Backup and Recovery Tip: Stop Scripting Snapshots

November 11, 2015

In a time when data protection is becoming increasingly complex, snap shot technology provides businesses with two very important attributes that are largely absent from traditional backup approaches: speed and simplicity. They also offer recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives that are also impossible with a traditional backup system. 

Snapshot technology creates a copy of a set of files as they were at a specific point in time. It is known for its ability to back up large systems and complex systems quickly and recover them quickly. The technology was originally created to solve common data backup issues such as: 

1. Backing up data that’s too large to complete in a certain amount of time.
2. Corruption of backed up data that can occur when it’s being written to while it’s being backed up. 
3. The effect on application performance while a backup is in process. 

While snapshot technology was built to support larger systems, it has become heavily relied on by companies and organizations of all sizes. 

One of the main challenges with snapshot technology, however, is the need to use scripts in order to orchestrate snapshots for data protection. Script-based solutions are easily broken down by application, hypervisor, or storage updates and configuration changes. They also require significant staff time maintaining the scripts. Many organizations are now implementing backup and recovery software that offers array-based snapshot technology because they don’t require complex scripts, and allow for more frequent copies and faster restores.  

NetBackup Replication Director for VMware

 The NetBackup Replication Director feature, included in Symantec NetBackup 7.6, allows snapshot technology to easily integrate with your backup and recovery plan without the use of scripts. This feature enables integrated end-to-end control for the management and recovery of array-based snapshots and replicated snapshots. For example, customers running datastores on NetApp filers can now leverage NetApp snapshot technology to protect their virtual environments, without going outside of the NetBackup environment or giving up standard granular recoverability.

Other benefits of the NetBackup Replication Director feature include: 

• It has the ability to protect 300 virtual machines in 300 seconds
• Improved recovery point objectives (RPOs) from snapshots and better recovery time objectives (RTOs) from NetBackup and granular restore capabilities
• Unified policy management that stretches the entire data lifecycle
• Simplified, single pane of glass for monitoring, alerting and reporting

Using scripts to orchestrate snapshots for data protection is crude, complex, and unreliable. By automating snapshot management instead, you can expect faster, and more efficient granular and full recovery for applications and virtual server environments. 

To learn more about Symantec NBU 7.6 and the NetBackup Replication Director Feature, click the button below to request a consultation with Dewpoint.