supports up to 100 kilometers between two nodes in a
cluster. This is useful if you want to have a cluster on a campus or in a metro
area to allow for some localized failures but still run as a cluster with failover
integration. MetroCluster provides the highest level of availability. It protects
against data center failures and site disasters. It allows simple and fast recovery.
It provides automatic recovery for any single component failure and onecommand recovery for major catastrophic site failures. MetroCluster is costeffective because it combines high availability clustering with disaster recovery
mirroring. It makes zero data loss possible by using synchronous data
replication. MetroCluster has enhanced read performance of up to 80 percent for
random reads because of simultaneous read operations that occur on both
plexes.

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PLANNING A METROCLUSTER INSTALLATION

When planning a MetroCluster installation, you need to gather distance

information, HA pair information, and setup information. Stretch MetroCluster
can support a maximum of 500 meters between nodes at a speed of two gigabits
per second. Fabric MetroCluster, using Fibre Channel switches, extends this
distance to 100 kilometers at the same speed. At four gigabits per second
speeds, these distances are essentially cut in half. This provides you greater
flexibility in the physical location of the HA pair while maintaining the highavailability benefits of HA controller configurations. The number of connections
and desired speed play a large role in distance considerations. In addition, cable
type affects both distance and speed. Single-mode cable is supported only for
the Inter-Switch links. For more information on cable type, refer to TR-3517, the
MetroCluster Upgrade Planning Guide, and TR-3552, the Optical Network
Installation Guide. NetApp supplies a configuration checker script that detects
errors in HA controller configurations. This script detects and reports licensed
services that are not identical on the partner, options settings that are not
identical on the partner, incorrect network interface configurations, and Fibre
Channel cfmode settings that are not identical. The script also verifies that
failover is set on both controllers. NetApp strongly recommends that you
complete the installation planning worksheets prior to beginning a MetroCluster
installation. These will facilitate the installation process.

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SNAPMIRROR SOFTWARE

SnapMirror software is a simple, flexible and cost-effective replication solution

that enables you to protect more of your applications. SnapMirror software
simplifies deployment and management for several reasons. First, the set up and
recovery is simple, facilitating lower deployment and management costs. Easier
recovery procedures result in reduced downtime. Second, it is a single
replication product across all storage systems. This means that less training on
the product is needed. Finally, SnapMirror software is integrated with
SnapManager software to ensure application-consistent Snapshot copies. The
solution is cost-effective because is mirrors between Fibre Channel and ATA
systems, which means less expensive disaster recovery storage. SnapMirror
software leverages Snapshot copies to reduce network bandwidth and storage
capacity needs. Another benefit of SnapMirror software is that it allows disaster
recovery copies to be actively used. It allows remote read access for centralized
backup and data distribution to remote sites. It also allows remote clones for
application testing, quality assurance, and production staging. Finally, it
produces space-efficient copies without impacting the production system.

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SNAPMIRROR REPLICATION

When a Snapshot copy is created, SnapDrive software determines whether or

not the LUN from which the copy was made resides on a SnapMirror software
source volume. If it does, then SnapDrive software sends a request to
SnapMirror software indicating that all destination volumes associated with the
source volume for that LUN should be updated. This means that the destination
contains data that is valid up to the point of the most recent replication. Because
SnapMirror software is configured as an asynchronous form of data replication
by default, any disk writes to the source volume that follow the most recent
SnapMirror software replication do not appear on the destination volume until the
next time the destination volume is updated. Therefore, the post-update changes
to the source disk are not available in the event of a catastrophic failure. With
synchronous SnapMirror replication, updates are continuously written to both the
source and destination volumes. If a failure occurs, the most recent changes to
the source volume are also available on the destination. The type of SnapMirror
replication you choose to implement will depend on your requirements for
availability during a catastrophic failure and your limitations on CPU processing.

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CHOOSING A REPLICATION MODE

There are several things to consider when deciding to use synchronous or

asynchronous mode for SnapMirror software. This table provides a summary of
the requirements and impacts for each mode. Synchronous SnapMirror
replication adds significant CPU overhead. In synchronous mode, write
throughput to primary storage cannot exceed the network bandwidth.
Synchronous mode requires that the secondary system have equal write
throughput as the primary system. In addition, the secondary system should not
be used as production data storage. Write throughput with synchronous
SnapMirror replication is limited to the write performance on the secondary
system's root volume. Finally, latency occurs due to the SnapMirror software,
network distances, and switches or routers between the primary and secondary
storage. Given the different levels of data protection available and different
performance characteristics of each option, it is important to select the correct
replication mode for your environment. Keep in mind that application failure
supersedes the types of recovery discussed here.

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LEARNING ACTIVITY INTRO

This learning activity reinforces the concepts that you learned in this module.
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This learning activity requires approximately three minutes.

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MODULE SUMMARY

In this module, you should have learned to:

TRANSCRIPT

Determine if a SAN is shared or siloed,

Determine if Snapshot copies will be used,
Determine backup schedules for secondary storage,
Identify if tape will be used,
Determine acceptable RTOs and RPOs, and
Describe how SnapMirror software and MetroCluster are used.

11
SANDesign
2011 NetApp, Inc. This material is intended for training use only. Not authorized for reproduction purposes.