What are you using for backup Nutanix?

  • 2 October 2017
  • 34 replies
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What are you using for backup Nutanix?

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34 replies

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Hi.

As we are migrating from esxi to AHV (2 different clusters) we have license for 70 VEEAM servers. We are using the paid veeam agent with 30 day trial license, and will renew that until VEEAM is ready for AHV integration.
Userlevel 3
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Hi,
You should definitely give try for HYCU at https://www.comtradesoftware.com/data-protection/hycu-for-nutanix/ have a look at https://farhanparkar.wordpress.com/2017/07/05/hycu-up-and-running-in-15-minutes/

F>P

Userlevel 3
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KMH

We're using Veeam
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Commvault ;)

You can download a 30-day trial. Its agentless backup and recovery for VMware, Hyper-V or AHV in the Nutanix, context, plus plenty of enterprise apps with agents or even agentless backup of Azure, Amazon, Oracle etc.
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We have some customers using Commvault. I like HYCU too, but until this moment we do not have customers in Brazill using this solution.
Userlevel 2
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We currently use Veeam but are going to move to Hycu
Userlevel 1
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An additional option I didn't see posted yet is Rubrik. It's way more than just a basic backup utility and is integrated with AHV and vSphere. More info on Rubrik and AHV here https://www.rubrik.com/blog/data-management-nutanix-ahv/
When looking at backup/DR software, remember to consider the functionality you already have built into the Nutanix software. Features like snapshots, remote replication, self-service restore and one click recovery are all in there. https://www.nutanix.com/solutions/data-protection-disaster-recovery/
Whatever tool you choose, remember to test the recovery plan 🙂
Userlevel 2
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No backup software supports backing up AFS.

In this blog post AFS Adds New Capabilities Through An Expanding Partner Ecosystem it states "Nutanix has started working with Comtrade and Rubrik to add support for these API’s, with active discussions with other vendors."

It seems that Comrade and Rubrik will be the first to market using native API's for AFS backup.
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I agree with jtempleton, Rubrik is a good companion to Nutanix and will be for backing up very soon.
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I was really interested in looking at HYCU. What are the experiences of anyone that is using it?
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How are you using Veeam Backup within Nutanix?
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Using the veeam agents..
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I'm new to Nutanix and this thread has me curious. Is it impractical to use Nutanix snapshots for backups assuming you have the disk capacity and a remote site?
Userlevel 1
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As you alluded to, snapshots themselves are not backups. But even if you're replicating the snapshots to a remote system, how would you catelog or search those snapshots for the data you need? file level recovery would involve restoring a snapshot, mounting the data and pulling the file. Doable? Yes. Practicle? Not really. This is where backup software come in to help maintain the catelog of what data was backed up when and then provide the means to reach in and get you the exact data you need.
Also worth noting, that depending on your snapshot retention policies, if the source file is deleted before anyone knows it, that deletion is replicated and there might not be a file to recover.
The 3-2-1 method still applies to Nutanix platforms just like any other. Ideally you have three copies of your data on two different media/devices and one copy offsite from the source.
Userlevel 2
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If you have malware on your system that is encrypting files that you have not detected, then you will just be saving the malware and encrypted files in your snapshots. With a backup you can restore to a previous version. OK you might have some data loss, but that is better than losing a complete system.

If you have a requirement to keep month end and year end backups for compliance purposes then Nutanix snapshots are not suited for this. For longer term backups Hycu, Veeam etc are better for this.

As mikegelhar says in his post, its good practice to follow the 3-2-1 rule.
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We currently use Veeam but we are going to try the Rubrik appliance
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Is Veeam and AHV combination is not working?
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Veeam is a good solution.
Waiting for the announced version of Veeam for AHV, we want to evaluate another solution before making the final choice ( We are also following the HYCU solution that seems very interesting).
Certainly veeam, for now, is our first choice.
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Yes, Veeam is good, we currently use it and are happy with it. Waiting for the release and annoucnement from Veeam to work with AHV.

Thanks
Userlevel 3
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nice partnership Nutanix + Veeam
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We are currently using Carbonite Server Backup (formerly EVault). It's an on-prem or cloud based backup. I like it as I can do a full bare metal backup as well as files, sql, exchange etc backups. I have not tested restoring a bare metal backup to Nutanix. I have in Xen and VmWare and worked great
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I was wondering what your decision points were for choosing HYCU? It is a standalone option, I imagine you might have other infrastructure needing data protection. What was the main decision criteria for choosing a point AHV solution?
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In my case, I was looking at HYCU because we currently use Rapid Recovery for all of our physical servers. As we are virtualizing those server on Nutanix I'm looking at a virtual aware backup that works well with Nutanix AHV so we aren't backing up VM's with the old style client method. I'll continue to use RR with our physical servers.
Userlevel 2
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I have an environment that is completely virtualised. Decision points around Hycu were :

Hycu is written using the Nutanix API's and therefore has great integration with Nutanix, that i don think anyone can beat at present.
I also like that Hycu is a standalone app and there is no physical hardware (commvault) or software proxies (veeam) needed.
Price, it was competitively priced
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I think there is a fair bit of fud in your post jtempleton. For transparency, I work at Commvault (Now: Customer Support) so take this with the usual vendor bias and skepticism. I have been working with Nutanix since 2015 and having so many solutions to pick from is a tesitment to the success of their platform and awesomeness of the community that has resulted.

You are incorrect on the integration point in your post. Most solutions now are integrating with Nutanix's data protection API. Commvault was the first to provide agentless backups (we believed :D) and no, it does not require physical hardware (grab a trial version and see for yourself). Likewise I think our friends at Veeam also provide direct integration now without the use of agents. I even think Veritas has announced or has support using agentless methods.

Sure, we're going to recommend physical when you achieve massive scale - but so will Veeam and other vendors if you need deduplication for any significant size of backup. The difference is that we do not need specialized dedupe hardware appliances at scale as we perform this using software only, where many would prefer you purchased a data domain, StoreOnce or other specialized accellerated appliance to handle larger datasets.

We're switching on the new API framework in our next service pack (3 days away) which will also bring CBT for AHV and Nutanix's much improved API model that does away with the older framework that we worked with Nutanix on since 2015. The old framework was tied to protection domains, so I'm excited to break free of that model and take advantage of all the new goodies.

Hycu does seem like an elegant solution, and I do like the approach, but no need to spread the fud. All of these solutions have completely different value propositions. Lets leave the good people here to try each solution on their own merits and keep the fud to a minimum.