Jason Buffington, Sr. Analyst Enterprise Strategy Group, examines the considerations for protecting converged/hyperconverged infrastructures and shares what Veritas is doing about it.

1. This ESG Solution Showcase was commissioned by Veritas and is distributed under license from ESG.
© 2016 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Introduction
Arguably, nothing in the last decade has been more transformative to how IT is delivered than server virtualization. As
Figure 1 illustrates, the industry has evolved from simply installing hypervisors on traditional servers, through deploying
blades and chassis, and most recently, to leveraging what many consider epitomes of the IT infrastructure building block:
the hyperconverged appliance and the converged-systems rack architecture.
FIGURE 1. The Evolution of Server Virtualization Infrastructure
Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2016
But the journey toward a more agile, virtualized state isn’t complete. Increasing the use of server virtualization remains one
of the most-cited IT spending priorities among ESG survey respondents (see Figure 2).1
1 Source: ESG Research Report, 2016 IT Spending Intentions Survey, to be published.
Data Protection Considerations for Converged
Infrastructure – and the Veritas Solution
Date: February 2016 Author: Jason Buffington, Principal Analyst
Abstract: “When you modernize production, you must modernize protection.” That claim is true in most IT
transformational discussions. But it’s especially true when you’re trying to determine how your data protection
strategies and methods should evolve as you embrace converged infrastructure and hyperconverged (CI/HC) systems.
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2. Solution Showcase: Data Protection Considerations for Converged and Hyperconverged Systems 2
© 2016 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
As Figure 2 also shows, improving backup and recovery is another consistently top-cited priority. In fact, in ESG’s 2012,
2013, 2014, and 2015 IT spending intentions research, increasing server virtualization and improving backup were both
always in the top-five most-cited IT priorities lists.
FIGURE 2. Top Ten IT Spending Priorities for 2016
Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2016
When You Modernize Production, You Must Modernize Protection
If your environment is only 20% virtualized, you can likely protect it with any mediocre backup approach you might still
have running. When you’re 50% virtualized, you may start feeling encumbered by those older backup approaches. By the
time you’re 70% or more virtualized, mediocre approaches to backup will probably hinder your virtualization
infrastructure. Said another way, as the density of virtual machines per host increases, such approaches to backup will
negatively impact the VMs being protected and the underlying hosts and storage systems. This assertion is not conjecture;
it reflects a difference in architectural approach known to affect IT systems significantly:
 Legacy-style, agent-based technologies running within each OS (physical or virtual) responsible for gathering and
transmitting data to and from the backup server create significant spikes in CPU and storage within the OS when
backup operations are in progress. Physical servers are often underutilized and therefore tolerate the spikes without
ramifications. OSs within virtual servers do not have spare capacity. In dense environments such as converged or
hyperconverged (C/HC) systems, CPU, storage, and memory can be oversubscribed because the underlying resources
allocate and share them dynamically. Spikes that rapidly require resources within one VM can strain the remaining
available resources for all other VMs in that host, as well as the host’s own resources.
 Modern host-based technologies protect VMs from the host’s perspective instead. By interacting with mature APIs
within the host hypervisor—i.e., VMware vSphere API for Data Protection (VADP) or Microsoft Hyper-V Volume
Shadow Copy Services (VSS)—VMs can be reliably protected without creating huge spikes that impact the
environment. Some kind of agent, helper, or assistance module running in each VM may still be required to ensure
that the data in the VM is ready to be backed up (often invoking VSS calls within each VM or other application-centric
operation). The difference centers on whether the data is then transmitted from within the virtualized OS using an
agent approach (“bad agent”) or the VM is protected as a whole from the host’s APIs (“good agent”).
18%
19%
20%
20%
20%
20%
21%
22%
23%
37%
Business continuity/disaster recovery programs
Improving collaboration capabilities
Desktop virtualization
Increasing use of server virtualization
Major application deployments or upgrades
Improving data backup and recovery
Data integration
Managing data growth
Business intelligence/data analytics initiatives
Cybersecurity initiatives
Top 10 most important IT priorities over the next 12 months. (Percent of respondents,
N=633, ten responses accepted)

3. Solution Showcase: Data Protection Considerations for Converged and Hyperconverged Systems 3
© 2016 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
To Be Clear, You Will Modernize Your Protection
Unless you are using a version of a unified data protection solution that is currently shipping (i.e., with a shipping date of
2014 or later), you will almost undoubtedly be updating your data protection solution as part of your embrace of C/HC
systems. The only two questions are when and how.
Proactive protection modernization means that selecting and modernizing your data protection tools supports your
broader IT strategy—enacted as part of modernizing your production infrastructure. Being proactive enables vAdmins,
backup specialists, and IT architects to communicate and collaborate on what SLAs are required and what kinds of recovery
agility are needed by the business units. Once those specifications are identified, a plan is developed and executed, which
includes deploying data protection solution(s) as part of the virtualization infrastructure deployment.
Reactive protection modernization is when an organization attempts to use its mediocre outdated backup solution for its
highly virtualized environment, causing significant I/O impact among the VMs and dissatisfaction among the vAdmins, IT
architects, and end-users. IT is then forced to deal with that issue via a hastily upgraded backup implementation, which can
affect other data protection scenarios until the entire environment is upgraded to a new solution. Considering the urgency
and the anxiety likely present across the broader IT team, an organization may find itself faced with two drastic choices:
 Option 1: Upgrade the mediocre outdated backup solution to its currently shipping version, which almost certainly
utilizes the modern VADP and VSS APIs that enable reliable backups of VMs from their hosts.
 Option 2: Deploy a VM-specific data protection tool to complement the existing unified protection tool.
Each of the reactionary tactics has its own set of challenges and benefits:
 Option 1 (upgrade the unified solution) enables the IT team to continue to use the framework and solution
architecture that it is familiar with, leveraging whatever scale, agility, or heterogeneous considerations that originally
drove it to adopt that platform. However, it may cause “change control” or other unseen aftereffects throughout the
environment depending on both the hardware and software being used.
 Option 2 (deploy a VM-specific solution) introduces a separate UI, toolset, schedule, and storage scenario(s), but the
efficiency impact will vary based on who is managing the VM backups, e.g., vAdmin versus backup admin, and
performance may vary based on how much the environment is virtualized
For many organizations with potentially aging unified solutions today, the best possible option is the proactive one.
What to Look for in Modern Virtualization Protection
According to recent ESG research, five of the top six reported challenges in protecting virtualized environments are
visibility related (see Figure 3).2
The implication is that many data protection tools (mostly those using antiquated
approaches) are not virtualization savvy.
Aside from the most-mentioned challenge (recoverability of data), the next five most-cited challenges appear to indicate
that many backup tools can’t discern whether backup/recovery operations are successful or not. They can’t see where
problems are occurring. Or they can’t depict how the backups are affecting the virtual infrastructure (and vice versa).
2 Source: ESG Research Report, Trends in Protecting Virtualized Environments, August 2015.
.

4. Solution Showcase: Data Protection Considerations for Converged and Hyperconverged Systems 4
© 2016 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
In other words, even if the VMs are being backed up successfully, IT operators won’t know it, and therefore they’ll have
doubts. Those doubts will eventually lead them to replace the solution with one that not only performs better, but also
communicates its effectiveness.
FIGURE 3. Top Ten Challenges in Protecting Virtual Environments
Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2016
A key differentiator to look for is the VM/host savviness of the backup policies, dashboard, and workflow integration with
whichever hypervisor or systems management framework(s) is in use or planned.
ESG research (see Figure 4) also reveals the most important virtualization-specific features sought by responding
organizations assessing new data protection solutions, including unified solutions and VM-specific solutions.3
3 ibid.
29%
29%
30%
31%
31%
32%
32%
39%
39%
45%
6%
8%
6%
5%
6%
6%
7%
8%
9%
15%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50%
Ensuring application consistency
Response time for troubleshooting backup failures, policy
violations, etc.
Gaps in protection
Understanding the impact of backup operations on the
performance of applications sharing physical resources
Simplified views across virtual infrastructure
Tracking capacity trends and consumption
Identifying inefficiencies and bottlenecks in the backup
process
Validating recovery success
Validating backup success
Recoverability of data
Primary virtual
server data
protection
challenge
All virtual server
data protection
challenges
Which of the following would you characterize as challenges for protecting your organization’s virtual
server environment? Which would you consider to be your organization’s primary virtual server data
protection challenge? (Percent of respondents, N=375)

5. Solution Showcase: Data Protection Considerations for Converged and Hyperconverged Systems 5
© 2016 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
FIGURE 4. Primary VM-specific Capabilities Important for Choosing a New Data Protection Product
Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2016
Interestingly, both the top-cited challenge protecting virtualized environments (shown in Figure 3) and the most-cited
important feature for choosing a data protection product (shown in Figure 4) relate to recovery of data.
In contrast, the next five most-cited challenges relate to management/monitoring, which can cause dissatisfaction. But the
next five most-cited sought-after features all deal with functionality (i.e., cloud integration, replication, deduplication, and
overall efficiency). Pragmatically speaking, Figure 4 provides some of the key features to look for:
 Instant or Rapid VM Recovery—gone are the days when business leaders would wait for “restores” before IT could
begin to “recover” the business process.
 Ability to Use Cloud Services—for data survivability in non-regulated industries, BC/DR preparedness, etc.
 More Continuous Protection—to reduce data loss between backup windows. It is often achieved by combining
snapshot, replication, and backup policies under a single management framework.
11%
13%
13%
14%
14%
14%
15%
16%
17%
17%
18%
19%
22%
27%
29%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%
Granular recovery of data objects (e.g. SharePoint/Exchange)
from VM-backup
Granular recovery of files from within VM-based backups
Ability to recover one hypervisor’s VM into a different
hypervisor
Integration with hardware-based deduplication arrays
Integrated protection with storage-snapshots
Ability to protect IaaS-hosted VMs (e.g. Amazon or Microsoft
Azure)
Ability to use tape for long-term retention of VM-centric data
Management of backups/recoveries from within Hyper-
V/SysCtr UIs
Management of backups/recoveries from within vCenter
management UIs
Application consistency within VMs
Ability to use cloud-services for BC/DR (e.g. DRaaS)
Built-in software-based deduplication
Continuous or near-continuous data protection (i.e.,
journaling/replication)
Ability to use cloud services for offsite protection
“Instant” or rapid recovery of VMs directly from the backup
server/appliance
Which virtual machine-specific protection capabilities are primary factors for choosing new data
protection product considerations? (Percent of respondents, N=375, three responses accepted)

6. Solution Showcase: Data Protection Considerations for Converged and Hyperconverged Systems 6
© 2016 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These features align with the broader data protection mandates set by IT leadership in 2015 as reported by ESG survey
respondents (see Figure 5).4
FIGURE 5. Top Five Data Protection Mandates from IT Leadership in 2015
Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2016
How Veritas NetBackup Addresses Protection and Recovery of CI/HC Environments
Veritas, one of the long-standing leader brands in enterprise data protection, continues to address the needs of
organizations that demand heterogeneous protection and recovery at true enterprise scale. By fully utilizing the VMware
APIs for Data Protection (VADP), Microsoft Volume ShadowCopy Services (VSS), and the Microsoft System Center Virtual
Machine Manager (SCVMM), NetBackup 7.7 continues Veritas’ vision to ensure that all IT platforms are protected with the
same rigor for data retention and recoverability. Additionally, it continues to still ensure an optimized (VMware) platform
experience that should assure both vAdmins and data protection specialists that their VMs are as well protected and
reliably recoverable as the rest of the heterogeneous enterprise (see Figure 6).5
FIGURE 6. Overview of Veritas NetBackup 7.7 Backup Mechanisms Utilizing VMware VADP
Source: Veritas, 2016
4 Source: ESG Research Report, Trends in Protecting Virtualized Environments, August 2015.
5
ibid.
18%
20%
22%
23%
28%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%
Reduce data protection software costs
Improve long-term retention (using tape, disk or cloud)
Increase speed or frequency of backups
Increase speed/agility of recoveries
Increase reliability of backups or recoveries
What are the top data protection mandates from your organization’s IT leadership?
(Percent of respondents, N=375, three responses accepted)

7. Solution Showcase: Data Protection Considerations for Converged and Hyperconverged Systems 7
© 2016 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The Veritas NetBackup platform is designed to leverage the same VADP mechanisms that some VM-only solutions utilize,
while still providing the same NetBackup policy/management framework, diverse media options, and enterprise-scale
catalog, deduplication, and monitoring benefits that NetBackup users are accustomed to. That being said, NetBackup 7.7
does boast several VM-specific capabilities, including:
 Live protection of both Windows VMs (utilizing VSS) and Linux VMs (using SYMCquiesce).
 Granular recovery of data from within VMware VM virtual disks.
 Deduplication at both the backup host and within the NetBackup Media Server to significantly reduce storage
requirements when protecting numerous, yet similar, virtual machines.
 Integrated use of VMware Change Block Tracking to significantly reduce backup times, while still ensuring flexible
recovery via synthetic full backups, utilizing NetBackup Accelerator.
 Rapid resumption of functionality by using Veritas’ Instant Recovery for VMware (IRV) to mount VMs from within
the NetBackup storage and then utilize VMware Storage vMotion to relocate the running, restored VM to a
production host after the users have resumed productivity.
Additional benefits of the Veritas NetBackup platform are its Appliance offerings, which enable a turnkey solution for
efficient, storage-optimized data protection for the data center, remote offices, and virtual environments. The NetBackup
Platform and Appliances ensure that organizations have modern data protection for their converged infrastructure or
hyperconverged environment.
The Bigger Truth
Improving data protection continues to be one of the most commonly cited IT spending priorities among IT decision
makers, year after year—it is a priority often spurred by the deployment of new IT workloads that demand modern
protection and recovery approaches. One of the key drivers for a “new” level of data protection is server virtualization.
Virtualization (storage, compute, and networking) is often best achieved through converged or hyperconverged platforms
because of their pre-integration, ease and consistency of deployment, and their ability to increase the VM density,
resulting in more efficiency and agility.
Virtualization’s transformative impact on IT cannot be overstated. But the same virtualization mechanisms that boost the
agility of production IT environments can create unreliability or hinder backup and recovery endeavors. The answer to this
problem is to proactively plan on modernizing protection mechanisms and strategies as part of the larger planning and
implementation effort to create a modern production infrastructure.
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© 2016 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.