What are you using for backup Nutanix?

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

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34 replies

Userlevel 2
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I am not attempting to spread any fud or misinformation. I am a typical, experienced, sys admin trying to cover a number of technologies in a complex infrastructure. I have purchased, implemented and used various backup solutions over the years for various companies.

Our old infrastructure used Veeam, backing up vmware servers on EMC Sans. I have used veeam since v3.5 and I am a really big fan of theirs and can only speak highly of them. I have run veeam successfully on our nutanix environment.

My opinion was based on a recent tendering exercise for a Nutanix backup solution for my company that I recently completed. The backup solution that fits my company would not suit every other company.

Commvault, Data Domain and Hycu came onsite and provided a demo of their solution, answered our questions and followed up with a proposal. We also engaged with Veeam.

As i said in my original post, commvault proposed we have physical devices, veeam propsed proxy servers in their solution. And to be fair to everyone the Data Domain presentation was poor as they couldnt get their demo system working. These were reasons why we selected Hycu as their propsal was a single app installed on Nutanix.

The system that was proposed by Commvault for my organisation contained physical devices because of the volume of data we backup. The Commvault solution was 5 times more expensive than Hycu's.

The whole point of forums like this is for people to swap, share ideas and experiences and help each other out, not shutdown people if you dont like their comments. If its only vendors who are allowed to express an opinion on here then there wont be many people left here.
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

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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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KMH

We're using Veeam
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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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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jtempleton thank you for the details and certainly my comments were more of a general point, that sharing experiences (product, meeting with sales/se, POC, support, compatibilty and above all unique requirments by each company and price point) makes for a good discussion for other to consider.

We ourselves use have been using Veaam in our Hyper-V environment today and are really happy with the product and support. However, we are really eagar to see how Veeam and Nutanix partnership will provide us the same level of comfort and techecnology we are already used to. May be even better integration and quite possiblly the API approach as you have suggested that HYCU has adapted in supporting Nutanix AHV.

I am intrige to look at HYCU now to see what they do offer.

Thank you all for a healthy conversation as at the end of the day being an IT person what always is on our mind is "can i recover my data when and if I need to" 🙂
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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 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?