Monday, August 12, 2019

How do Changed Block Tracking (CBT) Backups Work


The backup appliance have become smarter with time. The increasing pressure of having less storage space and more data to accommodate, is resulting in innovative and efficient solutions such as CBT. The changed Block Tracking backup allows the system to take the backup of only those blocks of data which have undergone a change.

CBT does not Waste Storage Space
It reduces the amount of data as it does not copy that data which has remained the same. This offers smart usage of the storage capacity. It does not waste the space available for data storage on copying the data again and again.
CBT Saves Precious Time
In addition to consuming the storage space in a smart way, CBT also contributes in terms of saving time, which is very important part of a backup appliance’s role in the industry. Not making the copies of unnecessary and unchanged blocks of data saves time which would have made the process considerably slow.
In this type of a backup appliance which offers CBT, the entire data on the VM is not backed up which makes it a smarter way of backing up the data. This smarter backup needs an equally smart backup appliance such as DR 365 by StoneFly which offers this and many other features to make your experience worthwhile.   
When there is less amount to data to handle, it becomes easier to keep the relationship with the enterprises positive. The trust factor is not disturbed as you can provide them with faster and efficient data accessibility and recovery.
What does CBT Require?
Changed Block Tracking backup require some infrastructure to run. ESX/ESXi hosts are required for CBT to run and the version of these hosts must be 4.0 or recent to that. In addition to this, the Virtual Machines must be   of virtual hardware version 7 or latest. Veeam backup appliance is used for backup and replication as per your data need.
The CBT actually informs the vSphere or any other backup tool to copy only the blocks which have experienced some change, while not copying the ones which are the same. It does not unnecessarily copies the data to the backup which reduces the amount and time taken in the backup process.
Offers No or minimum Latency
By using CBT, a business can have minimum or no latency issues as only the data that needs to be backed up really is considered and rest of the data on the VM is ignored, there is no latency that is undesirable. We must keep it in mind that if there are so many blocks which have undergone changes, then there might be a little latency, this is why we have not mentioned no latency, just to be honest.
One major drawback of CBT is that it can miss out on the changes occurred to the data blocks during the hardware failure or any other kind of incident like power outage. Azure cloud backup can be used as data backup also.
Conclusion
Changed Block Tracking (CBT) is a type of data backup that really saves time and frees storage space. Both of these features are very crucial for modern backup appliances to have in them. A solution that offers this feature should be preferred as it provides the enterprise with optimum use of space storage and also that it does not waste time where it can be saved.   

Tuesday, August 6, 2019

What is Veeam Backup & Replication and how does it work

Introduction:

Veeam Backup & Replication is a data protection software that has been very popular in many organizations in the past 12 years. It is known for its efficient protection of the infrastructure and all critical workloads (virtual, physical and cloud based). With a single console, achieve fast, flexible and reliable backup, recovery and replication of all applications and data.

Backup:
Veeam Backup & Replication appliance supports software-defined storage (SDS) technology. It allows organizing a scalable backup repository from a collection of heterogeneous storage devices. Backups can be stored on-premises, transferred to off-site repositories, saved to tape media for long-term retention, or can simply be sent to cloud storage. Cloud storage support is available on an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) model. Veeam's technology, Cloud Connect, provides integrated and secured backup to the cloud through Veeam-powered service providers (like Stonefly).
Veeam Backup & Replication uses storage system snapshots as a source for backups and recovery of VMware Virtual Machines (VMs) with disks residing on storage volumes. This way you can backup data at any point in time.

Replication:
Replication works alongside backup. It can perform image based Virtual Machines (VMs) replication. It creates a ‘clone’ of a production VM onsite or offsite and keeps it in a ready-to-use state so that it can be used instantly when needed. Each VM image has a configurable number of failover points which can be useful as during a ‘failover’ you experience near zero data loss.

 Recovery:
This software provides a number of data recovery options with a response time of 10-30 minutes.

-        Entire VM Recovery: 
      An immediate restore of a VM via mounting a VM image to a host directly from a backup file.

-         File-Level Recovery: 
      Restore only specific VM files.

-       Virtual Drive Restore: 
     A specific VM hard drive recovery.

-          Application Item Recovery: 
     Granular recovery of items from Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft SQL Server etc.

Optimization:

Veeam Backup & Replication decreases backup files size and data traffic with built-in data deduplication and compression. It also provides built-in WAN acceleration to reduce the bandwidth required for transferring backups and replicas over the WAN.
 In Summary
Veeam Backup & Replication is a powerful tool for protection and has been trusted for years. It provides easy solutions for backup disaster recovery solution with a very low response time.