Esg Lab Validation Report Emc Data Domain Avamar

Lab
Validation
Report

EMC Data Domain and Avamar

Performance and Efficiency for VMware Data Protection
By Kerry Dolan, Lab Analyst

October 2015

© 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Lab Validation: EMC Data Domain and Avamar 2
Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 3
Background .............................................................................................................................................................. 3
ESG Lab Validation ...................................................................................................................................... 6
Ease of Integration ................................................................................................................................................... 6
Performance and Efficiency ..................................................................................................................................... 9
ESG Lab Validation Highlights .................................................................................................................... 17
Issues to Consider ..................................................................................................................................... 17
The Bigger Truth ........................................................................................................................................ 18
Appendix ................................................................................................................................................... 19

ESG Lab Reports

The goal of ESG Lab reports is to educate IT professionals about data center technology products for
companies of all types and sizes. ESG Lab reports are not meant to replace the evaluation process that should
be conducted before making purchasing decisions, but rather to provide insight into these emerging
technologies. Our objective is to go over some of the more valuable feature/functions of products, show how
they can be used to solve real customer problems and identify any areas needing improvement. ESG Lab's
expert third-‐party perspective is based on our own hands-‐on testing as well as on interviews with customers
who use these products in production environments. This ESG Lab report was sponsored by EMC.

All trademark names are property of their respective companies. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources The Enterprise
Strategy Group (ESG) considers to be reliable but is not warranted by ESG. This publication may contain opinions of ESG, which are subject to change from
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Introduction
This report documents hands-‐on testing and validation of an EMC data protection solution for virtual environments
using Avamar Virtual Edition with a Data Domain system, with a focus on the ease of integration, efficiency,
scalability, and backup/restore performance.
Background
According to ESG research, over the past five years, IT professionals have consistently identified improving data
backup and recovery, managing data growth, and increasing the use of server virtualization among their top IT
priorities. In ESG’s 2015 IT Spending Intentions Survey, only information security initiatives were cited more often
(see Figure 1).1 One challenge for organizations is that data growth has a big impact on data backup and recovery:
Ever-‐expanding volumes of data lengthen backup windows and recovery times, often to the point of interfering
with production activities, while also demanding increasing amounts of back-‐end storage.
Figure 1. 2015 Top-‐ten Most-‐cited IT Priorities
Top 10 most important IT prioriAes over the next 12 months. (Percent of respondents,
N=601, ten responses accepted)
Informadon security inidadves 34%
Improving data backup and recovery 26%
Managing data growth 26%
Increasing use of server virtualizadon 25%
Desktop virtualizadon 25%
Using cloud infrastructure services 25%
Regulatory compliance inidadves 24%
Business condnuity/disaster recovery programs 23%
Building a “private cloud” infrastructure 22%
Improving collaboradon capabilides 22%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%

Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2015.

In addition, many organizations have a difficult time finding the best option for protecting their ever-‐growing
VMware virtual machines (VMs). Each VM requires an individual backup job, which can be difficult at scale.
Traditional backup solutions struggle with the shared resources of VMs, putting SLAs at risk. VM backups often
include redundant OS, application, and file data—the enormous amounts of data often mean backups cannot be
completed during backup windows without leaving some VMs unprotected, and managing all these backups can be
an operational nightmare. Another challenge is that running separate physical and virtual backups results in more
servers, storage, and software to buy and manage, driving up costs and complexity.

1
Source: ESG Research Report, 2015 IT Spending Intentions Survey, February 2015.
EMC Data Domain and Avamar

This EMC data protection solution combines the simple and efficient Avamar backup/recovery software with the
performance, scale, and efficiency of a Data Domain system.
Data Domain
Data Domain systems are highly scalable, purpose-‐built protection storage appliances that provide high-‐speed
deduplication for backup and archiving, and replication for disaster recovery. The family of models can scale up to
86.4 PB of logical capacity. Variable-‐length deduplication maximizes dedupe rates, reducing backup and archive
storage requirements by 10 to 30 times on average, making Data Domain a cost-‐effective alternative to other
backup appliances or tape. These systems provide a target for a wide variety of enterprise backup and archiving
workloads, including VMs, databases, mainframes, IBM i systems, NAS, e-‐mail, big data, content management apps,
and remote offices. Data Domain systems support both backup and archive data simultaneously, eliminating the
need to buy and manage a separate storage platform for archiving, as well as enabling global deduplication across
both backup and archive data. Secure multi-‐tenancy is built into the Data Domain Operating System (DD OS),
enabling hybrid cloud-‐based data protection-‐as-‐a-‐service for enterprises or service providers. Simple installation
and easy management ensure lower OpEx.
Data Domain systems are built with the Data Domain Data Invulnerability Architecture for maximum reliability and
data integrity, performing inline verification of writes and reads and automatically recovering from I/O errors
during ingest and retrieval. This ensures that backups and recoveries are successfully completed. Data Domain
provides a wide range of backup options through support for NFS, CIFS, VTL, NDMP, and Data Domain Boost; the
latter integrates with backup and enterprise applications to dramatically speed backups and reduce network
utilization.
Avamar
Avamar backup software delivers daily full backups with variable length deduplication for VMware environments as
well as for business-‐critical applications, NAS, desktops/laptops, and remote offices. Avamar can be deployed with a
physical appliance for metadata or using the Avamar Virtual Edition appliance, as was used in this testing. When
Avamar is combined with Data Domain, DD Boost code included in the Avamar client is used to distribute parts of
the deduplication processing to the client side, reducing backup data and requiring less bandwidth. Avamar’s web-‐
based management provides central control across a global deployment; it can also be managed through vSphere.
For VMware environments, both guest-‐ and image-‐level backups are supported. Avamar is integrated with
VMware’s vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP), enabling agentless guest backups. For image-‐level backups,
Avamar offloads the backup process from the application VMs to multiple proxy VMs as needed, and intelligently
load balances among them. Avamar also leverages VMware Changed Block Tracking (CBT) to speed backup and
restore. After the initial full backup Avamar transfers only changed data, but creates a complete recovery point for
restore. This “forever full” method delivers fast performance for both backup and restore; in comparison,
traditional methods require rolling back to the most recent full and then staging the subsequent incremental
backups, taking more time and sometimes impacting recovery reliability.
Avamar provides fast, single-‐step recovery of entire VMs or individual files. In addition, Avamar VM images stored
on the Data Domain target can be instantly accessed, a technique often used for test/dev and recovery validation;
VMs can be run directly on the Data Domain for immediate use, while the running VM is transferred back to the
original location in the background using vMotion.
Tested Solution: EMC Data Domain and Avamar

ESG Lab tested an EMC Data Protection Solution that included Data Domain and Avamar with the virtual
environment hosted on an EMC XtremIO all-‐flash storage array. Figure 2 provides a conceptual overview of the
solution. On the left, a VMware ESX hypervisor hosts multiple application VMs, the Avamar Virtual Edition VM, and
proxy VMs. The Avamar Administrator dashboard is shown at the top. A proxy VM leverages VMware CBT to
identify changed data. Then leveraging DD Boost, parts of the Data Domain deduplication process are distributed to
Avamar, where client-‐side deduplication ensures only unique data is sent from the Avamar client to Data Domain.
The highly scalable Data Domain system can serve simultaneously as a target for other backup and archiving
workloads, as shown on the right. For this testing, XtremIO was used as the client-‐side storage platform to
eliminate the possibility of any storage bottleneck.
Figure 2. Solution Overview: EMC Avamar and Data Domain
ESG Lab Validation

ESG Lab conducted hands-‐on testing as well as auditing of tests performed in one of EMC’s Hopkinton, MA labs.
Testing was designed to demonstrate the ease of integrating Avamar and Data Domain, the efficiency of both
capacity and CPU usage, and the performance of backup and restore, all with a focus on VMware backups.
Ease of Integration

EMC Avamar and EMC Data Domain systems are extremely simple to integrate, enabling organizations to leverage
the scalability and built-‐in protection of Data Domain for Avamar backups. ESG Lab audited the integration
procedure, which took only a few steps and less than five minutes.
ESG Lab Testing

Using a powered-‐on and network-‐connected Data Domain DD4500, the first step was to add the Data Domain
system for Avamar to use as a target. Provisioning it can be done completely within the Avamar Administrator
management console, without having to launch the Data Domain System Manager GUI or CLI. The Avamar
Administrator GUI in Figure 3 (left) shows the Server tab, displaying back-‐end system configurations. The upper
right corner of that display shows one Avamar server available for back-‐end capacity.

Figure 3. Add Data Domain System via Avamar Administrator Console

The next step was click the Server tab, select Server Management, and select Add Data Domain System (Figure 3,
right). On the System tab, the qualified system name (dd4500a) was added, and the DD Boost account name and
credentials (which had been created during the dd4500a set up) were added. This authenticated the target system,
enabling write permissions for Avamar clients.
A key setting is the total number of Avamar client backup streams that can be launched at the same time; in this
case, 270 streams were enabled. Since Data Domain can serve as a target for multiple backup and archiving tasks
simultaneously, it is important to ensure the optimal balance to avoid having one application unintentionally
oversubscribe the Data Domain target. Next, SNMP details were added to enable Avamar to collect and display
details regarding system health, alerts, and capacity.
Once these steps were completed, ESG Lab was able to view the Data Domain target within the Avamar
Administrator dashboard (Figure 4, top). In addition, from the Server/Server Management tabs, we could click the
dd icon in the toolbar and view the system details of the newly added dd4500a, including hostname, used and
available capacity, bytes protected, replication status, stream limit, and the status of encryption, authentication,
and monitoring (Figure 4, bottom).

Figure 4. Managing Data Domain from Avamar Administrator GUI

With the dd4500a target properly configured, the final step was to create an Avamar backup policy for the VMware
VMs. For the backup job titled VM_Test, the Options tab was selected. From the drop-‐down box we selected Linux
VMware Image and checked the box to use Change Block Tracking. Next, we clicked the Store Backup on Data
Domain system check box, selected dd4500a from the list of available targets, and clicked OK. At this point, the
next manual or scheduled backup for the dataset VM_Test would send data directly to the Data Domain target.

Figure 5. Creating a Backup Policy

Why This Matters

The flexibility of today’s virtualized data centers is a boon to business, but can be a tremendous challenge for IT,
and particularly for backup administrators. Many organizations run separate infrastructure silos and backup
applications for physical and virtual data sets, or for different enterprise applications. This consumes valuable time,
extends backup windows, which can interfere with production activities, and drives up Capex and OpEx.
ESG Lab validated the fast and easy integration and policy creation for the combined Avamar/Data Domain
solution. In just a few steps and less than five minutes, the Data Domain target was added through the Avamar
Administrator console, and a VM backup policy was created. The ease and speed of integration make it an easy
choice for administrators who wish to consolidate backups for a wide range of applications, systems, and locations
with flexible, full-‐featured Avamar and Data Domain components.
Performance and Efficiency

Backup and restore performance have a big impact on production operations. The speed of backups often makes
the difference between completing the job for all VMs within a backup window, and leaving data unprotected; the
ability to restore quickly enables fast resumption of business. The combined Avamar/Data Domain solution
executes extremely efficient VM backup, using advanced deduplication to dramatically reduce the amount of data
that must be transferred and stored, which in turn dramatically increases backup performance. In addition, the
efficient use of host CPU resources during backups is an important factor for virtual environments as it ensures that
the data protection processing doesn’t interfere with production activities.
Avamar and Data Domain Backup Methodology

A key differentiator of the Avamar/Data Domain solution is the backup methodology. After an initial full backup,
only incremental backups are done by Avamar. Integration with VMware CBT ensures only changed or new data is
subsequently backed up, and DD Boost ensures that only unique data is sent from Avamar to Data Domain.
Metadata is always stored in a separate file, enabling Avamar to quickly find the data wanted for recovery. The
changed data that is backed up is applied to previous backup data to create a recovery point after every
incremental. This means that every backup with Avamar takes the time of an incremental, but is actually
represented as a full backup, which makes recovery fast and efficient.
This “forever full” capability eliminates the need for IT to run additional full backups on a regular basis and update
the catalog, as traditional backup applications do (see Figure 6). These additional full backups take time and effort.
Also, the restore process using the traditional method requires rolling back the most recent full backup and
subsequent incrementals, a cumbersome process that can cause delay and can be unreliable.
Figure 6. Avamar/Data Domain Forever Full versus Traditional Method

Image-‐level VM Backup and Restore with Avamar

Because Avamar is tightly integrated with VADP, image-‐level backups leverage proxy VMs to offload backup and
dedupe processing from client VMs. vSphere is used to dynamically connect client VMs to the Avamar proxy VM
(load balancing across multiple proxies) without transferring data over the network, enabling fast backups of
multiple VMs.
VMware CBT further speeds backup by sending a list of changed blocks to the Avamar software. Then, leveraging
DD Boost, blocks are broken into variable-‐length segments and deduplicated before being sent to Data Domain.
CBT can also be used for fast restore of changed data to an existing VM. Avamar keeps track of the current VM
state and the CBT logs; identifies what blocks from the desired recovery point need to be restored; and quickly
restores only those blocks.
ESG Lab Testing

For the performance and efficiency testing, ESG Lab leveraged two VMware vCenter ESX 5.5 servers housed on dual
Cisco UCS 240 servers; each UCS server hosted 50 VMs, for a total of 200 VMs. Storage for the servers consisted of
two XtremIO bricks with 7.56 TB usable each. Data protection was provided by an Avamar Virtual Edition 7.2 virtual
appliance and a Data Domain DD4500 with 86 TB of usable capacity, leveraging 10GbE ports. Test data (various files,
about 1 MB each) was generated and modified for backup processing using an internal tool (Data Gen), providing a
consistent data set across multiple test iterations.
Three test procedures were used:
• Simulated 28-‐day backup cycle test using 200 VMs.
• Simulated restore test using 31 VMs with CBT restore.
• Simulated backup scale test with 200 VMs.
Each VM consisted of approximately 70 GB of data, including the operating system and file data generated to create
initial backup data and new/modified data between backups. Metrics were recorded for deduplication,
backup/restore runtime performance, and CPU. Each test was conducted in full three times to evaluate consistency
of results. Both hands-‐on testing and auditing of previously run tests were used.

First, ESG Lab looked at the capacity efficiency delivered by the Avamar/Data Domain solution, beginning with the
simulated 28-‐day backup cycle test using 200 VMs. For each test run, the Data Gen tool created a simulated file
system, including directories and files, of approximately 50 GB per VM. An initial full backup was done; next, the
tool was used to generate 4% changed data and .125% new data per client, and an incremental backup was run.
This was executed 28 times to simulate a typical four-‐week backup cycle. Because of the “forever full” method that
Avamar uses, only a single full backup is needed. Three test runs were completed, with a complete reset done
between test runs to ensure a clean environment.
ESG Lab audited the log files of each test to gather deduplication statistics. All three test runs of the complete 28-‐
day backup test were virtually identical. Data from one test iteration is shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7. Deduplication During 28-‐day Backup Testing
DeduplicaAon: 28-‐Day Backup Test

450
400
350
300
250
TiB
200
Dedupe rate 72.3 x
150
100
50
0
Data Protected Data Stored aker Dedupe/Compression

What the numbers mean

• The amount of VM data protected was 402.15 TiB.
• The amount of data stored on Data Domain after compression and deduplication was 5.56 TiB.
• Capacity reduction for this test was 98.6%, resulting in a 72.3x dedupe rate.
Next, ESG Lab reviewed the backup performance for the 28-‐day backup cycle. As Figure 8 shows, the initial backup
of 200 VM clients (70 GB each) took two hours and 56 minutes to complete. After that, each incremental backup
with 4% changed data and .125% new data consumed only 7-‐10 minutes.
Figure 8. Backup Performance
28-‐day Test Backup: RunAme

200.00
180.00
160.00
140.00
120.00
Minutes
100.00
80.00
60.00
40.00
20.00
0.00
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

• Runtime for the initial full backup was 176 minutes (2:56:12).
• Runtime for the 28 incrementals averaged 8.68 minutes.
• Each recovery point represents a full image of the client, although only incremental data was transferred.
The conceptual graphic in Figure 9 demonstrates the capacity efficiency and runtime advantages of the solution.
The left side of the figure represents the virtual machines, including the total capacity protected. The CBT and
deduplication processing in the solution reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred and speeds backup
time. In this case, an average of 19.8 GiB was transferred per day, resulting in an average daily backup time of 8.68
minutes.

Figure 9. Data Reduction and Backup Time

Next, ESG Lab reviewed data for a restore test using CBT. After a complete reset of the environment, another 50GB
data set was generated for 31 VMs, creating VMs of 70 GB each. After an initial full backup was done, a single data
modification cycle was executed. Next, CBT restores were conducted for a single VM, for 10 VMs simultaneously,
and for 20 VMs simultaneously. This simulates restore after a corruption or a rollback of application data to a
specific point in time for a VM or group of VMs. Figure 10 displays the average restore time for the three test
iterations.

Figure 10. Restore Performance
Restore Time as Clients Scale
Restore 20 Clients
Restore 10 Clients
Restore 1 Client
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
Minutes


• Only changed data, about 1.5 GB, needed to be restored for each VM.
• Restore performance for a single client averaged 7 minutes.
• Restore performance for 10 clients averaged 10.5 minutes.
• Restore performance for 20 clients averaged 15 minutes.

Next, ESG Lab looked at the CPU overhead required for the backup tests. Backup processing with the Avamar/Data
Domain solution includes deduplication that is distributed between the client and target. ESG Lab audited the log
files for the 28-‐day backup test to determine the CPU utilization for the Data Domain target and the ESX hosts.
The 28-‐day backup testing process included automated clean up and new data generation between test runs,
followed by a full backup, and then a series of incremental backups with new and modified data generated
between incrementals. As Figure 11 shows, throughout the duration of the testing, the Data Domain CPU utilization
remained below 30%, with a single initial spike to about 90% during the first full backup; smaller spikes occurred
during the cleaning and reset that ran between simulated weeks. For the four ESX hosts, CPU utilization remained
very low.

Figure 11. Data Domain and ESX Server CPU Utilization
CPU UAlizaAon: 28-‐day Backup Test

100
90
80
70
Data Domain
60
ESX 1
Percentage
50
ESX 2
40
ESX 3
30 ESX 4
20
10
0
Time


• For the 28-‐day backup cycle test, Data Domain CPU averaged 23%, spiking to about 90% utilization during
the full backup.
• For the 28-‐day backup cycle test, for all four ESX hosts, CPU utilization averaged between 6%-‐8%, and never
exceeded 15%.

Finally, ESG Lab looked at the performance of the Avamar/Data Domain solution during scaling of backups. After
the initial full backup, modified and new data was added, and 50 VM incrementals were run concurrently. The same
process was repeated with 100, 150, and 200 concurrent incrementals. Figure 12 shows the data growth for each
set of concurrent incremental backups and the time to complete concurrent incrementals. The dark blue bars show
the initial amount of data; the light blue bars show changed data for each set of VMs; and the orange line shows
the time required for the backup. It is clear that backup performance was not negatively impacted by data growth.

Figure 12. Scale Test: Backup Performance as Data Volumes Grow
Scale Test: DuraAon of Concurrent Incremental Backups

11 200
10.8 180
10.6 160
10.4 140
10.2 120
Minutes
TBs
10 100
9.8 80
9.6 60
9.4 40
9.2 20
9 0
Inidal Data 200 Incremental 50 Incremental 100 Incremental 150 Incremental 200
VMs Vms VMs VMs. VMs
Inidal data New/changed data Minutes


• The initial full backup took 184 minutes.
• The time required for 50 concurrent VM incrementals was 11 minutes; for 100 concurrent, 8 minutes; for
150 concurrent, 8 minutes; and for 200 concurrent, 7 minutes.
• No additional proxy servers were needed to scale to 200 VMs.
• While 200 VMs were tested, the global deduplication in this solution would likely result in increasing
performance as more VMs are added to the pool.

Why This Matters

The ongoing growth of data volumes challenges IT in many ways, but in particular in the backup domain.
Organizations must protect and retain data in case of a corruption or disaster, as well as to address stringent
compliance and governance initiatives; storing and keeping this data for the long term drives up costs. Growth is
exacerbated by the proliferation of VMs, where backups often store redundant copies of operating systems,
applications, and data.
ESG Lab validated the ability of the Avamar/Data Domain solution to significantly reduce the amount of backup
data with deduplication technologies. The Data Domain variable-‐length deduplication ensures maximum dedupe
rates; this results in minimizing both storage and bandwidth needs for backup, delivering cost and time savings to
the business. In addition, this ensures that replication for disaster recovery will benefit from the same reduction in
bandwidth needs, adding to the cost and time savings. Testing also validated the speed of 200 VM backups,
concurrent backups, and concurrent restores. The ability to use CBT restores ensures fast recovery and minimizes
the impact to your data protection stack as your VM environment scales. Finally, ESG Lab validated that backup
processing for individual backup streams, concurrent streams, and restore tasks leave plenty of CPU available on
the Data Domain target and the ESX hosts.
ESG Lab Validation Highlights

þ ESG Lab was impressed with the ease and speed of integrating Avamar and Data Domain, enabling
consolidated management for data protection.
þ Data deduplication rates in this testing demonstrated the ability to reduce capacity by more than 73x,
enabling organizations to save on both storage and bandwidth.
þ ESG Lab was pleased to see efficient CPU utilization for both the Data Domain target and the ESXi hosts
during all backup processing, leaving plenty of headroom for other tasks.
þ ESG Lab also appreciated that when heavy processing was needed, Data Domain offloaded the bulk of the
burden from the host.
þ Backup performance testing demonstrated the speed advantage of “forever full” backups with this
capacity-‐ and network-‐efficient solution. ESG Lab also validated that there was no performance impact
during concurrent VM backups, and the fast, efficient restore available when using VMware CBT.

Issues to Consider

þ Data Domain minimizes storage requirements by leveraging variable-‐length deduplication, and DD Boost
integration minimizes bandwidth by distributing parts of the Data Domain deduplication to Avamar to
enable client-‐side dedupe. This is important for VM backups since they often contain redundant operating
system and other data.
þ CPU utilization efficiency is important not just for the ESXi hosts that support production applications, but
for Data Domain that can serve as a target for other protection activities at the same time.
þ CBT restore is an excellent option that provides fast restore in the case of a specific VM data corruption. It
should be noted that CBT restore is not effective for a fully destroyed VM, since in that case, all VMDKs
making up the VM must be restored.
þ Deduplication rates are always dependent on the type of data being backed up; some data types (such as
file data) tend to have significant duplicate data, while other data types (such as video and images) tend to
have little duplication.
The Bigger Truth

Year after year, ESG research reveals that midmarket and enterprise organizations place improving data protection,
managing data growth, and increasing server virtualization among their highest IT priorities.2 It’s easy to see why:
The transformation of production operations has an immediate and significant impact on protection mechanisms.
VMware’s pioneering technology launched a revolution that has resulted in the mainstreaming of virtualization,
and the proliferation of VMs within organizations across the world; protecting all that data remains challenging.
Avamar and Data Domain are both highly evolved data protection solutions, and in combination they become even
more powerful.
• Data Domain was a pioneer in the deduplication field, but equally important at this point are its scalability
and flexibility—critical for VMware data protection, as organizations quickly spin up new VMs and find
themselves with hundreds and even thousands to protect. Data Domain offers unmatched flexibility,
simultaneously providing a target for: multiple different backup applications; direct backups from
enterprise applications like Oracle RMAN, SQL, SAP, and DB2; direct backups from primary storage such as
VMAX3 and XtremIO; backup of mainframe and IBM i systems; and archiving solutions such as SourceOne.
Also, while IT can keep track of all protection activities (for example, using EMC Data Protection Advisor),
other administrators can handle their own backups (for example, DBAs can run RMAN, and virtualization
administrators can run VM backups). This spreads out the work of managing multiple data protection
activities without having to buy and manage separate infrastructure stacks. Data Domain is also known for
its built-‐in reliability—it has been called a “paranoid” system due to the data verification, continuous fault
detection, and self-‐healing features of the Data Invulnerability Architecture. All these characteristics make
it a rock-‐solid solution for small and large enterprises as well as service providers.
• Avamar provides application-‐ and VM-‐consistent backups with fast, granular recovery. It leverages VADP for
VMware backups and is integrated with vSphere. Like Data Domain, Avamar delivers the scalability that
virtual server environments demand, using proxy VMs that are automatically load balanced. The ability to
leverage CBT for backup and restore speeds performance for both tasks and reduces data movement across
the network. Also, while not tested in this project, Avamar provides instant VM access to images stored on
Data Domain, providing the agility and rapid recoverability that organizations need today to maintain
production operations.
ESG Lab validated the combination of using Avamar and Data Domain in a real world scenario to test how it would
perform in a customer environment. This included the ease of integrating Avamar with Data Domain, essential in
the modern IT landscape. Our testing with 200 VMs validated the capacity efficiency of the dual deduplication
mechanisms, the performance advantages of incremental backups, the ability to handle hundreds of VM backups
concurrently while maintaining fast performance, and the ability to leverage CBT restores for fast recovery.
Many organizations today are turning to integrated backup appliances for two key reasons: ease of deployment,
and reduction in CapEx and OpEx. While not technically an integrated appliance solution, the combination of Data
Domain and Avamar delivers higher deduplication rates than traditional integrated backup appliances, as well as
the scalability, flexibility, and agility necessary to protect an entire environment without compromise. It’s a
powerful combination that can help organizations simplify and consolidate data protection while reducing costs.

2
Source: ESG Research Report, 2015 IT Spending Intentions Survey, February 2015.
Appendix
Table 1. ESG Lab Test Bed

Backup Software Disk Target
Avamar Virtual Edition 7.2 Data Domain DD4500
2 x vCPU DD OS 5.6.0.3
6 x vRAM 4 x ES30-‐30 Disk Shelves
900 GB Disk Space 4 x 10 GbE Interfaces (2 used in testing)
Virtualization Servers
VMware vCenter 5.5.2 4 x Cisco UCS 240
OS: SLES 12.3
Storage Network
2 x EMC XtremIO, 7.56 TB usable each 10GbE

How Measurements Were Obtained in Testing

All testing was done to mirror a real-‐world scenario: daily backups with a realistic change rate for a month.
• Deduplication: Deduplication measurements were pulled directly from the Data Domain using the filesys
show compression in the scripts controlling the backup jobs. The data was gathered immediately after each
backup job was completed and written to a log file.
• Backup/Restore Performance: The common Unix/Linux time utility was used to determine how long
backup and restore jobs ran. All backup and restore jobs ran from scripts using the Avamar mccli command
line interface with the time utility used to output the total runtime of all jobs from start to finish. These
results were written to a log file during the testing.
• CPU: CPU and other system resource information for various components in the test environment were
gathered using EMC Data Protection Advisor. DPA was also utilized as a second method to verify
deduplication and runtime results.


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Lab

By Kerry Dolan, Lab Analyst

ESG Lab Reports

Informadon security inidadves 34%

Improving data backup and recovery 26%

Managing data growth 26%

Increasing use of server virtualizadon 25%

Desktop virtualizadon 25%

Using cloud infrastructure services 25%

Regulatory compliance inidadves 24%

Business condnuity/disaster recovery programs 23%

Building a “private cloud” infrastructure 22%

Improving collaboradon capabilides 22%

EMC Data Domain and Avamar

Tested Solution: EMC Data Domain and Avamar

Figure 2. Solution Overview: EMC Avamar and Data Domain

ESG Lab Validation

Ease of Integration

ESG Lab Testing

Figure 5. Creating a Backup Policy

Why This Matters

Performance and Efficiency

Avamar and Data Domain Backup Methodology

Figure 6. Avamar/Data Domain Forever Full versus Traditional Method

Image-­‐level VM Backup and Restore with Avamar

ESG Lab Testing

Figure 7. Deduplication During 28-­‐day Backup Testing

DeduplicaAon: 28-­‐Day Backup Test

What the numbers mean

Figure 8. Backup Performance

28-­‐day Test Backup: RunAme

What the numbers mean

Figure 9. Data Reduction and Backup Time

Figure 10. Restore Performance

Restore Time as Clients Scale

Restore 20 Clients

Restore 10 Clients

What the numbers mean

Figure 11. Data Domain and ESX Server CPU Utilization

CPU UAlizaAon: 28-­‐day Backup Test

What the numbers mean

Scale Test: DuraAon of Concurrent Incremental Backups

Inidal data New/changed data Minutes

What the numbers mean

Why This Matters

ESG Lab Validation Highlights

Issues to Consider

The Bigger Truth

How Measurements Were Obtained in Testing

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Image-‐level VM Backup and Restore with Avamar

Figure 7. Deduplication During 28-‐day Backup Testing

DeduplicaAon: 28-‐Day Backup Test

28-‐day Test Backup: RunAme

CPU UAlizaAon: 28-‐day Backup Test