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Executive summary............................................................................................................................... 2
What is a Virtual Tape Library? ............................................................................................................. 2
Comparing the VTL and a standard tape library ...................................................................................... 3
Will different virtual and physical drive types cause problems or affect performance? .................................. 3
Advanced Backup to Disk technology using a Data Protector File Library.................................................... 4
Overview—Advanced Backup to Disk .................................................................................................... 4
Backup to disk-based devices—benefits .............................................................................................. 5
HP Data Protector Software offers three different device types ................................................................... 6
What is a file library?....................................................................................................................... 6
Distributed file media format (DFMF) file library ................................................................................... 8
Enhanced incremental backup (Incremental forever) ............................................................................. 9
How does enhanced incremental work in Data Protector? ............................................................... 10
Incremental forever paradigm ...................................................................................................... 10
Object consolidation ...................................................................................................................... 11
Space-efficient synthetic full backup (virtual full) ................................................................................. 12
VLS Automigration option ................................................................................................................... 13
VLS Automigration data copy methods ............................................................................................. 13
How to integrate and configure Automigration in Data Protector.......................................................... 13
How is the Automigration initiated by Data Protector.......................................................................... 16
VLS Automigration advantages ........................................................................................................ 17
Limitations ..................................................................................................................................... 17
VLS versus Data Protector file libraries .................................................................................................. 18
Data Protector GUI wizard .............................................................................................................. 19
Automatic and intelligent space management .................................................................................... 19
Improved disk full handling ............................................................................................................. 19
Use case—Disk staging ...................................................................................................................... 20
New file library license: B7038** ................................................................................................... 21
Advanced Backup to Disk Licensing (B7038AA/BA/CA) ................................................................ 21
HP Data Protector Software licensing using a VTL library .................................................................... 21
Summary and conclusions................................................................................................................... 22
For more information.......................................................................................................................... 23
Executive summary
This white paper provides a better understanding of the integration of HP Data Protector Software
with Virtual Tape Libraries by utilizing the Advanced Backup to Disk functionality available with the
HP Data Protector Software. After reading this paper, you should be able to determine the difference
between a Data Protector file library device and a Virtual Library. You should also be able to
determine how to employ the licensing structure of HP Data Protector Software to best suit your
customer’s needs.
The VTL consists of three components: computer hardware, application software, and a RAID-based
array of disk drives. The application software emulates a tape library and tape drives and the RAID-
based array of drives ensures no backup data is lost if a hard drive fails. These components are
frequently bundled by a single vendor into an appliance.
The VTL allows a customer to configure virtual tape drives and virtual tape cartridges, and to specify
cartridge capacity. The maximum number of supported virtual tape drives varies by vendor, ranging
from single digits to an unlimited number of drives. And, unlike physical tape libraries, which require
that additional tape drives be purchased and installed, virtual tape drives can be added to the VTL by
changing the software configuration, with no additional hardware costs.
Because the VTL emulates a tape library and its drives, it does not require a change to the backup
paradigm. When using Data Protector Software, you would configure the device just as you would
configure any other direct/LAN/SAN–attached tape library and drive.
2
Comparing the VTL and a standard tape library
Problems with physical tape drives, robotic failures, and media lead to the failure of several backup
jobs. These problems can be difficult to diagnose. Write errors, reported by an operating system, do
not indicate whether the media or drive is at fault. The administrator must then spend time determining
whether the media or drive caused the problem. In addition, restoring from physical tape can involve
multiple tape cartridges. If one of these cartridges fails, the restore most likely will be incomplete or
fail altogether.
Because all VTLs use RAID storage, read and write failures are extremely unlikely, so the VTL
effectively eliminates drive and media issues from the backup and recovery process.
Base VTL throughput can also be improved by adding more capacity (disk drives), controllers, and
Fibre Channel (FC) ports. However, with newer tape drives capable of backing up data, with
compression, at greater than 50 MB/s, backing up large amounts of multi-streamed data to physical
tape may still be faster than the VTL.
Performing restores from the VTL can also be faster than using physical tape. This is likely to be the
case when recovering specific files, due to the random access of disk as compared to the sequential
access of tape. However, if huge amounts of data are being restored, and multiple tape drives are
reading data in parallel, physical tape may be faster than the VTL.
Multiplexing or interleaving of client backup jobs to a single tape drive is often used to keep a tape
drive streaming. But, if the tape drive cannot continue streaming, it either has to stop, reposition the
tape, and start writing again—which has a huge impact on performance and reliability—or the drive
has to slow down and write data at reduced speed. Either way, backup performance is
compromised. Multiplexing also impacts restore performance. Restoring data from a multiplexed
backup takes longer because one client’s data is interleaved with many others and spread over a
larger area on the tape cartridge. A VTL uses disk and provides random access to data. Rather than
multiplex backups, each client can be allocated a separate virtual drive. If the disk backup is then
copied to physical tape, it will not be multiplexed. Restoring from this tape will be faster than restoring
from a multiplexed backup.
With no penalty imposed when configuring additional VTL drives by using Data Protector’s capacity-
based licensing model—assuming the maximum allowable number of drives has not been reached—
virtual drives can be allocated specifically for restore operations. This ensures that restores will be
initiated quickly. Overall speed of the restore operation will still depend on available bandwidth and
the size of the restore.
In most instances the VTL will be deployed as a front-end to a traditional physical tape library. Backup
data can be object copied from the VTL to physical tape using the copy functions of Data Protector or
using the new VLS Automigration Integration.
3
With regard to capacity, the virtual cartridges in the VTL can be configured to whatever size is
desired. Although a physical DLT7000 drive uses a cartridge holding 35 GB of uncompressed data,
a virtual DLT7000 cartridge can be configured to store 300 GB, 1 TB, or whatever capacity is
appropriate to the application. Virtual cartridges should not be configured so large that they limit the
number of concurrently running backup jobs—a VTL with 20 TB of storage can only support 20
concurrently running backup jobs if virtual cartridges are sized at 1 TB. If backup jobs are being
multiplexed, very large virtual cartridges can be configured. However, the ability to avoid
multiplexing is considered by many to be a significant benefit of using a VTL.
4
Many applications and databases frequently make small changes to existing files or produce many
new files containing business-critical data throughout the working day. These files must be backed up
immediately to guarantee their data will not be lost. This requirement means that a fast medium
capable of storing large amounts of data without interruption is necessary for storing data.
Disk-based storage media has become increasingly cheaper in recent years. At the same time, the
storage capacity of disks has risen. This has led to the availability of low-cost, high-performance
single disks and disk arrays for storing data.
Disk backup (also known as disk-to-disk backup) is becoming ever more important. In the past, tape
storage was the favored medium for backup and restore because of its price and effectiveness in
meeting disaster recovery requirements. Today, more businesses are augmenting their tape storage
backup solutions with faster disk-based backup solutions. This ensures faster data backup and
recovery.
5
HP Data Protector Software offers three different device
types
HP Data Protector Software has a selection of devices that are designed to do backup and restore to
and from disks. These devices are referred to as disk-based devices because they are designed to
back up data to disk as opposed to tape. The devices vary in their functional sophistication and
expected uses, and include:
• File device (standalone)
The file device is the simplest disk-based device. It is a standalone device and it has to be
configured manually. It consists of a single slot to which data can be backed up. It is not possible to
change the properties of the device after it has been created. The recommended maximum capacity
of data that can be backed up with the standalone file device is up to 2 TB, if this file size is
supported by the operating system on which the device is running.
• Jukebox
The jukebox device is a logical equivalent of a tape stacker. It contains slots whose size is defined
by the user during initial device configuration. This device is configured manually. The jukebox
properties can be altered while it is being used. Each slot in the file jukebox device has a maximum
capacity of 2 TB. The device’s maximum capacity is equal to: number of slots x 2 TB
Out of the three disk-based devices, the file library device is recommended for use as an unattended
backup device.
6
Protector creates more than a single file depot for a backup session. The backed up object will span
over two file depots. A file depot is equivalent to a tape media in a slot, whereas the directories
represent the repository (slots) part of a library. As a consequence, many of the known media
operations can be applied, for example, scan, format, recycle, export (non DFMF library), and so on.
However, some operations are not available, for example, eject.
The name of each file depot is a unique identifier that is automatically generated by Data Protector. It
looks similar to the Data Protector media ID, but actually it is not a media ID, instead just a unique file
name. For example, (including path 80 character filename limitation):
C:\back\0100007f54106d9295058c50008.fd
Since each file depot contains backed up or copied data, a corresponding DCBF file keeps the detail
catalog information for it in the IDB. Thus, for each file depot a corresponding DCBF file exists,
providing a logging level or catalog protection period is specified (default).
The size of file depots is defined when you initially create the file library device. During this process
you specify all sizing properties for the device, including the maximum size of the file depots (see
Figure 2). The sizing properties of the file depots, although only entered once, are globally applied to
each file depot within its directory. If the size of data to be backed up within one session is larger
than the originally specified file depot size, Data Protector automatically creates more file depots until
the allocated disk space for the file library device has been consumed.
On Windows, the maximum recommended file depot/slot size is 5 GB, although the standalone file
device has been tested on Windows with file depots of up to 600 GB. On HP-UX, the maximum
allowed file depot size is 2 TB. However, for best performance a 5 GB depot size is recommended.
7
Analog to the file jukebox file drives can also be created; these are called “writers.” The naming
convention for the writers is:
<file library name>_Writer<number>
For each newly created file library, by default there will be a new media pool created with the
naming convention <library name>_MediaPool. The user can change this setting to any other existing
mediapool of type “file.”
8
Figure 4 shows conceptually the difference between the conventional and the new DFMF format for
the Data Protector 6.0 file library. Instead of putting all data blocks into one file, the new DFMF
creates several files on the file library. For each file that is backed up, an own file is created inside
the file library to host the data blocks. The parent medium file, storing all catalog information, is using
pointers to find the data segments.
9
How does enhanced incremental work in Data Protector?
The first full backup with enhanced incremental backup enabled in the file system options of the
backup specification (see Figure 5) creates two files for each directory on each client to be backed
up. Both of these new files will contain a hash-key, one for the directory and the other for all the files
of this directory. Additionally a timestamp is stored.
The hash-key contains the properties of the file. This information allows Data Protector to detect nearly
all changes to the files and thus it is able to add all the modified files into an incremental backup job.
This is done by comparing the stored hash-key with the current hash-key, generated whenever an
incremental backup is done.
Note that the hash-key does not contain the ACL information. Therefore the enhanced incremental
backup detects changes on file permissions not by the hash-key and must still rely on OS flags, like
attribute flag on Windows.
Incremental forever paradigm
The incremental forever paradigm means that except for the first backup, where a full is performed,
only incremental backups are executed. This concept presents the most efficient way of backing up
only changed data.
10
However, without object (backup) consolidation, the restore process would last far too long, since
nearly all backup sessions would have to be restored as separate objects. Due to this behavior,
regular full backups are required.
Object (backup) consolidation removes this drawback. After the first full backup, you employ Data
Protector’s new incremental forever technology. To prevent the incremental forever paradigm, Data
Protector 6.0 has introduced the concept of object (backup) consolidation into synthetic full backups
or space-efficient virtual full backups.
Object consolidation
The Data Protector object consolidation functionality enables you to merge a restore chain of a
backup object into a new, consolidated version of this object. Using this functionality, you no longer
need to run full backups. Instead, you can run incremental backups indefinitely and consolidate the
restore chain as needed. During the object consolidation session, Data Protector reads the backed up
data from the source media, merges the data, and writes the consolidated version to the target
media. The result of an object consolidation session is a synthetic full backup of the specified object
version.
Note:
If a file was removed between two incremental backups, the consolidated
session will include the file.
11
Synthetic backup is a backup solution that eliminates the need to run regular full backups. Instead,
incremental backups are run, and subsequently merged with the full backup into a new, synthetic full
backup. This can be repeated indefinitely, with no need to run a full backup again. In terms of restore
speed, such a backup is equivalent to a conventional full backup. With a synthetic backup, all blocks
(data and catalog information) are copied to a new media (see Figure 6).
Figure 6 shows how the restore chain is consolidated. The restore chain, consisting of a full and three
incremental backups, is consolidated into a new full, named synthetic enhanced full.
After a consolidation one session with type full (synthetic, enhanced) is listed inside the restore
GUI. This session represents the incremental backup, used for the consolidation, and the
consolidation itself.
12
The following prerequisites must be fulfilled to perform a synthetic or virtual full backup:
• All the backups that will be consolidated were performed with the enhanced incremental backup
option enabled.
• All incremental backups that will be consolidated reside in the same file library.
• The restore chain must be complete, meaning that all the object versions that comprise it
have the status Completed or Completed/Errors and all the media holding these object versions
are available.
• The necessary backup devices are configured and the media prepared.
• A Media Agent that will participate in an object consolidation session is installed on every system.
• The appropriate user rights for starting an object consolidation session (Start backup specification)
are secured.
• To perform a virtual full backup, all the backups source (full, incremental) and target (virtual full)
must reside in the same file library that uses DFMF.
13
Figure 7. VLS Automigration dataflow + device configuration in Data Protector
3.Tape is physically
SAN taken off site
Destination library
can be a VTL, too.
14
VLS configuration
• Configuration of a dedicated physical library on the VLS (under the new Automigration tab
on the Command View VLS as can be seen in Figure 8)
• Smart Copy Pool Creation for this dedicated physical tape library :
1. Click on
2. Under “Destination Libraries, select “Media Pools” of the of the connected physical
tape library
3. Click on
4. Fill out the required fields and click the submit button for Smart Copy Pool Creation
15
Data Protector configuration
• Installation of the Data Protector component “VLS Automigration on the client machine.
• Import the VLS as the new client type “VLS device” into Data Protector
• During import operation, the IP address or hostname, username and password needs to be
entered in order to gain the access to the CIMOM (Common Interface Model Object
Manager) running on a VLS device.
• Enabling Automigration functionality by setting the appropriate option
• Activate “smart media copying” by using the existing media copy functionality
CIMOM configuration
Enabling Automigration
• Automated smart/media copying: takes place after the completion of a backup session
(Post-backup) or at a specific time or at regular intervals (scheduled)
• Interactive smart/media copying creates a copy of a medium containing the backed up
data and can be started on demand at any point in time
16
VLS Automigration advantages
The VLS Automigration integrated into Data Protector brings the following benefits:
• Easy management, as smart copies are managed as standard Data Protector media
copies. This means that Data Protector tracks the status of copy operations and monitor
copy sessions.
The information about the smart/media copies is stored in the IDB
• Increased backup performance and significantly decreased backup window. The fast primary
backups to the VLS disk-based virtual tapes are made with minimal impact on your
environment. Smart copying takes place as a secondary task without causing any disruption
to the application performance.
• Additional protection against data loss due to the existence of multiple copies on disk
and tape.
• The ability to create smart copies allows you to keep your data available for restore or data
archiving for longer periods of time without exceeding the capacity of a virtual library.
• Fast and reliable restores using the Data Protector restore functionality.
Limitations
• Copies through Automigration can only be done between slots and copy slots of the
same VTL
• After copy process, source and destination tape are made non-appendable. This is the same
as for the usual media copy
• Direct Access to the media in the physical library is not possible
• Media within copy slots can only be accessed through VLS
Further information and consideration regarding the configuration and setup can be found in the VLS
documentation and Data Protector’s manuals.
17
VLS versus Data Protector file libraries
The VLS should not be confused with Data Protector file libraries. Both are disk-based backup
solutions, but the VLS is a hardware solution, and Data Protector file libraries are a software solution.
The VLS has the following advantages over Data Protector file libraries:
• VLS tape drives can be shared among multiple servers in a SAN environment just like physical
tape drives.
• The VLS is optimized for sequential I/O and therefore provides better backup performance.
• VLS tape drives appear as tape devices to the server and therefore will not be included in backups
or scanned by virus scan.
• VLS tapes can be imported into a Data Protector cell in the event that the cell manager is lost; file
libraries cannot.
The following comparison was taken from the VLS customer presentation:
• Choose Data Protector Advanced Backup to Disk when any of the following are true:
– You want to use existing storage in your SAN or locally attached storage.
– You have relatively few SAN hosts writing to disk.
– Your environment is LAN only.
• Choose the HP StorageWorks Virtual Library System when any of the following are true:
– You have many SAN hosts writing to disk.
– You want to use compression.
– You have high bandwidth needs for backup.
18
Data Protector GUI wizard
To make the creation and configuration of a file library as easy and user friendly as possible, a new
GUI wizard has been added, which guides the user through the few required steps (see Figure 10).
19
Use case—Disk staging
The concept of disk staging is based on backing up data in several stages to improve the
performance of backups and restores, reduce costs of storing the backed up data, and increase the
data availability and accessibility for restore.
The backup stages consist of backing up data to media of one type and later moving it to media of a
different type. The data is backed up to media with high performance and accessibility, but limited
capacity (for example, system disks). These backups are usually kept accessible for restore for a
period of time when a restore is the most probable. After a certain period of time, the data is moved
to media with lower performance and accessibility, but high capacity for storage, using the object
copy functionality.
Disk Agent
Media Agent
Disk Agent
Backup
Disk Agent
NEW:
direct restore from tape
Restore:
Fast restore from disk if data still
available there
Some use cases where a file library as part of a disk staging concept is very useful include:
• Continuous backup of transaction log files (no overhead through media load/unload and for tape
drives there is no issue with start/stop mode)
• Backup of slow clients without multiplexing
• Tapeless backup of branch offices
• Working similar to a virtual tape library
20
New file library license: B7038**
Advanced Backup to Disk Licensing (B7038AA/BA/CA)
• Includes the license-to-use (LTU) for 1/10/100 TB of backup disk storage.
• Required once per terabyte (TB) usable native capacity of backup disk storage.
• Usable native capacity of a Data Protector file library is the size on disk of all files used for the file
library, as reported by the file system.
• The backup disk storage can be distributed over multiple disk arrays and systems.
• Does not require any drive and library LTU. Drive and library licenses are required for file devices,
but not for Advanced Backup to Disk. In the same way, Advanced Backup to Disk cannot be
licensed with drive and library licenses.
• It does not matter whether UNIX or Windows powers the backup disk.
• The Advanced Backup to Disk license is required to back up to a Data Protector file library or
a VTL.
21
Continuing with the previous model only makes sense in case you do not use compression or
deduplication technology. Otherwise, you get a higher value if you use previously purchased
licenses under the new licensing model.
This capacity enhancement is only available to HP Data Protector Software customers who deploy a
VTL library utilizing the Advanced Backup to Disk Licensing extension.
To utilize the capacity-based license to utilize a VTL, select the Virtual Tape Library option when
configuring the SCSI device (see Figure 12).
22
For more information
• HP Data Protector Software
http://www.hp.com/go/dataprotector