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/v130722342-150074602Deployment of Veritas NetBackup on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
As customers adopt a multi-cloud strategy (public, private, and hybrid), the need to align services with key cloud characteristics, such as deployment, cost management, and scaling, is increasing. Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a fully managed container orchestration service used to deploy, scale, and manage Docker containers and container-based applications in a cluster environment. AKS enables the provisioning, scaling, and upgrading of resources per requirement or demand without downtime in the Kubernetes cluster. In addition to the traditional deployment of Veritas NetBackup in the cloud, customers can deploy NetBackup’s infrastructure in a native, extensible format for greater performance and resiliency and to optimize costs when using AKS. NetBackup powered by Cloud Scale Technology delivers automation, artificial intelligence, and an elastic architecture to improve the agility and data security of any cloud, at any scale. Optimized for the cloud, NetBackup simplifies data management and delivers unmatched cyber resiliency, control, and visibility. As a prerequisite to deploying Veritas NetBackup on Azure Kubernetes Services, you will need to: Create Azure Container registry Download Container images to the Azure Container registry Create a user-assigned managed identity The container images can be found here: https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/veritas.netbackup You will have to download all six images to the same Azure Container Registry: NetBackup Operator NetBackup Server MSPD Meta Data MSDP Controller MSDP Engine MSDP Operator Figure 1.: Azure Marketplace – Veritas NetBackup powered by Cloud Scale Technology – Container Images Once you downloaded all images, you will use the Veritas NetBackup powered by Cloud Scale Technology – Deployment on AKS, to deploy the images in an integrated manner. Now you can start configuring the parameters for each NetBackup component, you will go through the Basics, Cluster Configuration, Primary Server Details, Media Server Details, and Storage Server Details. The typical deployment, which consists of one primary server, one media server with two replicas and one MSDP (Storage Server) with four replicas will take approximately 45 minutes until the environment is fully up and running. After that, your Veritas NetBackup on Azure Kubernetes Service is ready to start protecting your workloads. For more information about Veritas NetBackup deployment on Azure Kubernetes Service, check the following links: https://www.veritas.com/content/dam/www/en_us/documents/technical-documents/TB_netbackup_deployment_on_azure_k8s_V1568.pdf https://www.veritas.com/content/support/en_US/doc/154778686-154778690-1What's new in NetBackup v10.0 - Microsoft Azure Immutable Storage with Deduplication support
I would like to share with you that Veritas NetBackup v10.0 allows you to have greater security and compliance using immutable storage for Azure Blob Storage. Immutable storage helps healthcare organizations, financial institutions, and related industries that must comply with regulations such as from Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC), Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and more, to store data securely. Also, immutable storage can be leveraged in any scenario to protect critical data against modification or deletion as well as enable users to store sensitive information that is critical to litigation or business use in a tamper-proof state until the desired lock duration expires. Veritas NetBackup v10.0 added a feature to support cloud immutable storage with dedupe functionality for Microsoft Azure blob storage with versioning. You can leverage Microsoft’s immutable blob storage to provide you security and compliance for your backup images storing them in a write once, read many (WORM) state. Once data is written, the data becomes non-erasable and non-modifiable, and you can set a retention period so that files can't be deleted until after that period has elapsed. After you create a new Microsoft Azure blob storage volume on Azure using the msdpcldutil utility, you can create the Media Server Deduplication Pool storage server using the NetBackup WebUI to add the volume you just created to a Disk pool, check the “Use object lock” box as shown below to enable immutability on your Azure blob storage. Now you can add a storage unit to the Media Server Deduplication Server Storage Server. You will see that the disk pool is WORM capable. Simply select “Enable Worm” checkbox and it is configured.What's new in NetBackup v10 - Azure Stack ADFS based authentication in NetBackup Resiliency Platform
There are two options of authentication mechanism used by Microsoft Azure Stack: Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) Active Directory Federation Service (ADFS) is a software component developed by Microsoft to provide Single Sign-On (SSO) authorization service to users on Windows Server Operating Systems. ADFS allows users across organizational boundaries to access applications on Windows Server Operating Systems using a single set of login credentials. Deploying with ADFS allows identities in an existing Active Directory forest to authenticate with resources in Azure Stack Hub. In a connected scenario, you can choose Azure AD or AD FS. For a disconnected scenario (without a connection to the internet), only AD FS is supported. With Veritas NetBackup v10.0, Azure Stack can be configured in Resiliency Platform to use ADFS authentication type allowing customer to use their own Active Directory and in a disconnected scenario. It also allows customers to recover virtual machines from Azure AD to Azure ADFS or vice-versa as well Azure ADFS to Azure ADFS.What's new in NetBackup v10.0 - Nutanix AHV Restore from Snapshot
Nutanix™, a leader in HCI, offers a single platform that integrates storage, compute, networking, resources, and virtualization to provide a comprehensive view of your infrastructure. The advantage of HCI is being able to move mission-critical data and applications into a simplified, unified infrastructure. However, increasing data protection and disaster recovery issues have also increased demand for a scalable and flexible data protection solution that supports the robust requirements of hyperconverged environments. Veritas NetBackup™ v10 release introduces a new feature that makes use of snapshot technology to perform full VM restore of Nutanix’s AHV virtual machines. This feature adds a faster recovery capability to the extensive list of features already available for Nutanix AHV, such as agentless full backup and restores, pre-recovery check incremental backups, role-based access control, WebUI integration with Intelligent backup selection, resource throttling, iSCSI support, application-consistent backup, agentless granular recovery, restful APIs and more. This newly introduced feature makes use of snapshots to perform the full VM restore of Nutanix’s VMs. NetBackup creates the snapshot and stores it on the Nutanix container to perform the backup operation. In the case of accelerator and incremental backups, NetBackup keeps that snapshot for reference to calculate the changed blocks in the next backup. We leveraged the reference snapshot for quick restore. Restoring from a recent backup is a common scenario in a customer environment. Rather than restoring VM from the backup image we can use the snapshot available on the Nutanix cluster and run the snapshot restore. This is a much faster restore as there is no data movement from the NetBackup media server to the Nutanix Cluster, nor presents additional load on the network, Nutanix AHV cluster, and to the NetBackup media server. The virtual machine will only be restored from a snapshot if there is a snapshot available otherwise it will automatically fall back to a backup image. The table below lists down the restore options which are supported by the approach. This feature is available with NetBackup v10 release deployment by default.
Configure StoreOnce to NetBackup 9.1.01
I"ve successfully installed the StoreOnce plugin on the NetBackup server: Plugin Info: Plugin Name: libstspihpeMT.so Prefix: hp-StoreOnceCatalyst Label: HPE OST Plugin Build Version: 11 Build Version Minor: 1 Operating Version: 11 Vendor Version: v4.3.0 r2 Also, configured the StoreOnce for ALL Client Access and created a "Store" . I am able to ssh to the StoreOnce ( via the IP ) from the NetBackup server, so connectivity isn't a problem. However, I'm not sure what values to put in for "Storage server type" and "Storage server name" when I'm in the "Configure Disk Storage Servers" wizard of the NetBackup GUI . Please see attached. Any ideas ? Thanks, wb238wProtecting 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/892479
LIVE: Enterprise Ransomware Resiliency – An interactive live conversation
The threat of ransomware has hit the mainstream and business of all types and sizes are now having to make sure their plans represent as resilient a position as possible. This live discussion with Dan Sanden, Sr. Principal Product Manager and Alex Restrepo from Solutions Marketing will cover how Veritas: -Provides Ransomware Resiliency for the Enterprise -Partners with other IT companies in the space -Can assist in compliance with applicable third party standards or regulations We want to hear from you. Collaborate with the Veritas team on how it can improve your resiliency to ransomware.
LIVE: Completing RPO Spectrum with Continuous Data Protection
Two of the pillars of the Veritas Enterprise Data Services Platform (EDSP) are Availability and Protection. In the past, there have been stark differences between high availability clustering, replication, and data protection; however, today, the spectrum of near real-time replication and point-in-time backups is blurring. Businesses need continuous data protection (CDP) that has a low impact on production services. In this discussion, Paul Mayer from Product Management and Alex Restrepo from Solutions Marketing will discuss how Veritas provides CDP today and how we will be expanding this support in the future.
