SOLUTION PROFILE

Automated Intelligence Provides a Layered Data Protection Approach

Enterprise Copy Data Management in a VMware Environment

The wide adoption of virtualization has revolutionized IT, providing greater agility, usage optimization,

scalability and self-serve capabilities. In the data protection domain, however, it has introduced new

challenges as traditional technologies have not kept pace with the new paradigms that virtualization

introduces. What is required is the ability to automate the data protection intelligently, with the same

ease and using familiar methods of VMware vSphere management. Crucially, this needs to be a

layered approach to data protection, where the level of protection is suitable to the value of the

data being protected. Hardware protection provides the least disruptive approach with the best

recovery time, while traditional backups continue to meet requirements for longer-term retention. This

solution profile describes how Hitachi Data Instance Director (HDID) can be deployed for automated

intelligence, to provide a layered service level agreement (SLA) schema for modern data protection.

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Not All Data Is Created Equal: Choose the Right ToolsIf your IT infrastructure, applications and data are diverse, you probably need more than one tool to protect against all the things that can go wrong with your data, and different tools for different types of data with different business values. With Hitachi Data Instance Director (HDID), you can choose which copy technology most suits your application, and often it’s more than one technology at the same time.

HDID Data Protection for VMware vSphere Using Hitachi Storage Hardware Acceleration

Hardware snapshots and replication are often considered the gold standard in data protection technology. Previously, the high costs of this meant it was only found in the confines of the Fortune 100 companies with huge IT budgets. Now, however, these enterprise features are available throughout the Hitachi block storage range.

When managing through HDID, you can utilize hardware-accelerated protection in a vSphere-aware fashion. Snapshots are fully orchestrated with vSphere to ensure that copy data is virtual machine (VM) consistent, with a wide range of uses for the resulting snapshots.

Hardware snapshots are created nearly instantly, with very low impact to the vSphere servers and their hosts, and are ideal for workloads where performance cannot be compromised. Recovery from hardware snapshots is also nearly instant. You also have the option of using the snapshots for business agility, so you can very rapidly deploy copies of your production data for re-use.

One consideration, however, is that snapshots reside on the same hardware as the primary storage. In the unlikely event of an array failure, the copy data is lost along with the primary data. Consequently, snapshot protection is generally used in combination with other technologies, such as remote replication to a geographically dispersed location, to provide business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities. Examples of this approach include augmenting the solution using hardware-based remote replication (active-active, synchronous or asynchronous) with remote snapshots.

See Hitachi Solution.

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VADP Enables Modern Data Protection Without Hitachi Storage HDID can provide end-to-end protection for VMware vSphere using vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP), which can be applied regardless of whether the datastores reside on Hitachi storage. This approach opens the possibilities of additional use cases.

HDID uses VADP Changed Block Tracking to perform incremental backups and fast, simple, full restores.

Use HDID With VMware vSphere vStorage APIs for Data Protection

Move Backup Data via SAN Instead of LANDuring an HDID backup using VADP, the data can be copied directly from primary storage to secondary storage. Previous methods copied data from primary storage to the application server VM to the backup server and finally to the secondary storage.

The load of moving backup data through the application server and user network can be eliminated.

Use the Right Tool for Each RequirementHardware snapshots support SLAs that require frequent recovery points, near-instant recovery time, low impact on production systems, and data retention of days to weeks. Software protection using VADP provides a cost-sensitive approach with lower service levels, suitable for less-critical workloads and long-term retention.

The cost of data protection can be aligned with the criticality of the data being protected.

Combine Capabilities To Provide a Holistic Protection StackYou may need to meet a range of requirements, including fast operational recovery with no more than 30 minutes of data loss. You may need a daily backup nearby for business continuity, a locked copy for ransomware recovery, periodic copies for DevOps, plus a daily copy off-site for disaster recovery.

With HDID you can create a single policy using hardware-accelerated protection and VADP software backups.

■■ Automatically assign protection policies and topologies when new VMs are created, based on SLA requirements.

■■ Combine local and remote recovery capabilities in a single policy-based workflow.

■■ Automatically create virtual copies of data on physical servers or VMs to support secondary business functions.

■■ Leverage high-performance Hitachi storage copy technologies or vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP).

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Automatically Apply the Appropriate Data Protection OperationsAutomated intelligence can guide the VMware system to make intelligent choices in the simplest and most natural way. For example, tagging a VM with an SLA-based data protection policy informs HDID how this machine needs to be protected.

SLA-based tags enable the vSphere admin to apply complex SLAs effortlessly, without leaving vCenter.

Easily Construct Advanced, Layered, Data Protection SLAsAn HDID policy defines two key things: “what my data is” and “how I am going to protect it.” Once that is defined, HDID’s patented dataflow interface makes it easy to configure even the most complex data protection topologies.

Easily create layers of policies and dataflows, such as “Platinum,” “Gold” and “Silver.”

Option: Protect Data Without Using vSphere vCenterHDID has the option of installing an agent on the VM guest operating system. Choose this option for specialized applications with specific protection requirements. It is an ideal choice when you want more granularity to what is backed up.

HDID provides flexibility to protect and copy data the right way, using the right tools and methods.

Provide Backup Administrators With Visibility and ControlData protection tools built specifically for VMware run in a silo managed by a VMware administrator and may not follow the same rules as other backup tools used by the organization. This can create data governance risks that the IT department doesn’t recognize.

HDID’s role-based access controls provide central IT, VMware and application administrators with control and visibility.

Among the organizations surveyed by ESG, a combined 71% reported they can’t tolerate more than one hour of downtime before invoking a failover for business-critical applications. Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, “Minimizing Downtime with Hitachi Vantara’s Modern Data Protection Solutions,” July 2018

Modernize data protection to avoid disaster.

71%

Create Business Agility Through Enterprise Copy Data ManagementOrganizations today expect technologies to be at their fingertips instantly, and they expect applications to be rapidly developed and deployed to meet changing needs. This means that businesses need to move to more agile business models, which can provide rapid and continuous improvements. HDID’s enterprise copy data management technologies enable rapid creation of multiple copies of physical or virtual environments for use in development, test and quality assurance. The HDID copies can also be used for high availability, business continuity, disaster recovery and local operational recovery operations.

HDID enables scheduling of copy data refresh and/or user-initiated copy data refresh and provides a full RESTful API so that it can be integrated with existing business tools and processes. Additionally, HDID is integrated with VMware vRealize Orchestrator to enhance automation, and VMware Site Recovery Manager to facilitate disaster recovery testing and execution.

On average, companies are storing 13 copies of their data and the cost for storing these copies will exceed US$55B in 2020. We need some of these copies to perform business functions, but if we could reduce the number to six or seven, that would make a big difference.

– Phil Goodwin, Sr. Analyst, IDC

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HITACHI is a trademark or registered trademark of Hitachi, Ltd. All other trademarks, service marks, and company names are properties of their respective owners.

SP-273-B BTD July 2019

Hitachi Vantara

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Next Steps

Learn more about snapshot and replication orchestration from our Modern Data Protection and Copy Data Management overview brochure.

Read our solution profile to learn how to provide local and remote replication to improve data availability, mitigate risks and reduce costs.

Learn how Hitachi Data Instance Director automates policy-based copy creation, access controls, copy refresh and expiration in this solution profile.

Dig deeper into how downtime introduced by backup and recovery operations can cost an organization money and reputation. Read our white paper.

Every new application, operating environment or location complicates the task of data protection. Learn about simplifying data protection in our white paper.

Visit the Hitachi Vantara data protection webpage to learn about all the modern approaches available to protect databases, applications and filesystem environments.

All too often, a VMware or database administrator forgets to provision data protection capabilities when deploying a new application or applies the incorrect levels of protection for the value of the data. Intelligent automation is needed to limit human error. With HDID and the entire Hitachi storage and data management software stack, automated intelligence is enabled through very robust application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow each function to communicate with and drive the others.