Top 5 Data Protection Attributes

Necessary for VMware Environments.

Empowering VMware administrators everywhere.

INTRODUCTION

Virtualization is at peak adoption, with 50 to 80 percent of the data in the data center now under VMware’s control. The amount of data
and the number of virtual machines (VMs) has become the single largest and most complex workload to protect and should be a critical
consideration for all businesses in creating an effective data protection strategy for their IT environments.

SOLUTION VALUE

Siloed teams lead to delayed service-level objectives.

Most large companies have dedicated IT teams responsible for the management of data protection and VMware. Often administrators
responsible for VMware resources will have corresponding access and control, and backup administrators will have similar corresponding
access and control for backup and recovery of the entire IT environment. This arrangement results in VMware administrators relying on
backup administrators for management of VMware backups, restores and corresponding resources. These manual handoffs can result in
delays in meeting service-level objectives, and especially in the case of restores, this process can dramatically increase the time needed
to recover a VM.

The importance of control.

Allowing VMware administrators to control the data protection of VMware resources dramatically reduces the complexity and time to
recover the VMware resources under their control. With Veritas NetBackup™, VMware administrators gain control of their environment
without compromising the backup ecosystem. The capabilities offered by NetBackup are synergistic in ensuring the best possible
experience for VMware administrators.

5 data protection attributes necessary for VMware administrators

• Role-based access control.

• Simple user interface.

• Instant access to VM data.

• Agentless backup and recovery.

• Flexible data protection and configurations.

Let’s review each of these constructs and how they can help empower VMware administrators and backup administrators.

1. NETBACKUP ROLE-BASED ACCESS CONTROL

Role-based access control (RBAC) enables backup administrators to delegate the tasks related to security, backup management,
workload protection and the associated resource assets the user can view and manage. NetBackup RBAC comes with three default roles:
Backup, Security and Workload (see Figure 1). These default roles are designed to meet the needs of the majority of IT environments.
RBAC in NetBackup gives administrators the flexibility to choose the role that best fits a user’s needs or to create a custom role to meet
the specific requirements of that user. Administrators can also create multiple access rules for a single user or group, allowing full and
flexible customization of user access.
With RBAC, VMware administrators can now have complete control in one location to configure policies that govern the protection of
VMware resources, including:

• Flexible schedules

• Storage
νν Deduplication
νν Compression
νν Encryption
νν Cloud
νν Cloud Catalyst (deduplicated cloud storage)

• Replication

• Long-term retention

• Accelerator (only changed data is protected)

• Instant access (boot a backup VM instantly or recover a file browsing the VMDK)

Figure 1. Role-based access control in NetBackup enables out-of-the-box and custom role creation.

2. SIMPLE USER INTERFACE

A simple user interface is a key construct that can help drive efficient backup and recovery for VMware, especially when VMware
environments scale to thousands and even hundreds of thousands of VMs. A simple interface shortens setup and management time,
freeing up time for other important VMware administrative tasks. Additional important user interface attributes in NetBackup include:

• HTML5 – Provides a more performant and compatible browser interface, giving administrators the flexibility to use their favorite browser, as well
as better compatibility for mobile browsing.

• Dashboard – Consolidating all important information on a single screen ensures administrators can see a quick, consolidated view of the overall
health of the environment, as shown in Figure 2.
 Figure 2. NetBackup offers a simple, web-based dashboard with configurable widgets and an overview of the NetBackup environment.

• Ease of Management – In 5 minutes or less, administrators can build a backup policy and define a group of VMs that needs to be protected. They
can build an intelligent VM group from a number of different parameters in vCenter, as shown in Figure 3. The backup policy walks administrators
through scheduling and the type of storage to use. Defining a group of VMs to back up is simple to do with wildcards. Once administrators build
the group, they can use a single click to protect the VMware environment.

Figure 3. Administrators can build an intelligent VM group using various parameters.

• Monitoring – Easily monitor jobs and events from the user interface. High-level messages are displayed with active links for additional details.
Messages are colorized to easily identify issues that may need attention. The message detail includes active links to the manual for additional
information, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. The Jobs screen shows the status of all backup jobs.

• Searchability – Administrators can use a wild card search to find and manage any VM in the environment.

• Flexibility – Administrators can build intelligent VM groups using a simple Boolean search based on the most commonly used fields and tags for
VMs in vCenter.

3. INSTANT ACCESS TO VM DATA

NetBackup instant access provides many capabilities and flexibilities for VMware administrators that aren’t available with typical backup
recovery workflows. These include:

Figure 5. Screen showing configuration choices available during VM restores.

• Boot – Boot directly from backup storage. You can boot an instant access VM in one of two ways: with the existing configuration or with a new
configuration (see Figure 5). After booting this system from instant access, administrators can use storage VMotion to move the VM onto primary
storage. Another reason to boot for instant access is to recover files and/or directories using File Explorer.

• File Download – Administrators can use instant access to mount and browse a file to download to their workstation.

• Restore – Administrators can use instant access to mount and browse a file to restore back to the original location, as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Screen showing the choice of VM recovery types.

4. AGENTLESS ARCHITECTURE
The VMware features discussed above are implemented using an agentless architecture, which does not require an agent to be installed
within the VM image. An agentless architecture reduces resource consumption and complexity, including upgrades and maintenance.

5. FLEXIBLE DATA PROTECTION AND CONFIGURATION

NetBackup is highly flexible and scalable to meet the most demanding and dynamic requirements of enterprise data centers. NetBackup
protects the widest range of leading enterprise applications and can store data on tape subsystems, disk and 60+ cloud storage targets.
You can build NetBackup on a variety of server and storage platforms or deploy it as a prebuilt virtual or physical appliance, offering you
the choice of deployment based on what’s best for your IT environment and your business.
CONCLUSION
NetBackup provides all the essential features for enabling VMware administrators to easily manage the protection of the VMware
resources for which they are responsible. To learn more, follow the Veritas YouTube Channel @Veritas YouTube Channel

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