NetApp hardware snapshots support in Veeam Backup & Replication v8

One of the main priorities of modern backup, especially in 24x7 systems, is to minimize the impact on the performance of the productive network. A good solution that meets this priority is creating disk storage snapshots at the hardware level, since they do not require the hypervisor to be involved in this process, and the algorithm for creating snapshots themselves is optimized by the storage developers at the hardware level.

NetApp - a company that belongs to the leaders in the storage market, has one of the most advanced technologies in the field of disk snapshots. This technology allows NetApp to provide efficient, cost-effective storage resources to users of its storage systems and, in general, insignificantly affecting the performance of a productive system data protection technology against failures. NetApp’s special strength has always been in the software part of the storage system — the ONTAP operating system, which offers users a full-featured data storage platform, as well as snapshot technology, on which highly scalable data protection technologies are based, such as SnapMirror (replication between NetApp storage) and SnapVault ( data backup).

The performance of building hardware snapshots is different - it depends on the storage system developer and the specific device model. The technology of snapshots from NetApp has a consistently high reputation: it weakly loads storage systems, creates small snapshots (which allows you to create them in large quantities), and allows you to quickly restore the system. With SnapMirror technology, snapshots can be replicated to backup storage systems, as well as archived with SnapVault technology.

Veeam Backup & Replication in its work uses the technology “ Backup from storage hardware snapshots ”, which was first introduced last year. This technology allows you to use a disk hardware snapshot as a data source for a backup (essentially instead of the original data), as a result of which no additional load is created on the original storage system, and the user gets all the benefits of using a full-featured backup and recovery product such as such as “granular restoration”, “automatic testing of the integrity and restoration of backup copies”, “virtual laboratory”, “archiving to tape” and others. All these benefits are now available for NetApp storage users.
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In addition, since NetApp users often use their storage not only as a block device, but also as an NFS server, Veeam developed its NFS client that allows you to back up from hardware snapshots even when VMware virtual machines start from network NFS folders, hosted on NetApp storage systems!

It should be particularly noted that Veeam Backup for Storage Snapshots works with NetApp storage systems directly (and not through an ESXi server), reading data directly from storage hardware snapshots, which significantly improves performance. The use of CBT technology allows several times (depending on the dynamics of data changes) to reduce the time of the backup session. Practically for users, this means: reducing the backup window, minimizing the impact on the infrastructure of the productive network and maximizing the RPO .

One of the most important requirements for the backup process is fast recovery. In the event of a failure, the main thing that will worry the user is the recovery rate of the productive system, or RTO.

For several years now, a number of technologies have been used to solve the problem of minimizing RTO in Veeam Backup & Replication, including patented Instant VM Recovery , which allow for quick recovery of individual files on disks (17 file systems are supported), entire virtual machines, and individual objects of virtualized applications (such as emails, for example) using the Veeam Explorers family of granular restoration tools or the Veeam U-AIR universal restoration technology .

Veeam Backup and Replication can integrate into your existing NetApp storage data protection infrastructure without modifying it, and then use hardware snapshots and SnapMirror and SnapVault data as data recovery sources (using Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots). The integration is simple - the NetApp infrastructure is registered in the user interface of Veeam Backup & Replication, after which it collects information on all available recovery points among the available hardware snapshots of storage systems in the system, as well as SnapMirror and SnapVault data.

Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots is included in all editions of Veeam Backup & Replication, including the Free Edition .

Combined, Veeam Backup & Replication and NetApp can effectively implement the “ 3-2-1 backup rule ” (3 copies of data, 2 physically different storage environments and 1 copy on off-site storage) as part of a data protection strategy against failures (see fig. below).

When Veeam integration with NetApp is enabled, the product collaboration scheme is as follows: Veeam Backup & Replication creates a virtual machine snapshot that is consistent at the application level (that is, created using VSS technology). After that, a NetApp hardware snapshot is created, from which data is read, and then a new backup is created, which is stored in the backup repository (for example, on the storage system or on a tape drive).
In addition to the scenario described, the snapshot created by Veeam Backup & Replication can be used as a data source for NetApp SnapVault, which gives two advantages - the data of the productive network is read only once and the snapshot is consistent at the application level , not the disk (as in the case of SnapVault without Veeam Backup & Replication).

Thus, collaboration between Veeam Backup & Replication v8 and NetApp storage can be implemented in several ways, which results in a unique combination of the lowest possible in practice RPO and RTO. Closed beta testing version of Veeam Backup & Replication v8 has already begun. The version is provided on an individual basis by contacting the sales department, the release is scheduled for the second half of this year. Read more about this on the website .

NetApp hardware snapshots support in Veeam Backup & Replication v8

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