Microsoft has announced the general availability of Azure VMware Solutions (AVS) during Ignite 2020. It allows customers to move VMware-based workloads from on-premises data centers to Azure. AVS is built on VMware Cloud Foundation and runs on Azure bare-metal infrastructure. This way, customers can capitalize on their existing VMware skills/tools and realize significant cloud infrastructure benefits.
For many customers, a major step to adopting a new platform is confirming the ability to protect data. Backup Exec provides Day-0 support for AVS. Customers utilizing Backup Exec to protect vSphere on-premises today will notice their data protection experience for AVS feels very familiar. Below we have summarized the supported use cases and some sample architectures, as well as providing some guidance to our relevant documentation.
Supported use cases
Veritas Backup Exec 21.1 and later supports the following use cases in AVS:
- Image level backup and restore of virtual machines.
- Restore to an existing or new virtual machine.
- Granular restore from image-level backups.
- In-guest backup and restore of file system data and application data using Backup Exec Agent for Windows, Agent for Linux/Unix Servers.
Solution Architecture
Just like on-premises, the Backup Exec server uses the hotadd transport mode for efficient backup and restore of virtual machines that reside on vSAN datastore. The hotadd transport mode requires one backup host installed per virtual machine cluster. At the moment, AVS only supports the hotadd transport mode. It is recommended to send backups outside of the vSAN datastore, to prevent losing both production and backup data.
The following are sample Backup Exec architectures to suit a variety of requirements.
Architecture 1: Backup Exec Server in AVS with Azure Blob backup repository
In this architecture, the Backup Exec server is installed within AVS, and the backup data is sent to Azure blob storage. All use cases mentioned earlier are supported with this architecture.
Architecture 2: Backup Exec Server and local backup repository in AVS with Azure Blob remote backup repository
In this architecture, the Backup Exec server is installed within AVS. The data is sent to the local repository (disk or deduplication storage) first and then replicated/duplicated to Azure blob storage. All use cases mentioned earlier are supported with this architecture using both local repository and Azure blob storage.
Solution Components
- Azure VMware Solutions Private Cloud
- Backup Exec Server within the AVS to provide hotadd backup and restore.
- Backup Exec Agent for Windows and Agent for Linux/Unix in the virtual machines (optional, for filesystem or application data)
- Backup repository (Azure Blob used for example)
Backup Exec is available in several configurations that can accommodate networks of all sizes. In addition, Backup Exec's family of agents and features allow you to scale your Backup Exec environment and unify your data protection across platforms.
For more information, refer to the Backup Exec 21.1 Administrator's Guide.
Backup Exec Installation Notes
To install Backup Exec Server, Backup Exec Agent for Windows, and Agent for Linux/Unix on virtual machine in AVS, refer to the Backup Exec 21.1 Installation Guide.
Ensure that communication between Backup Exec Server and Agents works as described in the article: Using Backup Exec with firewalls.
Continually Improving Partnership
Our teams have been diligently working to ensure customers can adopt new deployment models without sacrificing data protection. With this latest addition of support for AVS, customers can rest easy knowing that they can make the leap to this new service and keep their data safe.
Interested in trying Backup Exec?
Our 60-day free trial can be found here: https://www.veritas.com/form/trialware/backup-exec.
For more information about Backup Exec please refer to our website or administrator's guide.
