How to protect Azure Stack Hub and Azure Stack HCI
There are a lot of misunderstandings about Azure Stack solutions and how to protect each one of them. I want to help you better understand each solution within Azure Stack portfolio and how to protect them using Veritas NetBackup. As you already know, Veritas NetBackup is an enterprise-class backup and recovery suite that provides unified data protection for multi-cloud, virtual and physical environments that can be globally managed from a single console, including all Azure Stack solutions. The usual misunderstanding is to think Azure Stack is a solution itself, but Azure Stack is a portfolio of products comprised of three distinct offerings – Azure Stack Edge, Azure Stack Hub, and Azure Stack HCI. Azure Stack solutions help you extend Azure services and capabilities to your environment of choice – from the data center to edge locations and remote offices. The confusion kicks in mostly between Azure Stack Hub and Azure Stack HCI and how to protect them. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-stack/operator/compare-azure-azure-stack?view=azs-2108 The most important feature of HCI is that it can run “disconnected” from Azure, in other words, HCI is just like your branch office server. It is a box that contains compute, power, storage, and network connections and holds Hyper-V based virtualized workloads and it has the option to connect to some Azure services. And so, as it is like a Hyper-V server, you can use Veritas NetBackup Hyper-V policy type to protect it along with all the features Veritas NetBackup already provided for Hyper-V: NetBackup for Hyper-V uses snapshot technology to keep virtual machines 100% available to users. NetBackup for Hyper-V creates quiesced Windows snapshots using Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). NetBackup for Hyper-V performs full backups and file-level incremental backups of the virtual machine. With the WMI backup method, it also performs block-level incremental backups and Accelerator backups. Can restore the full virtual machine from the following: Full backups of the VM. Block-level incremental backups of the VM. Accelerator backups of the VM. Can restore individual files of the virtual machine from the following: Full backups of the VM. File-level incremental backups of the VM. Block-level incremental backups of the VM. Accelerator backups of the VM. Can restore to the original virtual machine, to other locations on the Hyper-V server, or to a different Hyper-V server. For details on how to protect Hyper-V, please check the NetBackup for Hyper-V Administrator’s Guide on the following URL: https://www.veritas.com/content/support/en_US/doc/21357025-151824041-0/v21357050-151824041 On the other hand, Azure Stack Hub is really the on-premise extension of the Azure public cloud. Almost everything you can do in the public cloud, you could also deploy on Hub: from VMs to apps, all managed through the Azure portal or even Powershell, including things like configuring fault and updated domains. In this case, you can still use the same deployment of Veritas NetBackup to protect your in-cloud workloads. The cloud data protection framework leverages the CloudPoint infrastructure to drive faster proliferation of cloud providers, since v8.3, CloudPoint can protect assets in AWS, AWS Outpost, Azure, Azure Stack hub and GCP clouds. Features includes: Automatic discovery of cloud assets: NetBackup retrieves the cloud assets pertaining to the cloud accounts every 2 hours by default. This period is configurable. Protection of intelligent cloud groups based on a set of filters called queries. All the assets satisfying the query conditions will automatically be protected. Protection of Microsoft Azure resources using resource groups. NetBackup Accelerator backups. Application consistent snapshots. You can perform original location and alternate location restores. Incremental snapshots. Backup from snapshot. Restore from snapshot copy, replica copy, backup copy or duplicate copy. Restore VMs to an alternate configuration, to a different region, to a different subscription, and restore VMs or disks to a different resource group. Granular files and folders restore For details on how to protect Cloud Assets, please check the NetBackup Web UI Cloud Administrator’s Guide on the following URL: https://www.veritas.com/content/support/en_US/doc/150074555-150074602-0/v130722342-150074602Protecting Azure Stack HCI with NetBackup
Backup and recovery are essential to protect the data on your hybrid-infrastructure investments, but such solutions can introduce complexity or fall short of what’s necessary to protect all your organizations’ workloads. As a leader in data backup and recovery, Veritas NetBackup provides enterprise IT organizations with a simple and powerful way to ensure the integrity and availability of your data, including hybrid clouds. Azure Stack HCI is a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) cluster solution that hosts virtualized Windows and Linux workloads and their storage in a hybrid environment combining on-premises infrastructure with Azure cloud services. NetBackup supports Microsoft Azure Stack HCI with the same robust features NetBackup already delivers for Hyper-V. Check out the link below for more information on how and benefits of protecting Azure Stack HCI with Veritas NetBackup https://vox.veritas.com/t5/NetBackup/Protecting-Azure-Stack-HCI-with-NetBackup/td-p/892479Protecting Azure Stack HCI with NetBackup
With NetBackup 9.1 and higher, you can now reduce the complexity of your data management with a fast, cost-effective, and unified Azure Stack HCI backup and recovery solution. Backup and recovery are essential to protect the data on your hybrid-infrastructure investments, but such solutions can introduce complexity or fall short of what’s necessary to protect all your organizations’ workloads. As a leader in data backup and recovery, Veritas NetBackup provides enterprise IT organizations with a simple and powerful way to ensure the integrity and availability of your data, including hybrid clouds. Azure Stack HCI is a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) cluster solution that hosts virtualized Windows and Linux workloads and their storage in a hybrid environment combining on-premises infrastructure with Azure cloud services. NetBackup supports Microsoft Azure Stack HCI with the same robust features NetBackup already delivers for Hyper-V. Benefits of protecting your Azure Stack HCI with NetBackup 1. Ensure 100% availability of your virtual machines with NetBackup’s snapshot technology, which uses Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) or Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) depending on your Windows server version. 2.Reduce the size of your backup image with Block-level backups of the virtual machine. 3. Optimize backup performance and increase speed to restore with the NetBackup Accelerator. By using Microsoft’s resilient change tracking (RCT) NetBackup can offer faster backups—in full or incremental—of your virtual machines. 4. Restore full virtual machine from: Full backups of the VM, Block-level incremental backups of the VM, and Accelerator backups of the VM. 5. Restore individual files of the virtual machine from: File-level incremental backups of the VM, Full backups of the VM, Block-level incremental backups of the VM, and Accelerator backups of the VM. 6. Flexibility to restore to the original location or alternate location. As shown on the screenshot below 7. Reduce human error and intervention by automating backup and recovery with Intelligent Policies allowing you to automatically select virtual machines based on your organizations defined criteria. 8. Ensure a workload will operate correctly when data is restored with application consistent backups. Check out below links for more detailed information: Veritas NetBackup™ for Hyper-V Administrator's Guide: https://www.veritas.com/content/support/en_US/doc/21357025-148949449-0/index Veritas NetBackup ™ Enterprise Server and Server 9.0 - 9.x.x OS Software Compatibility List https://www.veritas.com/content/support/en_US/doc/NB_90_OSSCL
