How To Win with Optimized Virtual Server Protection In Five Steps

Page 2 of 2

3. Integrate data replication to meet critical application service levels.
Data grows and changes quickly; relying on a backup that’s 24 hours old is no longer sufficient. As organizations deploy more critical applications in the virtual server environment, they need to be able to recover in near-real time – not from a backup copy from the previous night.

For instance, many Exchange deployments have four-hour recovery point objectives (RPO) while many database applications have sub one-hour RPOs. Traditional backups have no hope of meeting these service level agreements (SLAs). Creating frequent recovery points without impacting production activity is a huge challenge.

Solution providers need to integrate VM snapshot and data replication technologies to enable customers to rapidly create recovery-ready copies of production data efficiently and cost-effectively. Advanced capabilities such as data encryption, compression and bandwidth throttling ensure data is protected and optimize the use of available network bandwidth. Copies of data can be immediately accessed to create multiple recovery points, to perform traditional backups without impacting server performance or to produce a second copy at another location for disaster recovery. As a result, customers can resume business as usual with minimal disruption and loss of data.

4. Restore data at granular level.
To accelerate data recovery, customers need an integrated approach to restoring data granularly at the volume, file or application object level. Traditional approaches that require remounting an entire virtual machine datastore and searching through the contents to recover a single file, for example an email, are simply too time-consuming and resource-intensive. Newer approaches are being introduced that enable file and object level restore. However, they may require a second pass to generate the granular catalog which adds additional processing time and risk into the data protection process. More advanced solutions allow users to recover individual files or entire VM images from the same single-pass backup operation.

5. Provide automated management tools to enhance virtual machine protection.
Administrators can today deploy new VMs in minutes. This ease of implementation can lead to virtual machine sprawl, making it time consuming to keep track of new VMs and manually apply data protection policies. Important virtual machines may be created and never backed up, creating major risk for the business.

Capabilities that deliver deep hypervisor integration and advanced automation will help customers protect hundreds of VMs in minutes and easily scale to thousands of VMs. Advanced features like VM auto-protection automatically discovers new VMs and transparently add them to data protection policies.

Virtualization is spreading like wildfire and along with it comes the shift to virtualized data centers and around the clock operations. To better manage and protect virtual data, end users are increasingly rethinking traditional backup techniques and so must the solution providers who serve as their trusted advisors. These five guidelines allow solution providers to help customers modernize data protection and overcome virtual server deployment challenges. In doing so, customers can elevate their overall approach to data and information management to a level that allows them to adapt and scale quickly as their business requirements evolve over time.

<< Previous | 1 | 2

SHARE THIS ARTICLE