Data Protection for VMware and Application Data in Mission Critical Environments

Backup option summary chart

CHART 1: Backup option chart

• 100% Protection • Agent in VM

• Agent in

ESX console

• VCB

• HP DP ZDB/IR +

VCB

• Virtual Machine • Yes

• Severe

performance

penalty

• Yes • Yes

• Windows

only

• Yes

• Zero

performance

impact

• Windows only

• Databases &

Applications

• Yes

• Severe

performance

penalty

• No • No • Yes

• Zero

performance

impact

(1) See Appendix A for more details.

Seventy four percent of surveyed IT professionals to a Data Protection indicated that

the recovery SLAs for mission critical applications in their environment was within

four hours time.

Source: Excillio Group Inc, Data Protection Report – January 2008.

To address these difficult challenges, this paper examines a solution based on key HP Data Protector

software and HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) technologies, which considerably

reduce the complexity of deploying a backup strategy in a VMware environment, reduce recovery

times while providing continuous backup protection, and a disaster-tolerant backup approach:

• Reduce RPO and RTO: Zero Downtime Backup and Instance Recovery shrink RPO and RTO.

• Reduce complexity of backup strategy: Backups managed and performed through simple interface.

• Provide disaster tolerance: HP Continuous Access EVA protects against complete site failure.