Strategy is a Greek word meaning “art of troop leader” or a high-level plan for achieving one’s goal. With the world moving at a rapid pace, isn’t it important and mandatory to chalk out strategies and keep ourselves updated before investing in something important? Obviously. This leads us to the question – Why Strategy and what’s its need?
A well planned Strategy will yield you efficiency, resiliency, effectiveness and at last, the most important aspect – Success. This, by all means, applies while choosing a data protection solution and an effective Backup strategy for best possible results.
One of the few topics which have gained humongous attention in the field of enterprise data centers and having several businesses dependent on it is the Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor. To ensure that your Hyper-V backup is potent and effective you have to make sure you select the right “Hyper-V backup strategy”. In this blog, I am going to explain few Hyper-V backup strategies, you can utilize and implement so as to achieve what you call as a dream data protection plan.
Preferring Host – Level Backups above Backup Agents:
Backing up your Virtual Machine data in Hyper-V environment can be approached in two distinct ways.
Agent Backup – the old-fashioned technique for backing up your Virtual Machines. This method has become outdated with plenty of new techniques coming into the foray. That being said, this method has its own advantages as well as flaws, but the flaws seem to be more prevalent.
The other option? VM Level Backup – Why?
Host level backup in a Hyper-V environment offers you a consolidated approach for backing up your Virtual Machines. For an image based backup to be created, Vembu has the ability to communicate directly to the Hyper-V host for extracting the Virtual Machine data. All this is done at the host level.
Again, why Image based backup? Image based backups have the ability to restore Virtual Machine to its original state by capturing the virtual hardware and settings without the need of reconfiguring it from the beginning, while Backup Agents take a back step while dealing with this option as they capture just the data and do not capture the hardware settings. Vembu provides Agentless Hyper-V backup designed specifically for protecting the VM’s on Microsoft Hyper-V Servers.
Understanding Importance of RPO and RTO
The topic of RPO and RTO pops up frequently whenever you think of establishing a proper data protection plan. You must understand what RPO and RTO are exactly for and understand the importance of it for the organizations planning their recovery strategies. So what is RPO and RTO and what does it have to do with disaster recovery?
RPO or Recovery Point Objective defines the amount of data loss a business can endure. It is the point in time up to which systems and data can be recovered post a disaster. Many organizations consider it as one of the key factors which play an important role when drawing out their recovery strategy.
RTO or Recovery Time Objective is the amount of downtime a business organization can endure for its survival and still have operations functioning i.e a stipulated time you set to overcome the disaster. Vembu offers True 15-Minute RTO for Mission Critical VM with Vembu VMbackup.
Offline Backups vs Online Backups :
For creating a backup in Hyper-V environment, two methods namely- Offline Backups and Online Backups, are used which utilize the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to take snapshots of the virtual machine regardless of its condition. What we have to understand is that a snapshot is just a snapshot and not a backup copy.
Offline Backups – A very inconsistent method of backing up your Virtual Machines, this method utilizes the Microsoft Hyper-V VSS writer, a Windows technology, to make sure that the Hyper-V Virtual Machine is in a state of Hibernation so that a proper image of the VM at that point of time can be created.
Once the image is created, the VM will return to its previous state. If you notice, there will be few minutes wherein the VM cannot be reached. This is why this method is deemed inconsistent.
Online Backups – This method of backing up your Virtual Machine is more advantageous as the VM will be active and can be reached anytime during the VSS process. The biggest drawback with the previous method was with its inconsistency which doesn’t exist in this method and applications that need consistency such as databases will be benefitted largely.
Hyper-V Snapshots are not backups, they are just Snapshots :
In our earlier blog regarding VM Snapshot vs Backup, we have clearly stressed the importance of understanding the difference between VM Snapshot and a Backup. The same myth is being followed with regards to Hyper-V backup that snapshots or checkpoints as you call them are viewed as backups.
Snapshots should not be depended upon as a source of backup because if any files (virtual) are corrupted, your snapshot also has a high probability of being corrupted too. Snapshots precisely should just be used for the purpose of rolling back or for other processes.
Including Encryption in your process :
Another important practice in Hyper-V backup strategy which most people know is important but still continue to omit is, including Encryption in your strategy. It is mandatory that your backups are safe and secure. Encryption is done at two levels- “at-rest” and “in-flight”. Encryption has evolved over the years and is a basic necessity now when any organization plans to adopt a backup strategy. Vembu offers end to end encryption and utilizes AES-256 bit encryption algorithm for backing up your virtual machine’s data.
The practices mentioned above are some of the important practices you have to take into account while choosing a disaster recovery strategy. The backup and recovery solution must be such that, it helps you to achieve your goals with ease. Backup Solutions such as Vembu provide you a Single, Comprehensive and Secure Backup & Recovery Solution to address the various needs of your IT environment, thus ensuring Business Continuity at affordable pricing.
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