True granularity in action... and what does it bring us?

In previous posts, we saw how important it is to re-think data backup in a virtual environment and to treat virtual machines like the flat files they are. We also highlighted the advantages of disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) in terms of agility and granularity.

Now let's apply these concepts to a concrete example and see how they work in real life!

The scenario
Let's take a centralised architecture that hosts a VI 3.5-type platform associated with a SAN-type centralised storage solution with two storage categories:
 

• Production: FC 10,000 rpm disks
• Data backup: SATA 7,200 rpm disks
• Production: 1.3 TB used
• Data backup solution:

>Disk-to-disk (D2D): VEEAM Backup and Replication V.4
>Disk-to-tape (D2T): Arcserve 12.1

All virtual machines (VMs) spread over six simultaneous jobs (attempts with a seventh did not show any improvement in performance) by grouping them according to OS type and balancing the volumetrics handled by each job.

What you can expect

• A reduction in the time required for data backup from nearly 12 hours to less than five hours (as a result of changing from tape-only to D2D).
• Usable volumetric reduced from 1.3 TB to less than 600 GB (VEEAM deduplication and native compression activated).
• An average data treatment rate of 240 MB/second for an average write-to-disk rate of 2 GB/minute for treated data (native deduplication and compression).
• A second, D2T phase that uses flat files from the D2D phase and lasts about six hours.

Conclusion
Cut data backup time in half and--since it doesn't address production-- complete secondary data backup in a single day. Plus, store the entire platform and its seven previous states on a single LTO 4 tape.

It works! So think about it.