1. Harnessing the Power of vStorage APIs for Data Protection
Lessons Learned and Best Practices Developed from Benchmarking Backup Solutions
Abdul Rasheed & George Winter
Backup and Recovery Product Management, Veritas Technologies

2. Harnessing the Power of vStorage APIs for Data Protection:
Lessons Learned and Best Practices Developed from
Benchmarking Backup Solutions
Abdul Rasheed, Veritas Technologies
George Winter, Veritas Technologies
STO5475
#STO5475

3. Copyright © 2015 Symantec Corporation3
vStorage APIs = The engine Backup Application = The drivetrain
Virtual Machines = The payload
vStorage APIs for Data Protection
The engine that powers all data movers

4. Benchmarking Backup Applications for VMware vSphere
Scale, performance and impact on production
Copyright © 2015 Symantec Corporation4
• Keep the engine at optimum RPM, well
below the red zone
• Keep the throughput as high as possible
while keeping the fuel consumption low
• Reduce the impact payload as low as
possible
As you increase the payload
• Keep the VADP/VDDK at optimum output,
well below vSphere I/O crawl zone
• Keep the backup streaming performance
as high as possible while keeping the
resource usage low
• Reduce the impact on production VMs as
low as possible
As you increase the # of VMs

5. 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200
We had been benchmarking the engine for a while
Pre-­‐VADP
(VCB
3.x)
–
NetBackup
6.5.1
Backup
Throughput
–
MB/sec
B-­‐Mark
1:
63
MB/sec
5
B-­‐Mark
2:
600
MB/sec
VADP
4.x
–
NetBackup
7.0
NetBackup for VMware
2007
2010
VADP
5.x
–
NetBackup
7.5/NetBackup
5220
2012
B-­‐Mark
3:
1340
MB/sec
270 VMs
2100 VMs
4800 VMs
Weekend
full
backups,
daily
incremental
backups,
100GB
VMs,
60GB
data

6. Now time to benchmark the drivetrain systems
The criteria
FOCUS ON VMWARE
• The most widely used virtualization
platform in the enterprise.
FOCUS ON SCALABILITY
• Not just on the amount of data, but
also the number of virtual machines
to protect.
FOCUS ON REAL WORLD
• The benchmark needed to represent
a real enterprise environment. Not
an artificial one designed to inflate
results.
Hypervisor
level
backups
The use cases The vendors
Vendor “C”
Vendor “E”
NetBackup “King of Scale” Copyright © 2015 Symantec Corporation6
Vendor “V”
Veritas NetBackup*
Storage
snapshot
level
backups
Granular
Recovery
Disaster
Recovery
*As we started this project before Symantec-Veritas separation, NetBackup results will be represented in orange color

7. PARTNERING TO EXECUTE
KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER
PT WILL DEFEND THE RESULTS
ALL DATA IS MEDIAN DATA OVER 3 RUNS
NetBackup “King of Scale” Copyright © 2015 Symantec Corporation7

8. Hypervisor level backup and recovery
The true test in harnessing the power of VADP engine
NetBackup “King of Scale” Copyright © 2015 Symantec Corporation

9. THE SAN STORAGE NETWORK: NETBACKUP
NetBackup “King of Scale” Copyright © 2015 Symantec Corporation9

10. VIRTUAL MACHINE DETAILS
Mission Critical VMs = Windows Server 2012 running SQL Server,
Exchange, or SharePoint
Web Front-end VMs = Windows 2008 R2 Core edition running IIS
100
VMs
200
VMs
400
VMs
1000
VMs
NetBackup “King of Scale” Copyright © 2015 Symantec Corporation10

11. Hypervisor level backups at scale
The shorter the bar, the better is the performance in meeting backup windows
Copyright © 2015 Symantec Corporation11
0:25:40 0:43:23
1:11:04
2:51:332:52:32
6:16:03
8:00:21
14:32:37
2:18:32
3:58:23
5:22:43
8:36:50
2:33:23
5:09:01
5:53:17
8:44:14
0:00:00
2:24:00
4:48:00
7:12:00
9:36:00
12:00:00
14:24:00
16:48:00
100 200 400 1000
TimeinHH:MM:SS
# of VMs
NetBackup Competitor "C" Competitor "E" Competitor "V"

12. Hypervisor level backups at scale
NetBackup media server is at <50% utilization for ~1/5th of the total time
Copyright © 2015 Symantec Corporation12
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
0:00
0:13
0:26
0:39
0:52
1:05
1:18
1:31
1:44
1:57
2:10
2:23
2:36
2:49
3:02
3:15
3:28
3:41
3:54
4:07
4:20
4:33
4:46
4:59
5:12
5:25
5:38
5:51
6:04
6:17
6:30
6:43
6:56
7:09
7:22
7:35
7:48
8:01
8:14
8:27
8:40
8:53
9:06
9:19
9:32
9:45
9:58
10:11
10:24
10:37
10:50
11:03
11:16
11:29
11:42
11:55
12:08
12:21
12:34
12:47
13:00
13:13
13:26
13:39
13:52
14:05
14:18
14:31
CPUUsage%onDataMover
Time since the beginning of backup (1000 VMs)
NetBackup Competitor "C" Competitor "E" Competitor "V"

13. Recovery at scale
When stuff hits the fan….
NetBackup “King of Scale” Copyright © 2015 Symantec Corporation

14. Recovery at scale (e.g. Disaster Recovery)
The shorter the bar, the faster is the ability to recover in cases of disasters
Copyright © 2015 Symantec Corporation14
0:08:10
0:19:36
0:36:56
0:56:56
0:12:41
1:35:39
3:08:40
4:40:41
0:06:06
0:31:09
1:00:44
1:31:20
0:07:12
0:22:37
0:37:16
0:00:00
1:12:00
2:24:00
3:36:00
4:48:00
6:00:00
1 8 16 24
TimeinHH:MM:SS
# of concurrent VMs restored
NetBackup Competitor 'C' Competitor 'E' Competitor 'V'

15. Storage snapshot based data protection
Eliminating data movement from VADP engine
NetBackup “King of Scale” Copyright © 2015 Symantec Corporation

16. THE NAS STORAGE NETWORK: NETBACKUP
NetBackup “King of Scale” Copyright © 2015 Symantec Corporation16

17. VIRTUAL MACHINE DETAILS
Mission Critical VMs = Windows Server 2012 running SQL Server,
Exchange, or SharePoint
Web Front-end VMs = Windows 2008 R2 Core edition running IIS
OS VMs = Windows 2008 R2 Server
100
VMs
200
VMs
500
VMs
1000
VMs
NetBackup “King of Scale” Copyright © 2015 Symantec Corporation17

18. Storage snapshots at scale (Crash consistent snapshots)
The shorter the bar, the better is the integration with storage snapshots
Copyright © 2015 Symantec Corporation18
0:00:00
0:14:24
0:28:48
0:43:12
0:57:36
1:12:00
1:26:24
1:40:48
1:55:12
2:09:36
2:24:00
100 200 500 1000
TimeinHH:MM:SS
# of VMs
NetBackup Competitor "C" Competitor "E" Competitor "V"
Why?

19. WHY THE BIG DIFFERENCE?
• Vendor “C” does not have separate frameworks for application-consistent and
crash-consistent backups
- They quiesce the VM when they don’t need to
- NetBackup does not quiesce VMs in crash-consistent mode
• Large amount of preprocessing
- Building some sort of script at execution time?
- Identifying VMs to backup?
- Single threaded
• Quiesce
- Vendor “C” mounts each VM serially on a proxy
- NetBackup creates a composite image from a backup backup host (quicker)
NetBackup “King of Scale” Copyright © 2015 Symantec Corporation19

20. Storage snapshots at scale (Application consistent snapshots)
The shorter the bar, the better the integration with storage and application
Copyright © 2015 Symantec Corporation20
0:38:22
2:50:21
0:00:00
0:28:48
0:57:36
1:26:24
1:55:12
2:24:00
2:52:48
3:21:36
TimeinHH:MM:SS
Application Consistent Snapshots for 1000 VMs
NetBackup Competitor "C" Competitor "E" Competitor "V"
NetBackup can meet application consistent
snapshot performance in Vendor “C” with
simple streaming backups!
Vendor “E” does not have storage integration
Vendor “V” couldn’t perform application
consistent storage snapshots at higher scale.
It was found that the product becomes
unstable when # of VMs reach a point
between 200 (03:49:06) and 300 (unstable)

21. There is more….
Let us open up for questions while we show you where to read more…
NetBackup “King of Scale” Copyright © 2015 Symantec Corporation

22. Look at the detailed reports for…
What we have covered here plus other use cases, impact on product storage,
hardware configurations, qualitative observations and more…
NetBackup is the king of scale:
http://www.symantec.com/enterprise-backup-software-comparison-benchmark/
Unlocking the value of vStorage APIs for Data Protection:
https://plus.google.com/events/c24c15lt8j1iellmsjqmgt913q0
Copyright © 2015 Symantec Corporation22
Join us @ STO6263-SPO
Veritas Technologies: How to use vSphere 6 and Virtual Volumes (VVOLs) the right way

24. Harnessing the Power of vStorage APIs for Data Protection:
Lessons Learned and Best Practices Developed from
Benchmarking Backup Solutions
Abdul Rasheed, Veritas Technologies
George Winter, Symantec Corporation
STO5475
#STO5475