This White Paper describes the EMC Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) solution based on EMC Avamar, EMC Data Protection Advisor, and EMC HomeBase, which allows service providers to deliver backup services for cloud and traditional hosted environments, reduce storage space, increase backup speeds, and provide portal-based backup management.
This white paper describes features introduced in EMC Avamar to extend VMware vCloud Director's service delivery and Virtual Data Center capabilities to include BaaS.
Learn about IBM PureFlex Sytem and VMware vCloud Enterprise Suite. The IBM PureFlex System platform has been used to meet the hardware requirements in support of this reference architecture. All the components required to support vCloud Suite (including computing, networking, storage, and management interfaces). For more information on Pure Systems, visit http://ibm.co/J7Zb1v.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/210719868/IBM-pureflex-system-and-vmware-vcloud-enterprise-suite-reference-architecture
Networker integration for optimal performanceMohamed Sohail
In large, modern data centers, integrating multiple products—whether from the same vendor or multiple vendors—to form a stable, consistent workflow is a major challenge. In their award-winning Knowledge Sharing article, Mohamed Sohail and Shareef Bassiouny offer some best practices for integrating NetWorker and different EMC products and present some best practices for the optimum performance of this integration.
This white paper describes features introduced in EMC Avamar to extend VMware vCloud Director's service delivery and Virtual Data Center capabilities to include BaaS.
Learn about IBM PureFlex Sytem and VMware vCloud Enterprise Suite. The IBM PureFlex System platform has been used to meet the hardware requirements in support of this reference architecture. All the components required to support vCloud Suite (including computing, networking, storage, and management interfaces). For more information on Pure Systems, visit http://ibm.co/J7Zb1v.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/210719868/IBM-pureflex-system-and-vmware-vcloud-enterprise-suite-reference-architecture
Networker integration for optimal performanceMohamed Sohail
In large, modern data centers, integrating multiple products—whether from the same vendor or multiple vendors—to form a stable, consistent workflow is a major challenge. In their award-winning Knowledge Sharing article, Mohamed Sohail and Shareef Bassiouny offer some best practices for integrating NetWorker and different EMC products and present some best practices for the optimum performance of this integration.
White Paper: EMC Infrastructure for VMware Cloud Environments EMC
This white paper describes an automated storage tiering solution for mission-critical applications virtualized with VMware vSphere on the Symmetrix VMAX 40K storage platform. SRDF coordination with FAST VP provides site-to-site replication for disaster recovery and assured performance by automatically monitoring and tuning storage at both sites.
This technical paper discusses the deployment of a VMware environment and best practices in using IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS) for its primary storage. To know more about the Network Attached Storage, visit http://ibm.co/SH8WJo.
The purpose of this paper is to set appropriate expectations for customers with regard to disaster recovery and workload migration options when using IBM NAS solutions with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager host-based replication. To know more about VMware, visit http://ibm.co/SOUdWO.
Iwan ‘e1’ Rahabok who's working as a Staff SE, Strategic Accounts in Singapore ha created an awesome vCenter Operations 5 Training. It's available in PowerPoint format and I really would like to advise you to read the slide notes. The presentation serves 2 purposes, first it provides in-depth training for those who are learning or evaluating vCenter Operations 5 and second it provides materials that vCenter Ops champion can use to share with internal colleagues (e.g. storage team, app team, etc)
This ESG Lab review documents hands-on testing of Symantec Backup Exec 2014, with a focus on ease of management and flexible recovery options for virtual machine backups.
Server virtualization has become a mainstream deployment due to its proven benefits: physical server consolidation, cost reduction, efficiency, and flexibility. However, it can throw a monkey wrench into data protection processes. Backup administrators must manage physical and virtual servers, consolidated workloads, and multiple hypervisors—while often lacking virtualization skills and training. 1 In addition, the ease of spinning up new VMs can leave administrators unaware of unprotected assets, resulting in data vulnerabilities.
ESG recently asked IT professionals at both midmarket and enterprise organizations about their challenges in protecting virtualized environments. In terms of all virtual server data protection challenges, the ability to validate both backup and recovery success topped the list, closely followed by recoverability of data (Figure 1).2 Other top challenges included response times for troubleshooting, gaps in protection, and simplified views across the virtual infrastructure.
Dell PowerEdge R920 and Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Migration and Benefits GuidePrincipled Technologies
The latest Dell PowerEdge R920 server is designed to provide highly scalable performance for large enterprises, with greater memory capacity, improved and expanded attached storage options, and processor architectures designed for high availability. Microsoft SQL Server 2014 is the perfect companion software to take advantage of the Dell PowerEdge R920’s impressive specifications. Upgrading has never looked more attractive, and with hardware/software upgrades must come data migration.
Migrating legacy database applications to the latest database technologies on newer Dell server platforms is a common task for businesses upgrading their hardware/software stack. As this guide shows, the process is straightforward and the cost benefits can be enormous. We calculated the savings attainable from multiple consolidation ratios, as well as how long it would take to pay off the replacement server. We found that a consolidation ratio of 13 to 1 could yield $531,725 in software savings, many times the cost of the replacement hardware itself. So not only will the business benefit from the massively-scalable current-generation Dell server technology paired with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 running SQL Server 2014, but you can save money in the process.
The values of server virtualization are well understood today. Customers implement
server virtualization to increase server utilization, handle peak loads efficiently,
decrease total cost of ownership (TCO), and streamline server landscapes.
Similarly, storage virtualization helps to address the same challenges as server
virtualization. Storage virtualization also expands beyond the boundaries of physical
resources and helps to control how IT infrastructures adjust to rapidly changing
business demands. Storage virtualization benefits customers through improved
physical resource utilization and improved hardware efficiency, as well as reduced
power and cooling expenses. In addition, consolidation of resources obtained
through virtualization offers measurable returns on investment for today’s
businesses. Finally, virtualization serves as one of the key enablers of cloud
solutions, which are designed to deliver services economically and on demand.
Physical to Virtual (P2V) & Backup to Virtual (B2V) Conversions with Backup E...Symantec
Convert-to-Virtual, Backup-to-Virtual, and Point-in-Time Conversions with Backup Exec 2014
Backup Exec 2014 continues to invest in virtualization technology. Features included in the Backup Exec 2014 product help administrators solve the problem of moving physical servers to a virtual environment and also give administrators unique tools for leveraging virtualization technology for disaster recovery. These features are the ability to perform automated conversions of physical servers to a virtual machine replica, perform automated conversions of physical servers – using existing backup sets – to a virtual machine replica, and perform “ad hoc” or on-demand conversions of physical server backups to a virtual machine replica.
Convert to Virtual (P2V)
The Backup Exec 2014 P2V feature allows administrators to configure backup definitions for physical servers that protect the server by both storing backup data to the Backup Exec server and creating a virtual machine replica of the server on an available VMware or Hyper-V host.
For backup definitions configured with a P2V task, the backup operation and the virtual machine replica operation occur in parallel.
Backup to Virtual (B2V)
A Backup Exec 2014 backup definition configured with a B2V task is similar to a backup definition configured with a P2V task; however, B2V jobs run the backup and virtual machine replica operations serially, meaning the backup operation runs first, and the virtual replica portion runs immediately afterwards or on a different schedule.
Point-in-Time Virtual Conversions
Another method of creating a virtual machine replica of physical servers using Backup Exec 2014 is the ad hoc or Point-in-Time method. This method is not scheduled, and is not directly associated with any particular backup definition. It simply enables an administrator to create a virtual machine replica, on demand, of any physical machine that has been backed up to a Backup Exec server using an SDR-enabled backup.
The P2V, B2V, and Point-in-Time conversion features of Backup Exec 2014 can be used by administrators to move physical servers to a virtual environment permanently for migration purposes, or temporarily for testing or quick failover.
Deploy with confidence: VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 on next gen Dell PowerEdg...Principled Technologies
A Principled Technologies deployment guide
Conclusion
Deploying VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 on next gen Dell PowerEdge servers brings together critical virtualization capabilities and high-performing hardware infrastructure. Relying on our hands-on experience, this deployment guide offers a comprehensive roadmap that can guide your organization through the seamless integration of advanced VMware cloud solutions with the performance and reliability of Dell PowerEdge servers. In addition to the deployment efficiency, the Cloud Foundation 5.1 and PowerEdge solution delivered strong performance while running a MySQL database workload. By leveraging VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 and PowerEdge servers, you could help your organization embrace cloud computing with confidence, potentially unlocking a new level of agility, scalability, and efficiency in your data center operations.
WHITE PAPER▶ Protecting VMware Environments with Backup Exec 15Symantec
Virtualization technology has been widely adopted by organizations of all sizes to optimize critical IT assets, such as data and application servers. As a result of this virtualization trend, companies are looking for efficient and effective ways to backup and recover their virtual servers and the critical applications that many of these virtual machines host, such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint, and Active Directory.
Because virtual host servers are used by many companies to virtualize production servers, the loss of a production virtual host can cost an organization more than losing a standalone physical server, since a single virtual host can be responsible for multiple virtual servers. A lost virtual host can impact productivity for hours or days while the IT administrator struggles to recover or repair the virtualization infrastructure.
Market leaders in virtualization technology include the VMware vSphere platform and the Microsoft Hyper-V platform. Modern backup and recovery solutions designed specifically for VMware and Hyper-V environments are critical to helping organizations quickly recover in the event of a disaster, whether it occurs at the virtual host level, the virtual machine level, the application level, or the file/folder level.
A significant advantage of Backup Exec 15 in virtual environments is direct integration with the VMware virtual platform. This integration enables advanced functionality built specifically for the optimized protection of VMware environments.
Backup Exec 15 integrates with VMware’s vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) to eliminate important challenges associated with the backup of VMware virtual machines and to provide faster backup performance with less overall storage consumption.
White Paper: EMC Infrastructure for VMware Cloud Environments EMC
This white paper describes an automated storage tiering solution for mission-critical applications virtualized with VMware vSphere on the Symmetrix VMAX 40K storage platform. SRDF coordination with FAST VP provides site-to-site replication for disaster recovery and assured performance by automatically monitoring and tuning storage at both sites.
This technical paper discusses the deployment of a VMware environment and best practices in using IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS) for its primary storage. To know more about the Network Attached Storage, visit http://ibm.co/SH8WJo.
The purpose of this paper is to set appropriate expectations for customers with regard to disaster recovery and workload migration options when using IBM NAS solutions with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager host-based replication. To know more about VMware, visit http://ibm.co/SOUdWO.
Iwan ‘e1’ Rahabok who's working as a Staff SE, Strategic Accounts in Singapore ha created an awesome vCenter Operations 5 Training. It's available in PowerPoint format and I really would like to advise you to read the slide notes. The presentation serves 2 purposes, first it provides in-depth training for those who are learning or evaluating vCenter Operations 5 and second it provides materials that vCenter Ops champion can use to share with internal colleagues (e.g. storage team, app team, etc)
This ESG Lab review documents hands-on testing of Symantec Backup Exec 2014, with a focus on ease of management and flexible recovery options for virtual machine backups.
Server virtualization has become a mainstream deployment due to its proven benefits: physical server consolidation, cost reduction, efficiency, and flexibility. However, it can throw a monkey wrench into data protection processes. Backup administrators must manage physical and virtual servers, consolidated workloads, and multiple hypervisors—while often lacking virtualization skills and training. 1 In addition, the ease of spinning up new VMs can leave administrators unaware of unprotected assets, resulting in data vulnerabilities.
ESG recently asked IT professionals at both midmarket and enterprise organizations about their challenges in protecting virtualized environments. In terms of all virtual server data protection challenges, the ability to validate both backup and recovery success topped the list, closely followed by recoverability of data (Figure 1).2 Other top challenges included response times for troubleshooting, gaps in protection, and simplified views across the virtual infrastructure.
Dell PowerEdge R920 and Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Migration and Benefits GuidePrincipled Technologies
The latest Dell PowerEdge R920 server is designed to provide highly scalable performance for large enterprises, with greater memory capacity, improved and expanded attached storage options, and processor architectures designed for high availability. Microsoft SQL Server 2014 is the perfect companion software to take advantage of the Dell PowerEdge R920’s impressive specifications. Upgrading has never looked more attractive, and with hardware/software upgrades must come data migration.
Migrating legacy database applications to the latest database technologies on newer Dell server platforms is a common task for businesses upgrading their hardware/software stack. As this guide shows, the process is straightforward and the cost benefits can be enormous. We calculated the savings attainable from multiple consolidation ratios, as well as how long it would take to pay off the replacement server. We found that a consolidation ratio of 13 to 1 could yield $531,725 in software savings, many times the cost of the replacement hardware itself. So not only will the business benefit from the massively-scalable current-generation Dell server technology paired with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 running SQL Server 2014, but you can save money in the process.
The values of server virtualization are well understood today. Customers implement
server virtualization to increase server utilization, handle peak loads efficiently,
decrease total cost of ownership (TCO), and streamline server landscapes.
Similarly, storage virtualization helps to address the same challenges as server
virtualization. Storage virtualization also expands beyond the boundaries of physical
resources and helps to control how IT infrastructures adjust to rapidly changing
business demands. Storage virtualization benefits customers through improved
physical resource utilization and improved hardware efficiency, as well as reduced
power and cooling expenses. In addition, consolidation of resources obtained
through virtualization offers measurable returns on investment for today’s
businesses. Finally, virtualization serves as one of the key enablers of cloud
solutions, which are designed to deliver services economically and on demand.
Physical to Virtual (P2V) & Backup to Virtual (B2V) Conversions with Backup E...Symantec
Convert-to-Virtual, Backup-to-Virtual, and Point-in-Time Conversions with Backup Exec 2014
Backup Exec 2014 continues to invest in virtualization technology. Features included in the Backup Exec 2014 product help administrators solve the problem of moving physical servers to a virtual environment and also give administrators unique tools for leveraging virtualization technology for disaster recovery. These features are the ability to perform automated conversions of physical servers to a virtual machine replica, perform automated conversions of physical servers – using existing backup sets – to a virtual machine replica, and perform “ad hoc” or on-demand conversions of physical server backups to a virtual machine replica.
Convert to Virtual (P2V)
The Backup Exec 2014 P2V feature allows administrators to configure backup definitions for physical servers that protect the server by both storing backup data to the Backup Exec server and creating a virtual machine replica of the server on an available VMware or Hyper-V host.
For backup definitions configured with a P2V task, the backup operation and the virtual machine replica operation occur in parallel.
Backup to Virtual (B2V)
A Backup Exec 2014 backup definition configured with a B2V task is similar to a backup definition configured with a P2V task; however, B2V jobs run the backup and virtual machine replica operations serially, meaning the backup operation runs first, and the virtual replica portion runs immediately afterwards or on a different schedule.
Point-in-Time Virtual Conversions
Another method of creating a virtual machine replica of physical servers using Backup Exec 2014 is the ad hoc or Point-in-Time method. This method is not scheduled, and is not directly associated with any particular backup definition. It simply enables an administrator to create a virtual machine replica, on demand, of any physical machine that has been backed up to a Backup Exec server using an SDR-enabled backup.
The P2V, B2V, and Point-in-Time conversion features of Backup Exec 2014 can be used by administrators to move physical servers to a virtual environment permanently for migration purposes, or temporarily for testing or quick failover.
Deploy with confidence: VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 on next gen Dell PowerEdg...Principled Technologies
A Principled Technologies deployment guide
Conclusion
Deploying VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 on next gen Dell PowerEdge servers brings together critical virtualization capabilities and high-performing hardware infrastructure. Relying on our hands-on experience, this deployment guide offers a comprehensive roadmap that can guide your organization through the seamless integration of advanced VMware cloud solutions with the performance and reliability of Dell PowerEdge servers. In addition to the deployment efficiency, the Cloud Foundation 5.1 and PowerEdge solution delivered strong performance while running a MySQL database workload. By leveraging VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 and PowerEdge servers, you could help your organization embrace cloud computing with confidence, potentially unlocking a new level of agility, scalability, and efficiency in your data center operations.
WHITE PAPER▶ Protecting VMware Environments with Backup Exec 15Symantec
Virtualization technology has been widely adopted by organizations of all sizes to optimize critical IT assets, such as data and application servers. As a result of this virtualization trend, companies are looking for efficient and effective ways to backup and recover their virtual servers and the critical applications that many of these virtual machines host, such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint, and Active Directory.
Because virtual host servers are used by many companies to virtualize production servers, the loss of a production virtual host can cost an organization more than losing a standalone physical server, since a single virtual host can be responsible for multiple virtual servers. A lost virtual host can impact productivity for hours or days while the IT administrator struggles to recover or repair the virtualization infrastructure.
Market leaders in virtualization technology include the VMware vSphere platform and the Microsoft Hyper-V platform. Modern backup and recovery solutions designed specifically for VMware and Hyper-V environments are critical to helping organizations quickly recover in the event of a disaster, whether it occurs at the virtual host level, the virtual machine level, the application level, or the file/folder level.
A significant advantage of Backup Exec 15 in virtual environments is direct integration with the VMware virtual platform. This integration enables advanced functionality built specifically for the optimized protection of VMware environments.
Backup Exec 15 integrates with VMware’s vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) to eliminate important challenges associated with the backup of VMware virtual machines and to provide faster backup performance with less overall storage consumption.
Make Kubernetes containers on Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd servers easier to man...Principled Technologies
Running VMware Tanzu on a VMware vSphere 7.0 Update 1 environment with Dell EMC PowerEdge servers provided centralized container management features at reasonable cost
This document describes the reference architecture of the EMC infrastructure for VMware View 5.1, EMC VNX Series (FC), VMware vSphere 5.0, VMware View Persona Management, VMware View Storage Accelerator, and VMware View Composer 3.0 solution, which was tested and validated by the EMC Solutions group.
White Paper: EMC Compute-as-a-Service — EMC Ionix IT Orchestrator, VCE Vblock...EMC
This White Paper explores the integration of cloud technology components into a Compute-as-a-Service platform that enables service providers to deploy and manage cloud-based services and tenants to adopt and customize those services into their businesses.
Cloud Foundry Platform as a Service on Vblock SystemEMC
This white paper describes how to build a PaaS service with Cloud Foundry enabled by Pivotal CF on Vblock systems while ensuring scalability and elasticity of underlying cloud structure including storage, compute, and networking layers.
Reference Architecture: EMC Hybrid Cloud with VMwareEMC
This Reference Architecture introduces an EMC Enterprise Private Cloud solution for an on-premises infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offering that enables IT to deliver private cloud-based services to their business. It describes the main features and functionality of the solution and the solution architecture and key components.
White Paper: Understanding EMC Avamar with EMC Data Protection Advisor — Appl...EMC
This white paper outlines how Data Protection Advisor helps customers gain control of their Avamar backup environments by providing a better understanding what is working well and what it not, enabling a proactive approach to managing their environments.
Similar to White Paper: EMC Backup-as-a-Service (20)
INDUSTRY-LEADING TECHNOLOGY FOR LONG TERM RETENTION OF BACKUPS IN THE CLOUDEMC
CloudBoost is a cloud-enabling solution from EMC
Facilitates secure, automatic, efficient data transfer to private and public clouds for Long-Term Retention (LTR) of backups. Seamlessly extends existing data protection solutions to elastic, resilient, scale-out cloud storage
Transforming Desktop Virtualization with Citrix XenDesktop and EMC XtremIOEMC
With EMC XtremIO all-flash array, improve
1) your competitive agility with real-time analytics & development
2) your infrastructure agility with elastic provisioning for performance & capacity
3) your TCO with 50% lower capex and opex and double the storage lifecycle.
• Citrix & EMC XtremIO: Better Together
• XtremIO Design Fundamentals for VDI
• Citrix XenDesktop & XtremIO
-- Image Management & Storage
-- Demonstrations
-- XtremIO XenDesktop Integration
EMC FORUM RESEARCH GLOBAL RESULTS - 10,451 RESPONSES ACROSS 33 COUNTRIES EMC
Explore findings from the EMC Forum IT Study and learn how cloud computing, social, mobile, and big data megatrends are shaping IT as a business driver globally.
Reference architecture with MIRANTIS OPENSTACK PLATFORM.The changes that are going on in IT with disruptions from technology, business and culture and so IT to solve the issues has to change from moving from traditional models to broker provider model.
Force Cyber Criminals to Shop Elsewhere
Learn the value of having an Identity Management and Governance solution and how retailers today are benefiting by strengthening their defenses and bolstering their Identity Management capabilities.
Container-based technology has experienced a recent revival and is becoming adopted at an explosive rate. For those that are new to the conversation, containers offer a way to virtualize an operating system. This virtualization isolates processes, providing limited visibility and resource utilization to each, such that the processes appear to be running on separate machines. In short, allowing more applications to run on a single machine. Here is a brief timeline of key moments in container history.
This white paper provides an overview of EMC's data protection solutions for the data lake - an active repository to manage varied and complex Big Data workloads
This infographic highlights key stats and messages from the analyst report from J.Gold Associates that addresses the growing economic impact of mobile cybercrime and fraud.
This white paper describes how an intelligence-driven governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) model can create an efficient, collaborative enterprise GRC strategy across IT, Finance, Operations, and Legal areas.
The Trust Paradox: Access Management and Trust in an Insecure AgeEMC
This white paper discusses the results of a CIO UK survey on a“Trust Paradox,” defined as employees and business partners being both the weakest link in an organization’s security as well as trusted agents in achieving the company’s goals.
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
JMeter webinar - integration with InfluxDB and GrafanaRTTS
Watch this recorded webinar about real-time monitoring of application performance. See how to integrate Apache JMeter, the open-source leader in performance testing, with InfluxDB, the open-source time-series database, and Grafana, the open-source analytics and visualization application.
In this webinar, we will review the benefits of leveraging InfluxDB and Grafana when executing load tests and demonstrate how these tools are used to visualize performance metrics.
Length: 30 minutes
Session Overview
-------------------------------------------
During this webinar, we will cover the following topics while demonstrating the integrations of JMeter, InfluxDB and Grafana:
- What out-of-the-box solutions are available for real-time monitoring JMeter tests?
- What are the benefits of integrating InfluxDB and Grafana into the load testing stack?
- Which features are provided by Grafana?
- Demonstration of InfluxDB and Grafana using a practice web application
To view the webinar recording, go to:
https://www.rttsweb.com/jmeter-integration-webinar
DevOps and Testing slides at DASA ConnectKari Kakkonen
My and Rik Marselis slides at 30.5.2024 DASA Connect conference. We discuss about what is testing, then what is agile testing and finally what is Testing in DevOps. Finally we had lovely workshop with the participants trying to find out different ways to think about quality and testing in different parts of the DevOps infinity loop.
Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey 2024 by 91mobiles.pdf91mobiles
91mobiles recently conducted a Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey in which we asked over 3,000 respondents about the TV they own, aspects they look at on a new TV, and their TV buying preferences.
Transcript: Selling digital books in 2024: Insights from industry leaders - T...BookNet Canada
The publishing industry has been selling digital audiobooks and ebooks for over a decade and has found its groove. What’s changed? What has stayed the same? Where do we go from here? Join a group of leading sales peers from across the industry for a conversation about the lessons learned since the popularization of digital books, best practices, digital book supply chain management, and more.
Link to video recording: https://bnctechforum.ca/sessions/selling-digital-books-in-2024-insights-from-industry-leaders/
Presented by BookNet Canada on May 28, 2024, with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Essentials of Automations: Optimizing FME Workflows with ParametersSafe Software
Are you looking to streamline your workflows and boost your projects’ efficiency? Do you find yourself searching for ways to add flexibility and control over your FME workflows? If so, you’re in the right place.
Join us for an insightful dive into the world of FME parameters, a critical element in optimizing workflow efficiency. This webinar marks the beginning of our three-part “Essentials of Automation” series. This first webinar is designed to equip you with the knowledge and skills to utilize parameters effectively: enhancing the flexibility, maintainability, and user control of your FME projects.
Here’s what you’ll gain:
- Essentials of FME Parameters: Understand the pivotal role of parameters, including Reader/Writer, Transformer, User, and FME Flow categories. Discover how they are the key to unlocking automation and optimization within your workflows.
- Practical Applications in FME Form: Delve into key user parameter types including choice, connections, and file URLs. Allow users to control how a workflow runs, making your workflows more reusable. Learn to import values and deliver the best user experience for your workflows while enhancing accuracy.
- Optimization Strategies in FME Flow: Explore the creation and strategic deployment of parameters in FME Flow, including the use of deployment and geometry parameters, to maximize workflow efficiency.
- Pro Tips for Success: Gain insights on parameterizing connections and leveraging new features like Conditional Visibility for clarity and simplicity.
We’ll wrap up with a glimpse into future webinars, followed by a Q&A session to address your specific questions surrounding this topic.
Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your FME expertise and drive your projects to new heights of efficiency.
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
The Art of the Pitch: WordPress Relationships and SalesLaura Byrne
Clients don’t know what they don’t know. What web solutions are right for them? How does WordPress come into the picture? How do you make sure you understand scope and timeline? What do you do if sometime changes?
All these questions and more will be explored as we talk about matching clients’ needs with what your agency offers without pulling teeth or pulling your hair out. Practical tips, and strategies for successful relationship building that leads to closing the deal.
Accelerate your Kubernetes clusters with Varnish CachingThijs Feryn
A presentation about the usage and availability of Varnish on Kubernetes. This talk explores the capabilities of Varnish caching and shows how to use the Varnish Helm chart to deploy it to Kubernetes.
This presentation was delivered at K8SUG Singapore. See https://feryn.eu/presentations/accelerate-your-kubernetes-clusters-with-varnish-caching-k8sug-singapore-28-2024 for more details.
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a buttonDianaGray10
Here is something new! In our next Connector Corner webinar, we will demonstrate how you can use a single workflow to:
Create a campaign using Mailchimp with merge tags/fields
Send an interactive Slack channel message (using buttons)
Have the message received by managers and peers along with a test email for review
But there’s more:
In a second workflow supporting the same use case, you’ll see:
Your campaign sent to target colleagues for approval
If the “Approve” button is clicked, a Jira/Zendesk ticket is created for the marketing design team
But—if the “Reject” button is pushed, colleagues will be alerted via Slack message
Join us to learn more about this new, human-in-the-loop capability, brought to you by Integration Service connectors.
And...
Speakers:
Akshay Agnihotri, Product Manager
Charlie Greenberg, Host
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a button
White Paper: EMC Backup-as-a-Service
1. White Paper
EMC BACKUP-AS-A-SERVICE
EMC Avamar, VMware vCloud Director, and VMware vCenter
Orchestrator
• Provide portal-based backup management
• Deliver single click backup and restore for vCloud Director
• Provide backup services for cloud and traditional hosted
environments
EMC Solutions Group
Abstract
This white paper provides information on using EMC® technology to create a
portal based multitenant Backup-as-a-Service offering which is portal based
and extremely easy to use. In addition, design considerations related to its
implementation and how the required components are integrated are
discussed.
December 2012
4. Executive summary
Business case Service providers face the challenge of providing easy to use backup solutions that
integrate seamlessly with their hosted VMware vCloud Director (vCD) environments.
Providing a simple portal-based graphical solution which allows their technical and
non-technical vCD customers to easily backup and restore virtual machines is critical
to the successful adoption of this type of offering. In addition, any portal-based
Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) solution of this type must integrate into existing
orchestration and management infrastructures. Ideally, the integration of all the
different systems must result in a single management interface for the customer’s
and service provider’s administrators.
Existing dedicated, standalone, disk-based or tape-based backup offerings don’t
provide the ease of use or deep integration with vCD that customers require.
Therefore the service provider must offer a Backup-as-a-Service solution which
provides that ease of use and seamless integration with vCD.
This BaaS solution provides service providers with the ability to offer backup services
to all of their vCD customers, regardless of their technical abilities or vCD usage
model.
Solution overview This white paper describes a scalable backup solution for a VMware vCloud Director
environment, including the backup components and associated proof-of-content
portal and orchestration integration.
This solution can be used to provide backup services for public or private cloud-
based VMware vCloud Director environments. In addition, this solution can be used
in the environments that are not provided as a service such as VMware’s vCloud
Director environments within a single or multi-organizational enterprise.
For this white paper, the service provider or enterprise components are co-located
within one geographic data center environment.
This white paper validates the integration of the solution’s components and provides
broad guidelines about how this type of solution can be built and integrated into the
service provider’s environment.
Key solution components include:
• EMC Avamar® 6.1 – Provides centralized and scalable backup environment with
deduplication and replication capabilities.
• VMware® vCenter™ Orchestrator™ – Provides an IT Process Automation engine
that helps automate the cloud solution and integrate the VMware vCloud Suite
with other orchestration systems.
• VMware vCloud™ Director™ - Orchestrates the provisioning of software-defined
datacenter services as complete virtual datacenters that are ready for
consumption in a matter of minutes.
• WaveMaker - Provides a rapid application development environment for
building, maintaining and modernizing business-critical Web 2.0 applications.
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5. • PostgreSQL – Provides a powerful, open source object-relational database
system used for storing solution-specific information.
Key results Backup-as-a-Service enables service providers to fundamentally change the way in
which they provide backup services for customers who have purchased their hosted
vCloud Director environments. By leveraging an in-house BaaS infrastructure that is
integrated with vCloud Director, service providers can provide uniform data backup
capabilities and offer differentiated offerings across their customer base.
This solution demonstrates that BaaS:
• Can provide a simple ‘one-click’ backup experience
• Can be leveraged through direct or channel sales
• Improves flexibility and simplifies application deployment
• Enables users to focus on revenue generating activities and other projects
instead of equipment logistics
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6. Introduction
Purpose This white paper describes the architecture of an EMC BaaS solution based on EMC
Avamar and VMware vCloud Director. It also discusses how service providers can
leverage the BaaS framework to deploy backup services. This framework allows
service providers to adapt their service portfolio to their customers’ dynamic
business requirements.
Scope The scope of this white paper is to demonstrate integration of Avamar and vCloud
Director in a service provider environment. This solution presents a reference
implementation of a portal-based channel BaaS offering that provides simple portal
based configuration and recovery actions.
In this white paper general configuration and operational procedures are outlined.
However, for detailed product installation information, refer to the user
documentation for those products.
This white paper has been designed to contribute to, but not replace, other
operational elements such as systems integration, customization, run books,
maintenance, and support. If the need arises for operational guidance outside the
scope of this paper, contact your EMC Global Services representative.
Audience This white paper is intended for EMC employees, partners, and customers including IT
planners, system architects and administrators, and any others involved in
evaluating, acquiring, managing, operating, or designing a BaaS infrastructure
environment leveraging EMC technologies. Throughout this white paper we assume
that you have some familiarity with the concepts and operations related to backup
and virtualization technologies, and their use in cloud and data center
infrastructures.
Terminology Table 1 defines some of the key terms used in this paper.
Table 1. Terminology
Term Definition
Tenant A customer of compute/backup services. A service
provider will have multiple tenants within their BaaS
infrastructure.
URL Uniform Resource Locator
API Application Programming Interface
CLI Command Line Interface
MCCLI Management Console Command Line Interface
MCGUI Avamar Management Console Graphical User Interface
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7. Backup-as-a-Service
Overview Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) uses cloud infrastructure to backup data to a shared,
rather than dedicated, backup infrastructure. Service providers can offer BaaS to
customers who need a flexible, on-demand backup infrastructure but prefer not to
purchase, configure, or maintain it by themselves. This solution focuses on
demonstrating how a service provider could provide an integrated and easy-to-use
vCloud Director based BaaS offering for those customers looking for simplicity in their
backup and recovery procedures.
This solution focuses exclusively on a BaaS solution for channel and direct vCD
environments unlike ESG’s previous Backup-as-a-Service offering, titled EMC Backup-
as-a-Service: EMC Avamar, EMC Data Protection Advisor, and EMC Homebase, which
focused on providing a general BaaS solution. By focusing the solution more
specifically, additional capabilities and functionality were able to be implemented.
Fundamentally, as with any BaaS offering, this solution enables customers to
consume cloud infrastructure in much the same manner as they consume electrical
power. Users consume and pay for power without needing to understand or maintain
the component devices and infrastructure required to provide the service. In a BaaS
environment, customers can draw on the elastic resources that cloud infrastructure
delivers and pay only for the backup service they consume.
The BaaS environment typically consists of:
• Hosted vCloud Director environments
• Self-service portal
• Secure multitenant-enabled shared infrastructure
Self-service portal The integration of any as-a-Service offering by a service provider is a key part of their
solution development and delivery mechanism. Only by integrating a new as-a-
Service offering into their existing portal can they continue to offer their services in a
cost-effective and scalable fashion. Allowing tenants to sign up for new services,
change service levels, and perform basic tasks through a web-based portal is critical
to maintaining scalability.
In addition, some service providers want to use their portals not only for tenant
access but also as the mechanism used by their staff to manage and administer the
environment. Regardless, the ability to integrate any new as-a-Service offering into
the provider’s existing environment is critical.
The focus of this solution, developed as a proof-of-concept portal implementation, is
to demonstrate the simplicity of an Avamar-based vCloud Director backup solution.
Figure 1 provides a screen view of the customer virtual machine management page.
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8. Figure 1. PoC Customer Virtual Machine Management view
VMware vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) was used as an orchestration tool along with
VMware’s web portal to provide a proof-of-concept web-based portal implementation.
This VMware-based solution is pictorially represented in all figures of this white
paper.
A web-based portal with underlying orchestration simplifies administration along
with management, and thereby avoids requiring users to learn and use the full
featured administrative consoles of the underlying applications. A web-based portal
also allows service providers to limit and audit what functions are available for each
user.
The goal of this proof-of-concept was to demonstrate the functionality and usage of a
portal.
Portal For this use case, several different components were used:
implementation
1. VMware vCenter Orchestrator was used, leveraging its graphic user interface
(GUI) workflow. Each service provider will need to customize and integrate the
command-line interface (CLI) and/or application programming interface (API)
capabilities into their own service portal offering. In our solution vCO
functioned as the broker between Avamar, vCloud Director, and the
PostgreSQL database by using the following interfaces:
− SSH calls to Avamar using its SSH plug-in
− REST calls to VMware vCloud Director to get customer information
− Database calls to PostgreSQL database to retrieve and/or modify
database table information
While our solution leveraged vCO for these calls, they could be done through
(web) server side scripting (some DLLs if it is Microsoft-based, or some jar
files if Java-based). In addition, the SSH calls could be done from the client
side as well as through server side scripting.
VMware vCEnter Orchestrator (vCO) is the central broker for the entire
solution. For each customer it will access the database and retrieve customer
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9. information. Once retrieved from PostgreSQL it will request from vCD details
on the all VMs associated with that customer and store the resulting
information in the database. Then it will check the backup configuration of
each customer and VM.
For any newly added VMs, vCO will check to determine if ‘auto protect’ has
been selected. If it has, the VM will need to be protected (backed up)
automatically for the customer. vCO will then add the new VM to the
customer’s Avamar domain and default backup schedule. Customers who
did not select ‘auto protect’ for their VMs can manually protect their VMs by
selecting ‘Protect’ in the portal.
vCO is also integral to the billing information displayed by the portal. It
retrieves, on a per-customer basis, the Primary Protected Bytes and Unique
Bytes information from the Avamar database through SQL queries. Once
retrieved this information is added to tables in the PostgreSQL database.
2. PostgreSQL Database was used to store distributor, reseller, and customer
information. In addition, it was used as a repository for all the customer-
specific information around VMs and backups retrieved from vCD and
Avamar. By using PostgreSQL tables in this fashion, the WaveMaker portal
development was simplified as the portal could display information from the
tables with minimal formatting and filtering.
3. WaveMaker (aka Portal) was used to simplify and speed the development of
the web portal portion of this solution. By leveraging WaveMaker’s
capabilities it was possible to implement the web-portal in days instead of
weeks or months.
4. Avamar Virtual Edition Server - To integrate Avamar, command shell scripts
were created, which were used by vCO to execute (over SSH connections to
the Avamar server) MCCLI commands. The exact integration and functionality
provided is further discussed in subsequent sections. In addition, examples
of scripts we used to enable the vCO workflows are shown later in this
document.
The orchestration capabilities used by this solution were modeled on the
work done in the white paper titled EMC Backup-as-a-Service: EMC Avamar,
EMC Data Protection Advisor, and EMC HomeBase. An overview of the
techniques and tools used will be provided here but for additional
information and other examples please refer to that white paper.
5. VMware vCloud Director integration with a backup solution was the primary
use-case for this solution. The solution made no changes to vCD and only
accessed it through its RESTful interfaces.
The communication and interdependencies between the components is illustrated in
the following diagram:
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10. Figure 2. Component communication
As the above diagram represents, vCO is the central orchestration component
communicating with all the other components.
Channel sales This solution implements a channel-based BaaS sales model in which the service
model provider sells capacity to distributors. The solution was architected to illustrate how a
channel-based BaaS solution might be designed and implemented. A three-tiered
model was constructed based on this architecture. The first tier, referred to as the
distributor tier, would purchase capacity from the service provider and, in turn, resell
that capacity to distributors. These distributors would sell the backup capacity to
customers who would either manage it themselves or have the distributor manage
the backups for them. This is graphically represented in the following diagram:
Figure 3. Hierarchical view of channel implementation
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11. The following figure illustrates the distributor view of the resellers purchasing backup
capacity from them:
Figure 4. Distributor Management View of Resellers
The above illustrates the ‘Reseller View’ for the ‘Orographic Distributor Corp’ and lists
the resellers Orographic is selling to along with their allocated and consumed space.
The following figure illustrates the reseller view of their customers:
Figure 5. Distributor Management View of Resellers
Figure 5 illustrates the ‘Customer View’ for the ‘Nene Reseller Inc’ and lists the
customers Nene is providing backup capacity to. This overview also details whether
an individual customer is a managed customer and their total amount of Protected
Bytes, also known as primary protected storage, as well as how much unique data
each customer has.
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12. The following figure illustrates the customer’s view of the virtual machines and vApps
in the vCD environment:
Figure 6. Customer View of Virtual Machines
The above illustrates what a customer, ‘Mercury Themometers Inc’ in this case, will
see in the ‘VMs View’ of their portal. This view lists the individual VM’s included in
Mercury’s vCD environment and the protected status of each VM. For simplicity the
amount of protected bytes, or primary protected storage, is listed for each VM as well
as whether or not the VM is powered on or off within the vCD environment.
Design One major design consideration for this solution was implementing a solution which
Considerations provided a simple-to-use portal suitable for non-technical users. In addition to being
easy-to-use the portal had to provide automated discovery of any newly created
vApps and VMs in addition to self-service restoration and backup management.
Secure multitenancy to the back-end infrastructure was provided through the use of
authentication and access controls within the solution.
Once a customer creates a new VM or vApp through vCD it is automatically detected
and listed as ‘unprotected’ in the portal as illustrated below by ‘Uranus_VM12’:
Figure 7. Automatic Detection of a newly added VM
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13. Once a vApp or VM is detected, protecting it is a simple matter of highlighting the VM
and clicking on the ‘Protect’ button as is illustrated below:
Figure 8. Customer Protecting a Virtual Machine
Similarly, unprotecting a virtual machine is as easy selecting the VM to be
unprotected and clicking the ‘unProtect’ button as shown by the following figure:
Figure 9. Customer Unprotecting a Virtual Machine
While this portal didn’t include an option to auto-protect newly added vApps and
VMs, it would be simple to implement that feature.
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EMC Avamar and VMware vCloud Director
14. This solution also simplified the steps required to restore a VM, thereby enabling
customers to perform self-service recovery operations. To restore a VM, a customer
need only select that VM from the ‘VM’s View’, click on the ‘Restore’ button, and then
pick which of the backups should be restored. The following figure illustrates this:
Figure 10. Customer Restoring a Virtual Machine
Orchestration tool An orchestration tool allows you to define a workflow and the operations needed to
execute it on demand. For example, it can provision the server using Cisco UCS
Manager plug-ins, deploy the storage using automated processes, configure the
network, update CMDB, and provision the provider vDC and organization vDC.
There are various orchestration tools available to perform all or some of the
orchestration functions. Choosing an orchestrator depends on what functionality or
infrastructure integration is needed, existing systems, price, and other
considerations. For this use case, we focused on vCO.
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EMC Avamar and VMware vCloud Director
15. vCO uses an open and flexible plug-in architecture to automate provisioning and
operational tasks across both VMware and third-party applications, as shown in
Figure 11.
Figure 11. VMware vCenter Orchestrator architecture
The process for developing a workflow involves a series of phases:
1. Provide general information about the workflow.
2. Create the input parameters.
3. Create the logical flow of the workflow by laying out and linking the schema.
4. Bind the input and output parameters of each element to workflow attributes,
creating the necessary parameters and attributes as you define each element.
5. Create supporting scripts for scriptable tasks or custom decision elements.
6. Create the layout and behavior of the input parameters dialog box that the
user sees when they run the workflow by creating the workflow presentation.
7. Validate the workflow.
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EMC Avamar and VMware vCloud Director
16. An overview of this workflow is shown below.
Figure 12. Example of designing a workflow using vCO
vCO PowerShell
The reference implementation also leveraged the vCenter Orchestrator Windows
PowerShell plug-in for simple and rapid prototyping. Windows PowerShell is a
command-line shell and scripting language designed for system administration, and
as such it has wide-spread industry support. There are PowerShell scripts already
written for many common tasks, and vCO users can easily use and reuse these
scripts.
The vCO PowerShell plug-in is used to call PowerShell scripts and commandlets
(cmdlets) from Orchestrator actions and workflows, and to work with the result. For
Avamar integration, the PowerShell script will use SSH to connect to the Avamar
server, run the MCCLI commands, and return the output.
PowerShell requires Windows to run, so we have a Windows machine with PowerShell
installed on it (PowerShell host). Connection between the PowerShell plug-in and
remote host machine is established using Secure Shell (SSH).
For this project, we used the SSH plug-in of vCO to create workflows that gather user
input and then call the underlying CLI commands and shell scripts. A production
implementation would also need to strictly enforce user authorization checks and
validate user input.
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17. Reporting For this solution none of the standard reports included with Avamar were used.
capabilities Instead, the solution leveraged Avamar’s read-only ODBC interface to directly extract
backup usage. After extracting it from Avamar the information was uploaded into the
solution’s internal PostgreSQL database every few minutes. The portal then displayed
the information as represented by the figure below. The billing model used by the
solution was based purely on “primary protected” data which is the amount of actual
disk capacity used by each protected virtual machine.
Figure 13. Sample reporting page
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18. EMC Avamar
Overview EMC Avamar provides scalable backup and restore capabilities with integrated data
deduplication and support for multisite replication. It also supports multitenant
implementations through the use of domains. Avamar deduplicates backup data
across sites and servers to reduce total disk storage, making backup a cost-effective
solution. Backup data can also be encrypted in-flight and at-rest for security and
privacy reasons.
With the release of Avamar 6.1, Change Block Tracking (CBT) support has been added
for VMware client recoveries, in addition to the existing CBT backup support that was
added in Avamar 5.0. Similarly, Avamar 6.1 included an automatic function to load-
balance across multiple Avamar VMware proxies to simplify and speed-up VMware
backups and recoveries.
Figure 14 illustrates the Avamar Web administrative portal.
Figure 14. Standard Avamar administrative GUI
This solution utilized the Avamar Virtual Edition (AVE) for testing and simulation
purposes. This implementation was deployed as a virtual machine within VMware. It
is intended for smaller deployments up to 2 TB but is functionally compatible with a
full multinode Avamar grid deployment scaling to over 100 TB of deduplicated
storage.
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EMC Avamar and VMware vCloud Director
19. Multitenant Avamar provides “domains,” a built-in paradigm for segregating user data. This
support Avamar management feature is not tied to Internet domains. Each domain is logically
segregated within the Avamar system, with backup metadata for each client assigned
and accessible via that domain. By utilizing domains and other actions within
Avamar, a set of actions can be restricted to hosts, clients, and groups within a
specific domain or sub-domain. By organizing clients within this hierarchy, it is
possible to use Avamar’s built-in reporting capabilities (with some modifications) to
generate status and statistical reports about backup related operations.
When implementing user access controls in the service portal, each customer should
be assigned a domain or sub-domain within the Avamar hierarchy. This hierarchy
should be enforced on all backup calls placed by the user to the Avamar system
through the portal.
Whichever service portal is used to connect to the Avamar system, Console Command
Line Interface (MCCLI) should be granted access to the appropriate levels of the
Avamar hierarchy. This is how multitiered access controls could be implemented at
both the service portal and Avamar levels if required for audit or compliance reasons.
CLI and API Through the use of the Avamar Management MCCLI, service providers can provide
support customized access to the backup, restore, configuration, and reporting aspects of
Avamar without requiring direct access to the Avamar Management Console GUI
(MCGUI). The MCGUI is a Java software application that can be installed on a
Windows or Linux client.
For this project, we utilized the vCO SSH plugin to create workflows that gather user
input, connect to the AVE server, run the required MCCLI commands or shell scripts,
and then return any output or error codes.
One important aspect of implementing portal integration around Avamar MCCLI
involves identity management and access controls. When the SSH plugin connects to
the MCCLI application, it runs as a privileged Avamar administrator that can access
any and all available commands. The commands are not run as the portal user. It is
the responsibility of the portal code to validate the input and parse the returning
MCCLI attributes to determine what information can be presented to the requesting
individual.
For example, if a tenant administrator requests to see all domains within the Avamar
instance, the MCCLI request will return all domains – not just those that are within
that tenant’s domain. It is the responsibility of the portal code to review and edit the
values passed to and returned from the MCCLI, to validate what subset of domains
the requesting user is permitted to see. It may also be necessary for the portal to
make multiple MCCLI calls on behalf of a particular user to first determine what
information they are permitted to see and then actually request that information. In
this way, the portal, which is vCO in this solution, manages identities and their
access to the Avamar environment.
The following figure shows a workflow design in vCO.
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20. Figure 15. Designing workflow in vCO
MCCLI examples
The following are two sample MCCLI commands. In these examples, “ROOT” is the
tenant’s top-level domain, which can be “/” for service provider administrators
creating a new tenant.
Example script using MCCLI to create a new domain:
/usr/local/avamar/bin/mccli domain add –-domain=”${ROOT}”
–-location=”${NAME}” -–email=”${EMAIL}” -–contact=”${CONTACT}”
--name=”${DOMAIN}”
Example script using MCCLI to add a host to a domain:
/usr/local/avamar/bin/mccli client add
--location=”${LOCATION}” –contact=”{CONTACT}”
--domain=”${ROOT}${DOMAIN}” –name=”${HOST}”
The MCCLI returns errors, status codes, and messages on the execution of each
command. And the command output is also returned as shown in the following code
example:
# /usr/local/avamar/bin/mccli domain add --name="/cust001"
0,22527,Domain added.
Attribute Value
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21. --------- --------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------
domain <appdircomponent contact="" domain="/" email="" id=""
name="cust001" phone=""/>
# echo $?
0
# /usr/local/avamar/bin/mccli domain add --name="/cust001"
1,22541,Domain already exists.
# echo $?
1
The error code and message numbers can be used to quickly parse and process the
output from each MCCLI command.
Only a few of the scripts included in this solution are provided here. Additional detail
and other sample scripts are available in the EMC White Paper titled: EMC Backup-as-
a-Service: EMC Avamar, EMC Data Protection Advisor, and EMC Homebase.
Full documentation for configuring Avamar using MCCLI is provided in the Avamar
Management Console Command Line Interface (MCCLI) Programmer Guide.
Configuration It is possible to directly access the Enterprise Management Server (EMS) or
database access Management Console Server (MCS) databases in a read-only manner to provide direct
access to the Avamar configuration. Querying the database directly may allow more
customization of the service provider’s portal integration. The database views
exposed are documented in the Avamar Administration Guide.
Limitations and One of the challenges involved in deploying Avamar in service provider environments
workarounds is the requirement that each Avamar client should have a unique IP address with
which to communicate with the Avamar backup server. This unique IP address is
required to establish bi-directional communication between the backup client and
the Avamar server. A unique IP address is not required to backup the client. For more
details on how to architect solutions refer to the BRS white paper Creating Backup as
a Service (BaaS) Solutions Leveraging EMC Avamar as well as the product
documentation.
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22. Conclusion
Summary This EMC Backup-as-a-Service solution provides service providers with a simple to
use, integrated carrier-grade, scalable, multitenant backup service, which can easily
and simply backup and restore vCloud Director environments.
This solution also allows service providers to provide robust backup protection
leveraging EMC Avamar which can:
• deduplicate data stored in virtual disks
• leverage Change Block Tracking (CBT) in VMware environments
• significantly reduce storage consumption
• enable replication of virtual disks across data center locations
This solution provides a reference implementation for delivering backup services that
leverage a service provider’s existing orchestration and portal infrastructure.
EMC BaaS provides the reporting capabilities that customers demand, including
backing up job status, restoring job status, and daily compressing rate reports.
Findings We found the following key results during the testing of this solution:
• The EMC BaaS solution with EMC Avamar and VMware’s vCloud Director can
provide an extremely easy to use multitenant backup service on a service
provider cloud platform.
• The EMC BaaS solution with VMware vCloud Director and vCloud Orchestrator
can integrate Avamar with industry-leading orchestration and portal solutions.
• The EMC BaaS solution successfully backed up and restored a newly created
virtual machine in approximately 3 minutes.
• The backup and restore support of virtual machine image backups provided the
ability to restore the entire virtual machine as well as individual files and
folders.
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23. References
White papers For additional information, see the white papers listed below. EMC documents are
available on the EMC online support website.
• EMC Backup-as-a-Service: EMC Avamar, EMC Data Protection Advisor, and EMC
Homebase
• Compute-as-a-Service
• Understanding EMC Avamar with EMC Data Protection Advisor — Applied
Technology
• Applied Best Practices for Service Provider Billing
Product For additional information, see the product documents listed below.
documentation • VMware vCloud Director Documentation (VMware.com)
• VMware vSphere Documentation (VMware.com)
• VMware vCenter Orchestrator Documentation (VMware.com)
• Avamar 6.1 Management Console Command Line Interface (MCCLI) Programmer
Guide
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