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Boosting Storage Backup Speed in a Virtual EnvironmentBy Drew RobbFebruary 3, 2010
Backups used to be simple. Attach a disk array to a tape drive and away you went. Then the volume of data mushroomed, and things got a little bit more complicated. Now, with so many virtualized systems to deal with, backups can be problematic. At professional engineering firm Wade Trim, for example, the move to a virtualized environment resulted in severe backup slows. According to Scott Landrum, senior network administrator at the company, the backup window at one of its data centers stretched from 14 hours prior to virtualization to three full days. "Backup throughput dropped from 2,000 Mb/minute to 400 Mb/min," said Landrum of Wade Trim, a 350 employee firm headquartered in Detroit with a total of 21 offices in 8 states. As well as engineering, it provides planning, landscape architecture, operations, surveying and environmental science services. Wade Trim was backing up 14 TB of Windows data throughout the enterprise. In addition to the office's files, the company had to backup lots of large CAD, GIS and image files. Two-thirds of the data sat on 25 Windows servers and an EMC Clariion cx3-based SAN at the head office. The company had three trays of CX-3 disks served by two SAN switches. At this location, everything was backed up onto a Dell PowerVault TL4000 tape library. As local branches generally had only one or two Windows servers, data was being backed up onto much smaller Dell PowerVault tape libraries. A Bump in the RoadThings started to go awry in the backup department, however, when the company began to march forward with its virtualization plans using Windows Hyper-V, first in its Detroit and Tampa locations. While the traditional gains from virtualization were experienced (e.g., better IT efficiency, server consolidation), its backup processes took a severe hit. The company was running differential and full backups. But after virtualization, the throughput choked down to a fifth of its previous levels. Full backups took days to complete. "What I needed was the ability to backup virtual hard disks (VHD) faster, while still being able to conduct file and folder level restores," Landrum said. He looked at various solutions, such as VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) and VMware ESX, but these required heavy Linux scripting, additional hardware and the move to a different virtualization platform. The decision was made to stick with Hyper-V, as it was doing a good job on the virtualization side. That left the selection process between two main backup candidates — Symantec Backup Exec and CA ARCserve backup, which was the product already in use at Wade Trim. The SolutionARCserve had been used for backup for about 10 years. CA suggested an upgrade to ARCserve Backup 12.5, which includes a new virtualization agent that addresses backup complexity and slowdowns. It came out on top during product evaluation, particularly as far as licensing costs. According to Landrum, the Symantec product would cost $3,000 per location to license compared to about $800 for ARCserve. "We didn't see any reason to retool our entire backup fabric," he said. "Further, we could use ARCserve as a core component to migrate our remote offices from a physical to a virtual platform." He explained that the company was engaged in a project to conduct a physical to virtual conversion of the primary production file server at each remote location. To facilitate this project, ARCserve could be used for conversion-related tasks in such a way that local offices could be moved to the virtual world over weekends without downtime and without heavy involvement from IT staff. "Instead of spending weeks rearchitecting our entire infrastructure, we were able to deal with a couple of remote locations per weekend," said Landrum. "We are most of the way through the transition to virtualization, and our users haven't noticed we are doing it." The lengthy extension of the backup window has also been resolved. According to Landrum, the time needed for a full backup has dropped from 72 hours to about eight, as compared to 14 hours prior to virtualization. Whereas backup throughput had crashed from 2000 Mb/min to 400 Mb/min, it has now surged to 4,000 Mb/min. "Backup throughput is now twice what we experienced prior to virtualization," said Landrum "Once we are complete with our virtualization initiative, we plan on investigating other capabilities, such as replication and deduplication." The company is looking to achieve this using products, such as CA XOsoft Replication, as well as the builtin deduplication functions available in ARCserve. Drew Robb is a freelance writer specializing in technology and engineering. Currently living in California, he was originally from Scotland where he received a degree in Geology/Geography from the University of Strathclyde. He is the author of Server Disk Management in a Windows Environment (CRC Press). Follow Enterprise IT Planet on Twitter
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