BackupRecoveryGuy: NetWorker and VMware backup: Extremely fast, ransmoware protection

NetWorker & VMware

NetWorker is currently one of the fastest backup solution for VMware environments:

Backup 6000 Virtual Machines in the environment without any problem
100 virtual machines backed up in parallel
Full backup of 500 virtual machines per hour in real environment (change ratio of 3% - 5%)

Film / presentation

Video describing NetWorker capabilities in VMware:

https://www.dellemc.com/en-emea/events/webinar/cee.htm#270019

Presentation used during the movie:

http://gurago.com/networker/1_NetWorkerVMware_ArchitectureValueDemo.pdf

Full backup - is it important?

Why do I underline that every VMware backup using NetWorker is full backup?

Restore from full backup is the fastest possible. Just because we restore from single, full copy, we have several hours faster recovery.

And recovery, restore time - this is the most important parameter.

Start virtual machines without recovery? Faster with backup than production?

What if we need to restore the virtual machine immediately? For example:

Disaster Recovery in the remote center
Analysis of the situation from the historical moment
Tests / Development
...

NetWorker / Data Domain offers immediate start of virtual machines just from the backup, without any data restoration.

And important: Virtual Mahines started from NetWorker/Data Domain have huge performance:

1,000 IOPS (DD6300)
10 000 IOPS for DD9800

It can be faster than real production!

Security

NetWorker / Data Domain offers protection against ransomware / hacker attacks. We are sure that neither ransmoware nor hacker (even if he has access to the top level admin passwords) will not delete the backups.

So even if ransomware has encrypted all the production data or hacker erased all the production data - we can always restore from NetWorker/Data Domain! Here data are secure!

Is it difficult to set it up? Just one click away. See slide 51 and further:

http://gurago.com/networker/1_NetWorkerVMware_ArchitectureValueDemo.pdf

Availability

Imagine that the connection between VMware and backup medium has crashed. NetWorker, without interrupting the backup, directs the data transfer to another available connection to the medium. Backup is successful though the one of connection crashed.

The result: Our SLA is still 100%!

Distribution of traffic

NetWorker uses lightweight proxy to backup 25 VMware virtual machine in parallel.

We can implement for example 8 such machines and enjoy 100 parallel backups (10 times more than market average). NetWorker automatically distributes backups / restores between all 8 proxies.

Again: The failure of a single proxy does not affect the backup. We still have 100% SLA backup / restore.

Wizards

Every function is available with wizards (shown in the movie / presentation):

Running Virtual Machine directly from backup (1,000 IOps to 10,000 IOps)
Repairing (reverting) virtual machine (few minutes for 1TB VM)
Restoring virtual machine to new instance
Restoring single file
Restoring virtual machine without vCenter (Emergency Restore)

Simplicity

The whole VMware backup configuration is extremely simple - as any other backup in NetWorker.

Below screen shows how easy is to achieve in NetWorker the most advanced backup / Disaster Recovery strategy:

Backup to local medium (Data Domain) in a primary location (1 month retention)
Disaster Recovery: Replication to Data Domain at remote location (2 weeks retention)
Local tape out (5 years retention)
Remote tape out (10 years retention)

All in just few clicks. We can define: