This webinar featured Bit9 Director of IT, Bill Suarez, as he walks you through his company’s decision to turn to cloud storage to handle their offsite data protection program and what happened when he was actually faced with a disaster scenario.
Also featured is a brief demonstration of TwinStrata’s CloudArray software and the encryption and data protection features that made it an ideal choice for a security company like Bit9.
Full webinar can be found here: http://www.twinstrata.com/blog/2013/10/28/case-study-cloud-backup-virtualized-environments
3. Agenda
Background
What needed to be covered
Decision criteria
Options considered
Deciding on Cloud
Where are we today?
Proven Technology
Questions
4. Background
Bit9 is a privately held security company in Waltham, MA
• Secondary datacenter location in Medford, MA
98% virtualized
• ESXi 5.1
– Apple and Dell chassis
• VCloud Director
• VMware View
Production, Development, Test, Support VMs
• 26 ESXi hosts
• EMC VNX5500 over 10GB Ethernet iSCSI
• Promise E class of over 4GB FC
DR/BC answers for:
• Loss of physical equipment
• Loss of physical location
5. What needed to be covered
Predominantly a Windows shop:
• Active Directory
– Windows Server 2008 R2 and Server 2012
• Exchange 2013
• SharePoint 2010
Source Control
• SVN repository
File servers
• User content
• Common storage
Application servers
• SQL
• Web servers
6. Decision Criteria
Must have:
Veeam Integration
• Established archiving platform
Encryption
• Content and transport
Highly Available
• Offsite configuration backup
Provide for remote restore
• Part of BC strategy requirements
Nice to have:
Data Reduction
7. Options Considered
Hardware approaches
DAS
• Existing storage array
Deduplicating storage array(s)
• Compression
• Site to site replication
Software approaches
Symantec Cloud
• Existing Backup Exec implementation – logical extension
Direct to cloud
• Too many vendors to list
8. Deciding on Cloud
One step solution that covered archive and off-premise storage needs
• No duplication of backup content – i.e. write local, then remote
• No necessity to manually transport backups (we all remember tape rotations)
Ability to write content to common storage from multiple locations
• Business and datacenter facilities both “use the same cloud”
Versatility of restoring content from anywhere
• Critical to BC strategy – recovery to warm site
ROI on storage cost
• Cloud storage, with linear growth cost, is 50% less that capital cost of same local storage.
• Writing/storing content is less expensive that reading it back out – so multiple restores will increase cost.
9. Deciding on TwinStrata
So why TwinStrata?
Security
• AES256 encryption of data to cloud
Versatility
• Backup targets but also usable as means to write compressed, security data from any application.
Insurance
• All we need to recreate our environments are stored safely off premise
Well engineered
• Built-in upgrade mechanism
• Reporting is excellent
PS and Support teams have been excellent
• Responsive and knowledgeable
10. Where are we today?
Implemented in December of 2012
Two VAs active:
• Main facility in Waltham, MA
• Datacenter in Medford, MA
Storing approximately 17TB of data
• Google cloud storage
16 Backup jobs
• Common control of multiple locations
• Varied schedules
• Varied retention times
Morning check of previous nights backups
• Simple to read reports
• 10 minutes and I move on with my day
11. Proven Technology
VCenter corrupted itself
• A month after TwinStrata was put into production
Loss of all centralized management capability for ESX hosts
• Individual connections remained intact – reduced functionality.
Before CloudArray
• Manual rebuild of VCenter Server
• Re associate all hosts from paper records
• Multiple man days of effort
Recovering with CloudArray
• Identified target restore point from catalog and initiated full VM restore
• Total of 2.5 hours to bring system back online from previous night’s backup
• Powered restored VM on – that was all that was necessary
24. THANK YOU
FOR MORE INFORMATION OR FREE SOFTWARE DOWNLOAD
www.twinstrata.com
Editor's Notes
The common theme with all our customers is they use CloudArray to maximize the benefit of cloud storage.First, CloudArray provides seamless integration between customer applications and their cloud storage provider by exposing iSCSI and/or SMB/SBM2/CIFS and mapping them to the API of the cloud provider’s object storage pool.It incorporates dynamic disk caching which acts as a buffer between the customer’s premise and their cloud provider ensuring local performance on critical data that’s required by the application and its users.CloudArray also compresses and deduplicates customer data prior to replication to ensure WAN optimization and a reduced cloud footprint.And we use military-grade encryption and local key management which prevents all unauthorized access of customer data both in flight and at rest in the cloud.
With TwinStrata’s CloudArray software, common applications such as Backup Software, User Files, Archive Systems, etc., see nothing more than local storage.Under the covers, CloudArray handles all the API translation to the cloud storage provider while maintaining the same look and feel as local storage. Users, administrators, and the applications themselves, can see their providers entire cloud storage pool (up to 50 PB) as if it were sitting within their own data center.
There are 3 categories which tend to be low hanging fruit for most organizations to leverage cloud storage to gain immediate savings. They’re actually 1a, 1b, and 1c – Backup, Archive, and primary file storage. DR is a common theme among all categories and tends to be a collateral benefit of cloud storage.Traditional offsite backup is manual, costly and error prone - compared to cloud storage which is a set-and-forget configuration.Archive is an equally popular use case. When coupled with cloud storage, customers are able to free up expensive primary storage by migrating older, static data to a lower cost tier (cloud). The great thing about CloudArray, is it abstracts away the WAN and the cloud provider from the local data center. Users and administrators see all the data as if it were local. The main benefit here is two fold, primary storage life cycles can be extended and the archive tier can forever be expanded with no capital outlay which can meet any retention policies required of the organization.Primary file storage is growing in popularity. Since CloudArray natively supports CIFS/SMB/SMBII, many customers have eliminated file servers from their backup strategy since the data on the shares is automatically replicated offsite. This can make backups more efficient and simpler while point in time images can be obtained on the shares via CloudArray in-cloud snapshots.Customers tell us their favorite feature is DR Anywhere. Regardless of the deployment, virtual or physical, CloudArray can be recovered anywhere in the world in the event of a disaster. We typically recommend recovering to a virtual appliance because it’s faster. Simply download a new CloudArray VM, which is completely generic, to the environment desired (secondary site, colo, in-cloud) and apply the most recent configuration file. Within minutes, the new CloudArray VM takes on the look and feel for the one previously destroyed which gives you complete access to all your data stored in the cloud.
