InMage vContinuum Taps into VMware to Provide a Near Zero Impact and Recovery Solution for SMBs

Small and medium businesses (SMBs) are rapidly moving towards virtualizing their physical servers using VMware. But as they do so, they are also looking to minimize the cost, complexity and overhead that the backup of VMware servers introduces while increasing their ability to recover their newly virtualized applications. It is these concerns that InMage's new vContinuum software addresses by using a new technique to tap into VMware that provides near zero impact backups with near real time recoveries.

Right now Gartner estimates that as many as 28% of all physical servers currently run virtualization with that percentage expected to grow to 50% by 2012. Further, it is expected that server virtualization among SMBs (companies with fewer than 999 employees and less than $500 million in revenue) will grow much faster than the overall market during this same period of time.

The problem that these SMBs are encountering as they adopt server virtualization is automating the non-disruptive protection and recovery of VMware's guest OSes. While backup software providers have adapted to take advantage of new backup techniques as well as new features found in VMware vSphere, these approaches still have the following shortcomings:

• Array based snapshots. Snapshots move backup overhead off the host but require the deployment of an external storage array of the same or similar kinds- not always a cost-effective or practical option for SMBs.
• VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection. vSphere's new vStorage APIs can create snapshots on the vSphere host without the need for external storage. However backing up the snapshot still creates overhead on the primary storage used by the VMware host.
• vSphere Change Block Tracking (CBT). CBT was also included with VMware vSphere 4.0 and tracks changes to blocks on a VM since its last backup. While it eliminates the need for external storage, it is not enabled by default plus it incurs server overhead when turned on and is not widely supported by backup applications.
• VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM). Primarily used for highly available and clustered configurations, it requires compatible arrays on both local and remote sites with separate management of replication and recovery policies. This means additional learning curves and load on already constrained IT resources plus the storage requirements alone usually put the cost of this solution beyond the reach of most SMBs.

Each of these techniques introduces varying levels cost, complexity or overhead or, in some cases, a combination of all three in order to be implemented in a VMware environment. It is these challenges that InMage's new vContinuum software addresses.

vContinuum is based upon InMage's existing and proven enterprise data protection software that is already in use by many enterprise organizations and resold by enterprise storage providers. However, InMage has specifically built vContinuum for VMware implementations in SMB environments in the following ways:

• First, vContinuum integrates with VMware at the hypervisor level to discover, provision and manage protection policies at a VM granularity. Using the vCLI, vContinuum does what InMage refers to as a "tap" of the protected Virtual Machine to track, copy and record the writes of each VM. To avoid creating overhead on the vSphere server, vContinuum uses the memory of the vSphere server to cache writes before they are copied and stored on the vContinuum server.
• Second, vContinuum protects all of the writes of VM including its boot and application volumes. The vContinuum tap captures all writes to files and volumes assigned to that VM but it excludes writes to page files associated with that VM and can also be configured to exclude writes to other volumes associated with that VM deemed "not valuable or needed.
• Third, it can protect data regardless of the storage type. vSphere implementations may use DAS, NAS or SAN though in SMB environments DAS, NAS and iSCSI SANs are the most likely storage options. Since vContinuum operates at the guest level, as long as the storage is under vSphere's control, vSphere can protect any data written to any of these volumes.
• Fourth, vContinuum leverages InMage's application integration so application consistent recovery points can be created. The ability of InMage's DR software to create application consistent recovery points is carried forward into vContinuum so that as Exchange, Oracle, SQL Server or SharePoint VMs are protected, their data is protected in application consistent state. Stored this way recoveries are more akin to a "point and click" operation as opposed to needing to restore a crash consistent copy of the application and then having to apply redo logs to the image in order to recover the application.

But maybe most importantly what InMage does with vContinuum is make it affordable for SMBs while continuing to provide them the near real time recoverability for which its software is known. vContinuum is priced per vSphere server in a tiered model, so an SMB can protect as many VMs on a vSphere server as that server can host.
 
Further, using the granular levels of protection and recoverability that vContinuum provides, SMBs can pick and choose exact files, volumes or VMs they want to protect and/or recover on a vSphere server. Or they can just protect and/or recover the entire vSphere server with all of its VMs.

InMage has an established history of providing enterprise caliber data protection software that is available from leading enterprise storage providers including Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), Pillar Data Systems and Xiotech. vContinuum is built upon that software foundation to meet the specific implementation, functionality and price requirements of SMB virtualized server environments. In so doing, InMage vContinuum eliminates the cost, complexity, and overhead that are commonly found in VMware backup solutions while providing SMBs the granular backups and near real time recoveries that they seek at a price they can afford.