Portfolio integration extends backup scale and Avamar establishes benchmark for VMware backup performance
On April18, EMC will publicly announce Avamar 6.0. EMC is also introducing NetWorker 7.6 SP2, NetWorker Module for Microsoft Applications 2.3, and EMC Data Protection Advisor 5.8. Collectively, these products, along with EMC Data Domain, provide an integrated foundation for a next-generation backup and recovery infrastructure. The tighter connection among products in the portfolio extends scale and performance of business application protection in both physical and virtual environments.
New Integration
Avamar 6.0 introduces integration with Data Domain, enabling high-speed, scalable backups and restores for particular data types to Data Domain systems. Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server; Oracle; and VMware image backups will be supported. For these datasets, users can select a Data Domain system as the back-end storage. Other types of data can be sent to an Avamar Data Store.
Utilizing Avamar’s user interface and workflows to move backup workloads to Data Domain takes advantage of Data Domain’s industry leading performance and scale, while leveraging Avamar’s simplicity and efficiency of management. This broadens Avamar use-case coverage and solves more customer problems.
NetWorker 7.6 SP2 with the NetWorker Module for Microsoft Applications 2.3 extends integration with Data Domain Boost by distributing parts of the deduplication process to application clients, and offers a direct client-to-Data Domain data path. This means faster and more efficient protection for Microsoft applications.
Data Protection Advisor 5.8 extends management, monitoring, and reporting to the new integrated Backup Recovery Systems (BRS) portfolio of offerings.
The integration of Avamar with Data Domain, coupled with previous integrations of NetWorker with Avamar (2008) and NetWorker with Data Domain (2010), provide proof points that EMC is committed to creating ever simpler, more predictable, and supportable backup and recovery solutions.
VMware, Vblock Backup Leadership
With the introduction of Avamar 6.0, EMC now offers the industry’s fastest backup solution for VMware at scale, and for Vblocks. Users now have the ability to back up 1,000 virtual machines with 50 TB of data in just 43 minutes. This benchmark is three times faster than the closest competitor.
In addition, by virtue of its support for the VMware vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP), Avamar offers differentiated capabilities such as changed block backup and recovery, virtual proxy pooling, and unmatched restore flexibility for VMware image-based backups. For Vblocks, Avamar provides bare-metal restore for the entire configuration, including UCS profiles and network configuration files, in addition to the user data. Avamar is the only product offering these capabilities.
NetWorker 7.6 SP2 extends its integration with VMware by introducing support for VADP, driving greater efficiency for centralized virtual machine backup using physical or virtual proxy servers. With a single backup, NetWorker delivers both image- and file-level recovery for virtual machines. The VADP integration also uses Changed Block Tracking (CBT) to improve performance for NetWorker incremental backups.
Data Protection Advisor 5.8 offers simplified visibility, management, and optimization of VMware environments.
Additional Product Details
Avamar 6.0
In addition to the capabilities discussed above, Avamar 6.0 provides a number of other new features, including:
- Support for the new Avamar Data Store Gen4, with up to 124 TB of deduplicated capacity.
- Expanded desktop/laptop capabilities that enable IT to offer greater control to end-users with regard to redirected restores.
- New client management capabilities for migrating clients from one Avamar grid to another with just a few clicks, and the ability to push upgrades to Windows and Linux clients.
- Network attached storage (NAS)/Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) performance and management enhancements, including the ability to run up to eight simultaneous backup streams per accelerator node. Avamar 6.0 is supported with the new EMC VNX family.
- Broadened application support:
– New support for Microsoft SharePoint 2010, with Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for improved performance and compatibility.
– Support for up to six simultaneous backup streams with Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Exchange.
– Support for granular-level recovery for both Microsoft Exchange (recover individual mailboxes, folders, or messages) and SharePoint (web applications, sites, calendars, etc.).
– Oracle RAC (Real Application Clusters) support.
NetWorker 7.6 SP2
In addition to the VADP and DD Boost capabilities highlighted above, NetWorker also provides a number of other new features, including:
- Wizard-guided disaster recovery for Microsoft Windows Server 2008, 2008 R2, and 7.
- NDMP incremental backups for greater NAS backup efficiency.
- Advancements with the NetWorker Module for Microsoft Applications 2.3:
– Support for Microsoft Exchange 2010, SharePoint 2010, SQL Server 2010, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Hyper-V R2.
– Dedicated storage node support for LAN-free backups.
Data Protection Advisor 5.8
In addition to adding support for Avamar 6.0 and NetWorker 7.6 SP2, Data Protection Advisor 5.8 provides new features, including:
- Expanded visibility into Avamar by adding new monitoring details, such as:
– Avamar plug-in names.
– Additional information regarding backup and restore jobs.
– Avamar grid total used capacity (in megabytes). - Enhanced visibility into DD Boost for NetWorker:
– Data Protection Advisor will monitor raw size and deduplicated size of a backup job. - New capacity-based Data Protection Advisor licensing for NetWorker to align with the NetWorker quoting/licensing processes.
- New monitoring granularity for Data Domain file system compression statistics.
Availability
Avamar 6.0, NetWorker 7.6 SP2, and the NetWorker Module for Microsoft Applications 2.3 are being released initially as Restricted Availability (RA). They will be made available through a different process than General Availability (GA) releases. For more information about how to get access to the RA releases for these products, see the Avamar and NetWorker FAQs on Powerlink. These products are scheduled for general availability in Q2 2011.
Call to Action
- Take the Q2 2011 Backup and Recovery Software Launch training.
- Have the next-generation backup discussion with your customer:
– Describe the new integration of Avamar and NetWorker with Data Domain, and the new backup choices that this presents.
– Find cross-sell opportunities (Avamar into Data Domain accounts), to displace IBM Tivoli Storage Manager and Symantec NetBackup.
– Make backup and recovery part of every VMware implementation.
– Demonstrate how EMC has the fastest backup for VMware, and the best VMware integration with Avamar.
– Don’t miss the Vblock opportunity; EMC has the best backup for Vblocks. - Use the announcement to further increase differentiation from competitors and drive backup
redesign with deduplication into your accounts. - EMC core sales should engage Backup Recovery Systems (BRS) sales and pre-sales in all opportunities. EMC channel partners should contact their EMC Account manager or local channel manager for opportunities.
Announcement Resources
New and updated content to support this launch—including FAQs, quick selling guides, customer presentations, data sheets, solution overviews, analyst reports, videos, white papers, training, and more—is posted on Powerlink in the subsections of these paths (as applicable):
- Products > Software A-B > Avamar
- Products > Software E-O > NetWorker
- Products > Software D > Data Protection Advisor
- Products > Hardware/Platforms > Data Domain