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LarsWulf
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DataDomain vs. HP StoreOnce

Post by LarsWulf »

I know this topic has been discussed already in a quite old post but I want to bring this up again as we are in the process of evaluating new Backup Storage.

Currently we have 50TB of VMware Storage that is backup by 4 Physical proxy in SAN mode to a Windows server with direct attached storage array without any hardware deduplication or compression. As a result we get about 20 TB of backup files. We use reversed incremental from monday to friday with extrem compression and local target dedup. On the weekend we dump the backup files to tape. As the underlying storage is getting to slow and is out of service we need to exchange the backup storage.
In addition our live storage will grow a lot in the future. We plan to have about 120 to 150 TB of VMware storage next year and about 250 TB within 3 years.
So it is definitely time for a deduplication storage.

As we have a close relationship with EMC the one option is an EMC DD. On the other hand we use HP servers and therefor also have a good HP partner. As Veeam and HP integration is getting deeper I really think this is a good alternative.
I know there are also other vendors like ExaGrid on the deduplication market but we have to stay with our known partnes who are only able to supply EMC DD or HP StorceOnce.

Now I am interested in any kind of reallife / test feedback of DD or HP StoreOnce systems used with Veeam.
Also sizing hints would be great as I am not sure which DD (DD640 ? DD670 ? ) or StoreOnce system I should choose for our environment.

I know I could also get these information from our partners. But I always like to be prepared and have a basic idea about the topic I am talking with a partner.

Thanks in advance
Lars
veremin
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Re: DataDomain vs. HP StoreOnce

Post by veremin »

With the current HP firmware (that sometimes might affect backup performance) you’d better use StoreOnce appliance as a secondary backup destination. In other words, you should first backup locally, and then take this data to the StoreOnce appliance for long-term archival purposes. Thanks.
LarsWulf
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Re: DataDomain vs. HP StoreOnce

Post by LarsWulf »

Thanks for the quick reply Vladimir.
Could you specify the problem you see with HP StoreOnce as primary backup storage.
Is it because of the WIP handling mentioned in this thread: http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16235
dellock6
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Re: DataDomain vs. HP StoreOnce

Post by dellock6 »

I would like to use this thread to make some thoughts about the new way of designing a backup storage that Veeam v7 will bring.

Basically, with the new BackupCopy option, I think a better design would be to split the backup storage in two layers:
- a small and really fast primary backup storage, able to hold for example up to 7 days of backup, for fast restore purposes
- a big and slower backup unit (a nas or a dedupe appliance) to hold GFS rotation of the backups, with longeer retention, and its content populated with BackupCopy jobs taking data from primary storage

I really think v7 is giving us an unique opportunity to remove all the compromise between size, speed and cost we have been used to evaluate when designing the primary backup storage. Uhm, this is something good for a new blog post :)

Luca.
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veremin
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Re: DataDomain vs. HP StoreOnce

Post by veremin »

Because up to this moment we haven't seen any customer who was happy with the performance he got in case of StoreOnce target. The bottom line is that HP dedupe logic doesn't seem to handle Veeam's workload well. Thanks.

[UPDATE] Veeam workload compatibility issues resolved by HP in firmware version 3.6.2
LarsWulf
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Re: DataDomain vs. HP StoreOnce

Post by LarsWulf »

dellock6 wrote:I would like to use this thread to make some thoughts about the new way of designing a backup storage that Veeam v7 will bring.

Basically, with the new BackupCopy option, I think a better design would be to split the backup storage in two layers:
- a small and really fast primary backup storage, able to hold for example up to 7 days of backup, for fast restore purposes
- a big and slower backup unit (a nas or a dedupe appliance) to hold GFS rotation of the backups, with longeer retention, and its content populated with BackupCopy jobs taking data from primary storage
Luca,
do you have any detailed information about the BackupCopy Feature ?
I haven`t looked at this feature in detail yet. But from my understanding you always need to have a full backup and the incremental for a few days (in your example for 1 week) on your primary storage. And only the incrementals of the older backups will be moved to the secondary backup storage.
If this is the case I would have about 70% of my data still on the primary backup storage so this won`t really help.
Please correct me if I there is a misunderstanding.
v.Eremin wrote:Because up to that moment we haven’t seen any customer who was happy with the performance he got in case of StoreOnce target. The bottom line is that HP dedupe logic doesn’t seem to handle Veeam’s workload well. Thanks.
Definitely good to know. Do you also have any information about DataDomain implementations with Veeam ?
veremin
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Re: DataDomain vs. HP StoreOnce

Post by veremin »

Definitely good to know. Do you also have any information about DataDomain implementations with Veeam ?
Some information on implementation and optimizing Veeam workloads for DataDomain devices can be found here.
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Re: DataDomain vs. HP StoreOnce

Post by dellock6 »

Hi Lars,
BackupCopy is not a simple copy of the existing backups from a repository to another, like rsync or the like.

With this kind of job, you can select VMs already stored in the primary backup, and create an additional copy of those VMs (read it: selected VMs, you can replicate only the VMs you want, not a 1:1 copy of the vbk files) and assign a completely different retention schema to the secondary repository. For example, you can keep only 4 days of reverse incremental backups in the primary, and than create a GFS rotation of the VMs in the secondary repository, and keep an year of retention in it (let's say as example, 1 copy of the last week, than a weekly copy of the last 2 months, than a montly copy of the last year...).

With this new feature, really imho the design of Veeam backup infrastructure can be deeply tuned for different purposes: fast and small storage on primary, large and slow on secondary. And with this kind of design, dedup appliances can be again a good target for secondary backups, while they have always had some problems in beeing primary targets...

Hope I explained it better than my first reply...

Luca.
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LarsWulf
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Re: DataDomain vs. HP StoreOnce

Post by LarsWulf »

Thanks Vladimir the post is really interesting and it looks like DD would be a working choice.

@ Luca: Now the feature is clear to me but this won`t help in my situation as I have only a very little need for storing long time backups. The design is for a development hosting for individual customer projects. There the only important thing is to have a backup of a few weeks. Nobody is interested of have the status 1 year ago.
But nevertheless thanks for your hint.
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Re: DataDomain vs. HP StoreOnce

Post by Gostev »

Good news for HP StoreOnce users: looks like the latest firmware addresses the outstanding issues with Veeam B&R workload. One of the users who upgraded to version 3.6.2 is reporting about 14x deduplication ratio, whereas previously backups were consuming double capacity (sort of anti-deduplication, so to speak).

So, we can now recommend StoreOnce as the target for Veeam backups.
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