5 Tips For Failsafe VM Protection

Greg Shields
Microsoft MVP and VMware vExpert

Whats in?
Possible reasons of VM failure Why cant HA technologies guarantee full protection of your VM? Why insufficient backup solution can be even worse than none at all? 5 problems that an improper backup solution may bring

5 tips for failsafe VM protection

Many paths to VM failure

A VM can fail because of
Lost or deleted data; Lost or deleted application objects; Lost, deleted, or corrupted OS; Accidentally obliterated VM object; Corruption as a result of layers miscommunication;

Stupid users;
Stupid admins;

and a whole range of other man-made or natural disasters

Why HA technologies cannot guarantee full protection of your VMs?

High-Availability Technologies (HA) can protect against:
a host failure, some kinds of application failures (might require a certain effort)

VM

VM

VM

VM

VMs fail over to healthy host

VM VM

VM VM

VM VM

VM VM

Failed Server
Shared Storage for VMs

Healthy Server

Yet, High Availability technologies

Do nothing for Data Loss. Do nothing for Data Corruption. Do nothing for Disaster Recovery.

Why insufficient backup is worse than none?

Having no backup tool might result in a disaster like partial or complete data loss. But having an insufficient backup solution can bring even more troubles and negative drawbacks!

5 common problems of insufficient backup tools

Insufficient backup may fail in:
capturing data across datacenter layers; verifying backup integrity; quiescence or VSS; notifying you when something happens; accounting for organic VM growth;

#1
Failure in capturing data across datacenter layers
A virtualization-aware backup tool must be cognizant of each layers impact to ensure that data is captured successfully.

#2
Failure in verifying backup integrity
If you cant get a verifiably good backup, you dont have a backup! Reliable backup tool should provide an easy way to check backup integrity to ensure availability of any data, at any point in time!

#3
Failure in quiescence
A backup solution designed for virtualization should include the extra monitoring that keeps an eye on quiescence across each virtual environment layer.

#4
Failure in notifying you when something happens
Almost any backup tool can notify you when problems occur, but are your notifications actually being received?

If not, then youll never know that the data youre collecting isnt good data.

#5
Failure in accounting for organic VM growth
Your backup tool contains extra functionality that exposes it to your virtual platforms management solution. This is the only way to ensure youre capturing the right VMs as theyre being organically created and decommissioned.

5 Failsafe VM Protection Tips

Follow these tips to resolve the 5 problems! Or ignore them at your peril

Tip #1: Mind Your Layers

Virtualization adds many layers of separation between a VM and its backup storage: the more layers, the better. The complicated interactions between those layers may create the source of failure-creating designs.
E.g., Disk-based backups have the potential to aggregate the backups with the data (which is bad!) Particularly when the VMware admin isnt the storage admin

Failsafe Tip #1
Ensure backups and primary VM storage stay separate!

Tip #2: Dont Test Your Backups

A good backup solution should contain an automated in-built testing tool. Unlike tape-based backup tools, todays disk-based backup solutions also provide added checks that ensure that all the backed-up data, applications, operating system and objects are captured correctly. Disk file data integrity A recoverable backup!

Failsafe Tip #2
Ensure backups include comprehensive integrity verifications that automatically occur with each backup!

Tip #3: Proactively Monitor Quiescence

In Windows environments, most data protection tools leverage their own components in combination with Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).

Writers

Volume Shadow Copy Service

Requestor

SQL, Exchange, Active Directory, Oracle, SharePoint

Provider

Backup application Operating system, storage array or system provider

Disk volume

Failsafe Tip #3
Take the right approach with VSS: Trust, but verify!

Tip #4: Demand Visibility for Success

Your backup tool most likely includes alerting features that provide notification for backup successes and failures.

These alerts must be always enabled!

Failsafe Tip #4
Monitors are better monitors than you are Use them!

Tip #5: Dont Add New Backup Jobs for New VMs
refer to Tip#2 if you dont get the joke ;) Organic growth of dynamic virtual environments (esp., the ones manages like a Private Cloud) can only be supported by a backup tool that is aware of your virtual platform. Such tool can easily accommodate organic VM growth!

Failsafe Tip #5
Ensure your backup tool backs up by virtual platform constructs:
datacenters,

folders,
clusters, other objects

and not just a list of VMs!

Need more information?

If you need more detailed information on the subject, please, refer to our featured White Paper 5 ways your VMware or Hyper-V may fail you

at http://go.veeam.com/wpg-backup-shields-2012-5-waysyour-vmware-hyper-V-backups-may-fail-you.html

Thank you for your attention!