Re: [Veritas-bu] Anyone using avamar
Also worthy of noting, EMC is making a run for Data Domain. They just bid $1.7B for the company, outbidding NetApp by $300M. Makes me wonder what EMC's plans are for Avamar. --Steve -Original Message- From: veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of william.d.br...@gsk.com Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 6:33 PM To: veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Anyone using avamar I looked in a lot of detail last year at VTLs and disk backup solutions. They all have pros and cons - a lot depends as someone else pointed out on what you are trying to fit it into. If you have to create long term retention tapes the Avamar has a real problem - it is not what it was designed to do, and anything EMC will offer at the moment is really ugly. I'm sure they know that and will try and fix it. As pointed out, if you don't need that it is in principal really good for VM backup as it dedupes in the client, so you can have a greater VM density on your ESX servers, with more storage and not run out of physical LAN bandwidth off the ESX server. We had a demo pair of these appliances, and had no problems doing what it says it does. We replicated transatlantically, and backed up clients elsewhere in Europe. We wouldn't do that for production, it was just we had the 2 demo units in different places. Like all dedupe + replicate solutions, you just need to recall you buy in pairs at least. So the entry cost is quite high if you are backing up a data centre. They come from the Remote Office background, where there a many small sites with modest data backing up to a central site. There are nice features like you can restore from any replica, and there is none of the hierarchy of a NetBackup domain. Both Avamar and PureDisk come from the 'low end' and are moving into the larger sites. As pointed out, PureDisk *client* itself is not yet integrated with NetBackup scheduling - it sends data to the PureDisk appliance, and there is a capability to export to NetBackup to create tape copies. What tends to confuse is that same appliance can act as a Disk Pool for NetBackup, and then it is just another kind of Open Storage, you use it in SLPs and whatever. It can do optimised replication, NetBackup catalog tracks all the copies. There is a plug-in on the Media Server that does the deduplication - so you don't get the in-the-client dedupe of Avamar, but if you position your media servers carefully you can still do good things. You use the normal NetBackup clients. Both Avamar and PureDisk deduplicate across the whole appliance. DataDomain support OST as well as offering straight NAS (as BasicDisk) and also a VTL mode. The issue we found was that a DD appliance could not be accessed by multiple NetBackup domains, so you can't share them. We wanted to put an appliance on Site A that took the local backups and replicated to Site B, and do the same in reverse. No can do (currently). We also wanted an existing Master on Site B to be able to import the replicated images from Site A, without interrupting replication, so we could do DR tests and the like. That is also an issue in some aspects. DD deduplicates within a single unit, so a stack of 16 is...a stack of 16; you need to make sure backups from a particular client always go the same appliance to get best dedupe. PureDisk (strictly the PureDisk Deduplication Option, PDDO) with NetBackup does allow the appliance to be used as a Disk Pool from multiple domains. You would need to be a little careful about free space reporting but it worked fine in demo at Symantec. We could also use SLPs or Vault to create tape copies as required, and as of 6.5.4 you can create the tape copy from the remote replica (assuming you have a remote media server to do it). PureDisk is not a simple appliance you buy - you *can* buy ready-built from Sun - a little advertised fact - otherwise you get the DVD and the licence, and build it yourself on your favourite hardware and disk - so long as it is in all those compatibility matrices. If you do want to end up on tape a VTL may make sense, with all the pretend tape drives and media. I looked a lot at when and how the deduplication is done. Quantum and all the FalconStor clones (like EMC) store the backup initially at 'full strength' and then deduplicate that to another set of disks. They sell that gives you quick restore of the most recent backup - but you do need a lot of disk! You also need to decide if you want a short backup window (least time to involve the application server CPU) or a short time to get the data offsite. For the former, backup to disk without inline dedupe is quickest. For the latter, you want the dedupe to start as soon as possible, so either inline or at least starting as soon as you have a complete image on disk. You can't start to replicate until you
Re: [Veritas-bu] Anyone using avamar
NetApp countered the offer by raising their bid to $30/share like EMC's. http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D98J6CN03.htm -Original Message- From: veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Sesar, Steven L. Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 2009 9:46 AM To: william.d.br...@gsk.com; veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Anyone using avamar Also worthy of noting, EMC is making a run for Data Domain. They just bid $1.7B for the company, outbidding NetApp by $300M. Makes me wonder what EMC's plans are for Avamar. --Steve -Original Message- From: veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of william.d.br...@gsk.com Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 6:33 PM To: veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Anyone using avamar I looked in a lot of detail last year at VTLs and disk backup solutions. They all have pros and cons - a lot depends as someone else pointed out on what you are trying to fit it into. If you have to create long term retention tapes the Avamar has a real problem - it is not what it was designed to do, and anything EMC will offer at the moment is really ugly. I'm sure they know that and will try and fix it. As pointed out, if you don't need that it is in principal really good for VM backup as it dedupes in the client, so you can have a greater VM density on your ESX servers, with more storage and not run out of physical LAN bandwidth off the ESX server. We had a demo pair of these appliances, and had no problems doing what it says it does. We replicated transatlantically, and backed up clients elsewhere in Europe. We wouldn't do that for production, it was just we had the 2 demo units in different places. Like all dedupe + replicate solutions, you just need to recall you buy in pairs at least. So the entry cost is quite high if you are backing up a data centre. They come from the Remote Office background, where there a many small sites with modest data backing up to a central site. There are nice features like you can restore from any replica, and there is none of the hierarchy of a NetBackup domain. Both Avamar and PureDisk come from the 'low end' and are moving into the larger sites. As pointed out, PureDisk *client* itself is not yet integrated with NetBackup scheduling - it sends data to the PureDisk appliance, and there is a capability to export to NetBackup to create tape copies. What tends to confuse is that same appliance can act as a Disk Pool for NetBackup, and then it is just another kind of Open Storage, you use it in SLPs and whatever. It can do optimised replication, NetBackup catalog tracks all the copies. There is a plug-in on the Media Server that does the deduplication - so you don't get the in-the-client dedupe of Avamar, but if you position your media servers carefully you can still do good things. You use the normal NetBackup clients. Both Avamar and PureDisk deduplicate across the whole appliance. DataDomain support OST as well as offering straight NAS (as BasicDisk) and also a VTL mode. The issue we found was that a DD appliance could not be accessed by multiple NetBackup domains, so you can't share them. We wanted to put an appliance on Site A that took the local backups and replicated to Site B, and do the same in reverse. No can do (currently). We also wanted an existing Master on Site B to be able to import the replicated images from Site A, without interrupting replication, so we could do DR tests and the like. That is also an issue in some aspects. DD deduplicates within a single unit, so a stack of 16 is...a stack of 16; you need to make sure backups from a particular client always go the same appliance to get best dedupe. PureDisk (strictly the PureDisk Deduplication Option, PDDO) with NetBackup does allow the appliance to be used as a Disk Pool from multiple domains. You would need to be a little careful about free space reporting but it worked fine in demo at Symantec. We could also use SLPs or Vault to create tape copies as required, and as of 6.5.4 you can create the tape copy from the remote replica (assuming you have a remote media server to do it). PureDisk is not a simple appliance you buy - you *can* buy ready-built from Sun - a little advertised fact - otherwise you get the DVD and the licence, and build it yourself on your favourite hardware and disk - so long as it is in all those compatibility matrices. If you do want to end up on tape a VTL may make sense, with all the pretend tape drives and media. I looked a lot at when and how the deduplication is done. Quantum and all the FalconStor clones (like EMC) store the backup initially at 'full strength' and then deduplicate that to another set of disks. They sell that gives you quick restore of the most recent backup - but you do need a lot
Re: [Veritas-bu] Anyone using avamar
Haven't used Avamar but have used the Data Domains. In general I like EMC hardware but their Clariion support is done BADLY out of India IMHO. Prior to buying anything other than Symmetrix to them I'd be asking where the front line and 2nd tier support is. If they tell you India then I'd suggest you move on. It doesn't matter how good the hardware is if you have substandard support after the fact. From: veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Klebba, Don Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 9:31 AM To: 'veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu' Subject: [Veritas-bu] Anyone using avamar We're a netbackup shop running NBU 6.5.2a. We currently have some data domain appliances that we backup roughly 25% of our nightly backups to. We're looking to go tapeless at some point in time and were considering getting larger Data domain appliances to accomplish this. We're also a EMC shop. Our EMC BURA guys have been pushing their Avamar Solution to us. I must admit it sounds promising, but I'm a little skeptical at this solution. Has anyone had any experiences, either good or bad with Avamar? Don Klebba Quicken Loans Storage Management Team donkle...@quickenloans.com phone: (734)805-7791 Please consider our environment before printing this e-mail or attachments. -- CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail may contain privileged or confidential information and is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution, or use of the contents of this information is prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please reply immediately to the sender that you have received the message in error, and delete it. Thank you. -- ___ Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu
Re: [Veritas-bu] Anyone using avamar
I asked about that last summer (or maybe autumn), but the general feedback I got then was that you should try an eval model and then put heavy load on it (stress test it) to see how well it handles things. I didn't try it out, but I got the impression that it didn't scale well and didn't handle being loaded down. At the time, we were looking at the Quantum DXi, the DataDomain and Avamar. Our budget got axed, and while dedup pays for itself, it was (and still is) a hard sell to our managers. If you're an EMC shop, maybe you could leverage that customer relationship to get an evaluation model?? ~ Robin From: veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Klebba, Don Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 6:31 AM To: 'veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu' Subject: [Veritas-bu] Anyone using avamar We're a netbackup shop running NBU 6.5.2a. We currently have some data domain appliances that we backup roughly 25% of our nightly backups to. We're looking to go tapeless at some point in time and were considering getting larger Data domain appliances to accomplish this. We're also a EMC shop. Our EMC BURA guys have been pushing their Avamar Solution to us. I must admit it sounds promising, but I'm a little skeptical at this solution. Has anyone had any experiences, either good or bad with Avamar? Don Klebba Quicken Loans Storage Management Team donkle...@quickenloans.com phone: (734)805-7791 ___ Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu
Re: [Veritas-bu] Anyone using avamar
Yes, and it works great. The key (as with most IT things) is to understand how it works and to use it appropriately within the correct environment(s). Since it de-duplicates client data before it leaves the client, it works especially well for virtual hosts that are likely sharing network resources. The scaling path for the solution is very clear, simply add more nodes to your grid when needed. Getting data offsite is also easy – you implement a remote grid and use IP-based replication. I recommend to start you get EMC to provide a detailed presentation on the product so you can get a deeper understanding of the product. If you use it in accordance with its design it will work as expected. From: veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Klebba, Don Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 06:31 To: 'veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu' Subject: [Veritas-bu] Anyone using avamar We’re a netbackup shop running NBU 6.5.2a. We currently have some data domain appliances that we backup roughly 25% of our nightly backups to. We’re looking to go tapeless at some point in time and were considering getting larger Data domain appliances to accomplish this. We’re also a EMC shop. Our EMC BURA guys have been pushing their Avamar Solution to us. I must admit it sounds promising, but I’m a little skeptical at this solution. Has anyone had any experiences, either good or bad with Avamar? Don Klebba Quicken Loans Storage Management Team donkle...@quickenloans.com phone: (734)805-7791 ___ Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu
Re: [Veritas-bu] Anyone using avamar
What about NetBackup PureDisk? It seems to do everything that avamar does, plus. Avamar will be separate from your netbackup environment and your netbackup server won't write to avamar, like it does the datadomain boxes. However, puredisk can be used as a backup server or a backup destination (ie storage pool)it will dedup, plus it will replicate that deduped data to a remote site. My research has been such that I can't find a reason to not look at puredisk, especially over avamar. Scott Chapman Senior Technical Specialist Storage and Database Administration ICBC - Victoria Ph: 250.414.7650 Cell: 250.213.9295 -Original Message- From: veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Cornely, David Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 9:35 AM To: veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Anyone using avamar Yes, and it works great. The key (as with most IT things) is to understand how it works and to use it appropriately within the correct environment(s). Since it de-duplicates client data before it leaves the client, it works especially well for virtual hosts that are likely sharing network resources. The scaling path for the solution is very clear, simply add more nodes to your grid when needed. Getting data offsite is also easy - you implement a remote grid and use IP-based replication. I recommend to start you get EMC to provide a detailed presentation on the product so you can get a deeper understanding of the product. If you use it in accordance with its design it will work as expected. From: veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Klebba, Don Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 06:31 To: 'veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu' Subject: [Veritas-bu] Anyone using avamar We're a netbackup shop running NBU 6.5.2a. We currently have some data domain appliances that we backup roughly 25% of our nightly backups to. We're looking to go tapeless at some point in time and were considering getting larger Data domain appliances to accomplish this. We're also a EMC shop. Our EMC BURA guys have been pushing their Avamar Solution to us. I must admit it sounds promising, but I'm a little skeptical at this solution. Has anyone had any experiences, either good or bad with Avamar? Don Klebba Quicken Loans Storage Management Team donkle...@quickenloans.com phone: (734)805-7791 This email and any attachments are intended only for the named recipient and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any unauthorized copying, dissemination or other use by a person other than the named recipient of this communication is prohibited. If you received this in error or are not named as a recipient, please notify the sender and destroy all copies of this email immediately. ___ Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu
Re: [Veritas-bu] Anyone using avamar
Note that, unless something's changed drastically since I last looked at it, if you set PureDisk up to do client-side dedupe, it is ALSO outside your NetBackup environment: you use the PD client and it sends data to the PD store (which can also be a storage-side dedupe storage unit / OpenStorage target / whatever, of course), and when you do restores, you don't do so through the usual NetBackup means. (At least, maybe, until a future NBU full version. But don't hold your breath.) This is, incidentally, what PureDisk (like Avamar) was originally designed to do well: remote-to-core backups with minimal bandwidth impact. I don't, personally, think that's a make/break question about either product, but some operational environments may, and it's worth bearing in mind in any case. The futurity for both products appears to be that they'll be embedded in a more mature and robust backup system (Avamar into NetWorker), but, and please correct me if I'm wrong about this, each is currently a separate piece. If all you really want is *storage* side dedupe (you don't mind the network bandwidth part), you should probably think with your wallet when comparing either Avamar or PureDisk to things like DataDomain (and the others that do *logically* the same thing; there are enough vendors kicking around this conversation already without dragging more in to confuse things by opening the pre-write vs. post-pass dedupe can of worms). (Also, I seem to recall some hand-waving about theoretical support for [NetBackup] OpenStorage in Avamar at EMC World 2008, but it's a bit hard to swallow given the presence of NetWorker, and I haven't heard much about it since, so I wouldn't run too far with that one if I were you.) -- Gabriel Rosenkoetter Radian Group Inc, Senior Systems Engineer gabriel.rosenkoet...@radian.biz, 215 231 1556 From: Chapman, Scott [mailto:scott.chap...@icbc.com] Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 12:43 PM To: Cornely, David; veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Anyone using avamar What about NetBackup PureDisk? It seems to do everything that avamar does, plus. Avamar will be separate from your netbackup environment and your netbackup server won't write to avamar, like it does the datadomain boxes. However, puredisk can be used as a backup server or a backup destination (ie storage pool)it will dedup, plus it will replicate that deduped data to a remote site. My research has been such that I can't find a reason to not look at puredisk, especially over avamar. Scott Chapman Senior Technical Specialist Storage and Database Administration ICBC - Victoria Ph: 250.414.7650 Cell: 250.213.9295 -Original Message- From: veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Cornely, David Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 9:35 AM To: veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Anyone using avamar Yes, and it works great. The key (as with most IT things) is to understand how it works and to use it appropriately within the correct environment(s). Since it de-duplicates client data before it leaves the client, it works especially well for virtual hosts that are likely sharing network resources. The scaling path for the solution is very clear, simply add more nodes to your grid when needed. Getting data offsite is also easy - you implement a remote grid and use IP-based replication. I recommend to start you get EMC to provide a detailed presentation on the product so you can get a deeper understanding of the product. If you use it in accordance with its design it will work as expected. From: veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Klebba, Don Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 06:31 To: 'veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu' Subject: [Veritas-bu] Anyone using avamar We're a netbackup shop running NBU 6.5.2a. We currently have some data domain appliances that we backup roughly 25% of our nightly backups to. We're looking to go tapeless at some point in time and were considering getting larger Data domain appliances to accomplish this. We're also a EMC shop. Our EMC BURA guys have been pushing their Avamar Solution to us. I must admit it sounds promising, but I'm a little skeptical at this solution. Has anyone had any experiences, either good or bad with Avamar? Don Klebba Quicken Loans Storage Management Team donkle...@quickenloans.com phone: (734)805-7791 This email and any attachments are intended only for the named recipient and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any unauthorized copying, dissemination or other use by a person other than the named recipient of this communication is prohibited. If you received this in error or are not named as a recipient, please notify the sender and destroy all copies of this email immediately
Re: [Veritas-bu] Anyone using avamar
I looked in a lot of detail last year at VTLs and disk backup solutions. They all have pros and cons - a lot depends as someone else pointed out on what you are trying to fit it into. If you have to create long term retention tapes the Avamar has a real problem - it is not what it was designed to do, and anything EMC will offer at the moment is really ugly. I'm sure they know that and will try and fix it. As pointed out, if you don't need that it is in principal really good for VM backup as it dedupes in the client, so you can have a greater VM density on your ESX servers, with more storage and not run out of physical LAN bandwidth off the ESX server. We had a demo pair of these appliances, and had no problems doing what it says it does. We replicated transatlantically, and backed up clients elsewhere in Europe. We wouldn't do that for production, it was just we had the 2 demo units in different places. Like all dedupe + replicate solutions, you just need to recall you buy in pairs at least. So the entry cost is quite high if you are backing up a data centre. They come from the Remote Office background, where there a many small sites with modest data backing up to a central site. There are nice features like you can restore from any replica, and there is none of the hierarchy of a NetBackup domain. Both Avamar and PureDisk come from the 'low end' and are moving into the larger sites. As pointed out, PureDisk *client* itself is not yet integrated with NetBackup scheduling - it sends data to the PureDisk appliance, and there is a capability to export to NetBackup to create tape copies. What tends to confuse is that same appliance can act as a Disk Pool for NetBackup, and then it is just another kind of Open Storage, you use it in SLPs and whatever. It can do optimised replication, NetBackup catalog tracks all the copies. There is a plug-in on the Media Server that does the deduplication - so you don't get the in-the-client dedupe of Avamar, but if you position your media servers carefully you can still do good things. You use the normal NetBackup clients. Both Avamar and PureDisk deduplicate across the whole appliance. DataDomain support OST as well as offering straight NAS (as BasicDisk) and also a VTL mode. The issue we found was that a DD appliance could not be accessed by multiple NetBackup domains, so you can't share them. We wanted to put an appliance on Site A that took the local backups and replicated to Site B, and do the same in reverse. No can do (currently). We also wanted an existing Master on Site B to be able to import the replicated images from Site A, without interrupting replication, so we could do DR tests and the like. That is also an issue in some aspects. DD deduplicates within a single unit, so a stack of 16 is...a stack of 16; you need to make sure backups from a particular client always go the same appliance to get best dedupe. PureDisk (strictly the PureDisk Deduplication Option, PDDO) with NetBackup does allow the appliance to be used as a Disk Pool from multiple domains. You would need to be a little careful about free space reporting but it worked fine in demo at Symantec. We could also use SLPs or Vault to create tape copies as required, and as of 6.5.4 you can create the tape copy from the remote replica (assuming you have a remote media server to do it). PureDisk is not a simple appliance you buy - you *can* buy ready-built from Sun - a little advertised fact - otherwise you get the DVD and the licence, and build it yourself on your favourite hardware and disk - so long as it is in all those compatibility matrices. If you do want to end up on tape a VTL may make sense, with all the pretend tape drives and media. I looked a lot at when and how the deduplication is done. Quantum and all the FalconStor clones (like EMC) store the backup initially at 'full strength' and then deduplicate that to another set of disks. They sell that gives you quick restore of the most recent backup - but you do need a lot of disk! You also need to decide if you want a short backup window (least time to involve the application server CPU) or a short time to get the data offsite. For the former, backup to disk without inline dedupe is quickest. For the latter, you want the dedupe to start as soon as possible, so either inline or at least starting as soon as you have a complete image on disk. You can't start to replicate until you deduplicated, or you have too much to ship over the WAN. Many of the VTLs have weaknesses around things like replication rate, or being able control when it starts. If you don't need NetBackup to know about the replicas you can do without Open Storage support. DataDomain used as NAS BasicDisk is I think very widely used. It took a big knock when Symantec changed the licensing so you need an Enterprise Disk licence to write to anything that deduplicates. NetApp are
