streamlined disaster recovery in heterogeneous storage environments

14 2013 Issue 03 | Dell.com/powersolutions

Converged infrastructure and data managementSpecialsection

Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 3. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 3. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

The mix of heterogeneous

hardware and software found

in many enterprises is a natural

result of expansion, whether

through organic growth, mergers or

acquisitions. Plus, remote offices, test

facilities and quality assurance labs may

choose to deploy systems that differ from

those in the corporate data center. These

diverse computing environments are

spurring IT groups to leverage novel ways of

facilitating interoperability and streamlining

data sharing.

Adding to this challenge is the

exponential growth in the volume, variety

and velocity of data that today’s enterprises

are required to manage. Accordingly,

reliable data protection has become

more important than ever before. Many

organizations have tried to piece together

solutions from multiple vendors to help

ensure data protection and business

continuity. In these mixed environments,

critical business information often resides

across a variety of file systems and

databases within the enterprise. Frequently,

portions of the data contained in each silo

are redundant but not necessarily in sync

across platforms. For positive decision-

making outcomes, organizations must

skillfully manage and protect their data so

that it is consistent, timely and accurate.

Moreover, efficient management

of the disaster recovery process is

necessary to optimize data protection.

Large, heterogeneous IT environments

typically contain disparate backup and

recovery applications as well as multiple

backup targets. This mix not only adds to

administration complexity but also leads

to time-consuming recovery processes,

which are unacceptable to the 24x7x365

environments of many organizations.

One option is to migrate data to a

common storage platform across the

enterprise. Alternatively, organizations

may prefer to retain cost-effective storage

systems in remote or branch offices and

deploy high-performance, high-capacity

systems in the corporate data center. Each

branch office may need consistent access

to its particular historical and real-time data

and also communicate data to the main

data center. In either case, a unified data

replication approach can streamline the

data protection and recovery process.

Simplified data protection using

common storage technologies

Organizations that have deployed a mix of

Dell enterprise storage can take advantage of

the underlying Dell™ Fluid Data™ architecture.

By consistently integrating key technologies

across Dell storage offerings, the Fluid Data

architecture enhances storage utilization,

streamlines management and bolsters

data protection. These technologies are

designed to automatically match capacity

with performance and to ensure high

availability. Moreover, the Fluid Data

architecture enables easy, nondisruptive

scalability to meet growth regardless of data

type, activity pattern, location or long-term

retention needs.

Widely deployed enterprise storage

platforms built on the Fluid Data architecture

include the Dell EqualLogic™ PS Series

storage area network (SAN) and the Dell

To strengthen data protection, many enterprises are

seeking disaster recovery solutions optimized for diverse

computing environments. Dell storage and software

offerings work together to enable rapid replication of

physical and virtual workloads.

By Dan Sutherland, Ted Curtin, Magi Kapoor and Jeremiah Mason

Streamlined disaster recovery in heterogeneous storage environments

Dell.com/powersolutions | 2013 Issue 03 15



Compellent™ Storage Center™ SAN

arrays. These arrays incorporate built-in

capabilities designed to address a broad

range of storage management and data

protection needs:

• Intelligent, automated tiering for drives,

RAID levels and load-balancing across

arrays to optimize storage utilization

• Automated data protection and backup

operations through thin snapshots,

replication and recovery, helping eliminate

the need for manual intervention and

maintain high availability of critical data

• Quick, linear scaling to help simplify IT

operations and reduce IT expenditures

as storage capacity, performance and

network bandwidth requirements expand

EqualLogic PS Series arrays offer a simple

path to rapid deployment, comprehensive

data protection, enterprise-class performance

and reliability, and pay-as-you-grow

expansion. Its peer storage architecture

enables linear capacity and performance

scaling with each array added to a storage

pool. EqualLogic arrays are designed to be

mixed and matched to build tiered storage

within a single storage pool or across

multiple pools. With its low entry point

and scale-out architecture, the EqualLogic

platform allows IT managers to start small

and grow quickly without disruption.

For organizations needing a high-

capacity, multiprotocol storage platform,

the Dell Compellent Storage Center array

provides self-optimized, intelligently

tiered storage to power the enterprise.

The array’s automated intelligence

manages a virtualized, scalable pool of

disks to maximize performance and help

lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

Storage Center enables organizations

to efficiently meet both performance

and capacity requirements through

automated intelligent data placement

that is designed to keep hot data on

high-performance drives and cold data

on large-capacity drives.

Unified backup for diverse

infrastructures

Many organizations use stand-alone

Dell AppAssure™ backup, replication and

recovery software to complement the

built-in data protection capabilities of Dell

storage. AppAssure is designed to deliver

fast backups with verified recovery for virtual

machines and physical servers, as well as for

several Microsoft® Windows applications.1

To move data efficiently with minimal

impact on performance, AppAssure

leverages nondisruptive snapshot

technology. AppAssure snapshots are

backups that are taken at regular intervals —

as often as every five minutes — to

effectively minimize data loss. Using these

granular snapshots, administrators can

recover data to a specific point in time,

enabling them to reduce recovery point

objective (RPO) intervals from hours to

minutes without resorting to complex

scheduling and downtime. AppAssure also

is designed to deliver aggressive, near-zero

recovery time objectives (RTOs).

At the heart of the platform is the

AppAssure core server, which handles

critical backup and restore functionality.

It facilitates a simple replication process

that keeps snapshots up to date in

multiple locations. Once replication

is set up, the source core server

asynchronously and continually transmits

the incremental snapshot data to the

target core server. Administrators can

configure outbound replication to the

organization’s data center or remote

disaster recovery site, or to a managed

service provider providing off-site backup

and recovery.

1 For more information about Dell AppAssure, see “Agile data protection for virtualized environments,” by Sheryl Koenigsberg, Ted Curtin, Marc Mombourquette and Jay Woodruff, in Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 3, qrs.ly/163gwqn.

Erasing continuity gaps

When a mission-critical application goes down, downtime must be limited to avoid lost revenues and productivity. View how Dell AppAssure replication allows organizations to turn on a replacement system in seconds after a failure occurs.

appassure.com/videos/dell-appassure-replication

http://qrs.ly/163gwqn

http://appassure.com/videos/dell-appassure-replication

16 2013 Issue 03 | Dell.com/powersolutions



The core server is designed to

simultaneously compress, deduplicate and

encrypt the snapshot data at line speed

before sending it to storage. This process

minimizes the volume of data being

stored and moved across the network —

leading to disk-capacity and bandwidth

savings and backup speeds of up to

several gigabytes per second. Redundant

copies of operating systems, applications,

documents and other data found on

multiple servers can be reduced to a single

copy and transmitted only once across

a wide area network (WAN) segment.

Automatic integrity checks performed

by the core server are designed to validate

the recoverability of critical data in the

event of disaster.2

AppAssure smart agents are installed

on individual servers that require protection

by the core server. Each smart agent

enables changed-block tracking, data-

volume grouping and the creation of

application-aware backups, with a minimal

2 to 4 percent processor utilization.

Because AppAssure backs up changes at

the block level, it minimizes performance

impact on the agent side and maximizes

storage savings. AppAssure also monitors

resource utilization of physical servers and

virtual machines to help ensure that backup

operations do not interfere with ongoing

business processing.

Rapid recovery on mixed hardware

Through strategic planning or acquisitions,

some organizations may find themselves

with a heterogeneous IT environment

that includes both Dell Compellent and

EqualLogic storage arrays. Using the

AppAssure replication feature, organizations

that wish to operate a mix of Dell storage

can easily migrate and replicate data from

an EqualLogic SAN to a Dell Compellent

storage array or vice versa.

AppAssure enables organizations to

quickly recover from a site-wide disaster

or recover block and file data stored on

Dell SANs across a WAN. In situations

that call for data replication between

like-to-like platforms, such as among

EqualLogic SANs or among Dell

Compellent arrays, administrators can

use the built-in data protection capabilities

of each respective platform.

In this example disaster recovery

scenario, an administrator can set up a

primary site using Dell Compellent storage

to replicate data to a secondary location

that hosts EqualLogic storage (see figure).

The administrator loads AppAssure software

on Windows-based Dell PowerEdge™

servers to create a source core server at the

primary site and a target core server at the

secondary site.

The administrator then configures

AppAssure repository volumes on the Dell

Compellent storage array at the primary

site and the EqualLogic SAN at the disaster

recovery site. Repository volumes are SAN-

based storage containers designated for

storing backups.

After setting up AppAssure replication

between the two core servers, the

administrator replicates the base image

of the Microsoft® SQL Server® volumes

on the Dell Compellent storage to the

EqualLogic storage.

From then on, snapshots, or recovery

points, of both the production data and

the application stack are taken at specified

intervals and stored in the repository

volumes on the Dell Compellent storage

array. Integrated global deduplication

and compression reduces the size of

the incremental snapshots as they are

ingested, greatly minimizing backup

storage requirements. AppAssure

asynchronously transmits the deduplicated

and compressed snapshots to the target

core server and the EqualLogic SAN across

the WAN at the disaster recovery location,

resulting in optimal bandwidth utilization

between the two sites.

2 For more information, view “AppAssure 5 Integrity Check Process,” Dell, accessed July 30, 3013, qrs.ly/1y3gwqo.

Primary site Disasterrecovery site

WAN

Network

VMware vSphere®

ESXi™ 5.0 hypervisor

Virtual machineMicrosoft Windows 2008

Enterprise R2 OS

MicrosoftSQL Server 2008

Enterprise Edition R2database

Smart agent

Dell PowerEdgeR720 servervSphere 5.1

Dell PowerEdgeR620 server

Microsoft Windows 2012

Dell Networking 6248 switch

Dell Compellent SAN

SQLlog

SQLdata

Productiondata

AppAssurerepository

VMware vSphereESXi 5.0 hypervisor

Virtual machineMicrosoft Windows 2008

Enterprise R2 OS

MicrosoftSQL Server 2008

Enterprise Edition R2database

Smart agent

Dell PowerEdgeR720 servervSphere 5.1

Dell PowerEdgeR720 server

Microsoft Windows 2012

Dell Networking 6248 switch

Dell EqualLogic SAN

SQLlog

SQLdata

Replicateddata

AppAssurerepository

Compressed anddeduplicated

recovery points

Network

Compressed anddeduplicatedblock-basedAppAssurereplication

AppAssurecore server

v5.3

AppAssurecore server

v5.3

Using Dell AppAssure software to migrate and replicate data between Dell Compellent and Dell EqualLogic storage

http://qrs.ly/1y3gwqo

Dell.com/powersolutions | 2013 Issue 03 17



In the event of disaster or a comprehensive

outage, the administrator can fail over

to the secondary site (see figure). The

target core server is set up to recover the

replicated SQL Server application and data

from the EqualLogic SAN, as well as to

start immediately protecting the failed-over

server. After the primary site is restored

and brought online, the target core server

can institute failback protection to the Dell

Compellent array at the primary site.

For high availability of mission-critical

servers, many organizations take advantage

of an innovative AppAssure capability to

create and continually update a standby

virtual machine that acts as a warm standby

of a primary host server. The bootable

virtual machine is designed to be an exact

clone of the host server.

If the primary host goes down, the standby

virtual machine — with the same name and

IP address — can be powered on, and end

users can continue to access data. While the

standby virtual machine is running, ongoing

backup snapshots continue to protect

changing data. When the primary host is

repaired, just a few mouse clicks are required

to initiate failback protection while avoiding

loss of access to applications or end users.

Efficient replication through

cross-platform synergies

For enterprises that rely on a combination

of Dell EqualLogic and Dell Compellent

storage, Dell AppAssure is designed to provide

a seamless cross-platform data replication and

disaster recovery solution. The solution helps

administrators eliminate backup windows,

ensure recoverability and availability, and

achieve near-zero RTOs and granular RPOs.

Dell AppAssure software and Dell Compellent

and EqualLogic storage work well together to

maximize storage efficiency, boost IT agility

and enhance business resiliency.

Authors

Dan Sutherland is a product consultant for

infrastructure solutions marketing at Dell.

Ted Curtin is a senior advisor for the Storage

Solutions Marketing team at Dell. He has over

25 years of experience in data center sales,

operations and marketing.

Magi Kapoor is a senior technical marketing

advisor in the Dell Enterprise Storage

Product Group.

Jeremiah Mason is a senior product advisor

for Dell Software with experience as a solutions

architect and security specialist.

Learn more

Dell AppAssure:

appassure.com

Implementing the failover process using Dell AppAssure

1. Begin failover by clicking the replicated backup and selecting Fail Over.

2. Fail back once the main site is up by clicking the replicated backup and selecting Fail Back.

3. Export the archive from the disaster recovery site and import it to the primary site.

Protecting mission-critical applications

To maintain business continuity, data for mission-critical Microsoft applications must be backed up and available. Download this technology brief to discover how Dell AppAssure Recovery Assure automatically tests backups to help ensure that they are fully recoverable.

qrs.ly/wn3gwqq

http://appassure.com

http://qrs.ly/wn3gwqq

streamlined disaster recovery in heterogeneous storage environments

Technology