What Is an Agentless Backup
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I dont get the controversy here. Every single agentless backup uses snapshots, always has. Veeam, Unitrends, etc. How else could they work?
edit: For example, I can do a snapshot in XS/xcp, then export that snapshot. That is a real agentless backup. This is exactly the same process Unitrends uses, with a bit of flair added on like dedup and some other stuff like automation. -
@scottalanmiller said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
@fateknollogee said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
I don't even think the Scale guys could/would make that claim.
They don't in their whitepaper, but might as well, as they state that for special cases and workloads that agent-based would be an alternative to the built-in backup system. As agentless is the only alternative to agent-based, and built in platform backups are called agentless, they've made it clear that that is what they are considering it, which they should, as that is clearly what it is.
https://www.scalecomputing.com/documents/white-papers/white_papers_backup_hc3.pdf
They can take a snapshot and replicate it somewhere else. That isn't really revolutionary in and of itself (EMC had storage arrays that could do this in the 90's). One challenge to this is what are you recovering?
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does the application require being put in a backup ready state? (Does the snapshot system support running pre-freeze and post, thaw scripts in the guest to accomplish this?). more importantly is this something I"m going to manually have to do for each application, or does the backup software detect and have awareness of how to do this and report on success/failure?
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Agentless backups that just block level clones may be useful for some things (Image level restore of an OS drive) but there are other things people often look for. Support for file level, or application level (Brick level sometimes called) restores? Index's built to make the search for that possible? the ability to "search" all the snaps without having to mount them (Veeam Array offload snap protection with Nimble as an example) can mean the difference between 5 minutes, and hours of fighting with an application to get an export of a schema to get some things restored.
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Testing. Can the Backup and DR platform perform fully isolated testing of recovery (Build an isolated shadow network that's segmented, perform application and service checks). This is where the DR/BC software gets pretty nifty and advanced on making runbook testing easy.
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Does the application have distributed state? If so you may need to snapshot and quiescent and stun a GROUP of VM's at the same time. There's some real devil in the details with this stuff, but new Scale-out apps this is also a concern.
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@momurda said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
I dont get the controversy here. Every single agentless backup uses snapshots, always has. Veeam, Unitrends, etc. How else could they work?
edit: For example, I can do a snapshot in XS/xcp, then export that snapshot. That is a real agentless backup. This is exactly the same process Unitrends uses, with a bit of flair added on like dedup and some other stuff like automation.This is actually incorrect. There have been agentless systems that can mirror data without using a snapshot by leveraging write splitting technology. RecoveryPoint was an early one in the physical layer (and similar storage virtualization engines). VAIO based replication (RP4VM's, Veritas) also can replicate without a snapshot as the API's allow for write splitting to occur at the hypervisor layer giving you access to a "journal" and window you can recover from.
You may use snapshots, or scripts to stun applications WITH these technologies to improve consistency of recovery, but they have existed for a long time and can run without snapshots.
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@fateknollogee said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
Do you need another Scale device on the other end or not?
With Veeam (in a non-Scale enviroment), I can send the "snaphots/backups" (or whatever you want to call them) to a generic server/NFS/SMB share etc.This is the core of the TCO battle between "Storage Appliances" and Storage/Backup software. One requires you buy xxx appliance where the software is tied to the hardware. this is fine if forward pricing can be guaranteed at a consistent level, or the ease of "Single SKU purchase/sale" exceeds the lack of cost control. You couldn't replicate a VMAX to a DL380, and nothing is really new here.
Another thing is if you replicate it to "something else" I also need to consider what I need to recover too. Veeam with their DRaaS partners will let you recover from HPE to Dell, or Cisco to Lenovo or whatever the partner is using for hosting. I think they have over a 1000 hosting partners. They even offer the ability to restore to various public clouds (IBM Cloud, VMC on AWS, Azure). IF you are operating a hybrid cloud strategy with one of these providers already (and have the direct connections etc) that can help with the decision. WHERE you are going to put the data is only as important as WHAT you are going to do with it.
Just because a storage/backup solution can send data to a cloud (the cheap part) doesn't mean it can recover local to that cloud, and if you are stuck waiting on the data to egress back out to a copy of that appliance it can cause issues with hitting your RTO.
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@storageninja said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
@fateknollogee said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
Do you need another Scale device on the other end or not?
With Veeam (in a non-Scale enviroment), I can send the "snaphots/backups" (or whatever you want to call them) to a generic server/NFS/SMB share etc.This is the core of the TCO battle between "Storage Appliances" and Storage/Backup software. One requires you buy xxx appliance where the software is tied to the hardware. this is fine if forward pricing can be guaranteed at a consistent level, or the ease of "Single SKU purchase/sale" exceeds the lack of cost control. You couldn't replicate a VMAX to a DL380, and nothing is really new here.
Another thing is if you replicate it to "something else" I also need to consider what I need to recover too. Veeam with their DRaaS partners will let you recover from HPE to Dell, or Cisco to Lenovo or whatever the partner is using for hosting. I think they have over a 1000 hosting partners. They even offer the ability to restore to various public clouds (IBM Cloud, VMC on AWS, Azure). IF you are operating a hybrid cloud strategy with one of these providers already (and have the direct connections etc) that can help with the decision. WHERE you are going to put the data is only as important as WHAT you are going to do with it.
Just because a storage/backup solution can send data to a cloud (the cheap part) doesn't mean it can recover local to that cloud, and if you are stuck waiting on the data to egress back out to a copy of that appliance it can cause issues with hitting your RTO.
Sure but that is an entirely different conversation from what is going on here. RPO and RTO objectives need to be evaluated long before you pick your backup solution(s).
Never should you have a conversation of "well with this vendor we can do this really cool thing, but it costs X". If you don't need that functionality or can't appropriately leverage it why would you consider it as a must have feature?
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If your RPO and RTO objects are lax (say 48 hours of downtime) any storage vendor in the world should be able to at a minimum, ship you a copy of your data.
Now this doesn't mean that you'll have somewhere to restore it too, or run it from. But that of course is a part of your recovery and restoration plan. Having a facility that is capable of supporting your staff and systems, a supplier (or spare hardware in working condition), accessibility to that space and systems.
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For example @hobbit666 wants a hypervisor with Agentless backup functionality, because the other people he work with are "Windows guys".
So his approach is to use XCP-ng and XO, which while simple to use and setup (and find support) might cause more issues down the road.
Is it the correct tool for the job, maybe. . . but maybe Citrix XenServer and Veeam would be a better option, or Hyper-V and Veritas or any other combination.
Maybe an agent based solution would be substantially better, because it's "all gui's" at that point and the "Windows Guys" just need to point and click to restore a file, folder or an entire system.
Taking each part of this conversation as "the only thing that matters now" and discussing it individually without considering the entire picture is a foolish task. As almost certainly there will be a follow up conversation of "why doesn't it do this".
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@storageninja said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
@momurda said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
I dont get the controversy here. Every single agentless backup uses snapshots, always has. Veeam, Unitrends, etc. How else could they work?
edit: For example, I can do a snapshot in XS/xcp, then export that snapshot. That is a real agentless backup. This is exactly the same process Unitrends uses, with a bit of flair added on like dedup and some other stuff like automation.This is actually incorrect. There have been agentless systems that can mirror data without using a snapshot by leveraging write splitting technology. RecoveryPoint was an early one in the physical layer (and similar storage virtualization engines). VAIO based replication (RP4VM's, Veritas) also can replicate without a snapshot as the API's allow for write splitting to occur at the hypervisor layer giving you access to a "journal" and window you can recover from.
You may use snapshots, or scripts to stun applications WITH these technologies to improve consistency of recovery, but they have existed for a long time and can run without snapshots.
Uhhuh. What is the cost of these solutions? Hundreds of thousands of dollars? Millions of dollars? This is an SMB IT admin forum, not Fortune 100 IT Admin forum.
Any of the solutions you mention here are meant for huge shops with annual multimillion dollar IT budgets.
I could give you specifics, but like all IT products, the price is hidden until you talk to someone on the phone.
I doubt anybody here on this forum is in an environment where these would be considered. One of the examples I see on the web for one of these products is for 2500 vms.
None of them work with anything other than VMware. -
@momurda said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
@storageninja said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
@momurda said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
I dont get the controversy here. Every single agentless backup uses snapshots, always has. Veeam, Unitrends, etc. How else could they work?
edit: For example, I can do a snapshot in XS/xcp, then export that snapshot. That is a real agentless backup. This is exactly the same process Unitrends uses, with a bit of flair added on like dedup and some other stuff like automation.This is actually incorrect. There have been agentless systems that can mirror data without using a snapshot by leveraging write splitting technology. RecoveryPoint was an early one in the physical layer (and similar storage virtualization engines). VAIO based replication (RP4VM's, Veritas) also can replicate without a snapshot as the API's allow for write splitting to occur at the hypervisor layer giving you access to a "journal" and window you can recover from.
You may use snapshots, or scripts to stun applications WITH these technologies to improve consistency of recovery, but they have existed for a long time and can run without snapshots.
Uhhuh. What is the cost of these solutions? Hundreds of thousands of dollars? Millions of dollars? This is an SMB IT admin forum, not Fortune 100 IT Admin forum.
RecoverPoint4VM's is licensed per VM. While it's not cheap, it's not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just because a company is small doesn't mean it might have a need WAN-efficient low RPO (What their specialty is). I worked for a 50 man call center, and I had systems that if they were down for 15 minutes it could lead to catastrophic repercussions (we did dispatching for medical messaging, and organ transport services).
Any of the solutions you mention here are meant for huge shops with annual multimillion dollar IT budgets.
I know a small credit union using them. Is someone with 30VM's HUGE with multi-million IT budgets?
I could give you specifics, but like all IT products, the price is hidden until you talk to someone on the phone.
And like all IT products, a quick chat with a VAR will give you budgetary pricing.
I doubt anybody here on this forum is in an environment where these would be considered. One of the examples I see on the web for one of these products is for 2500 vms.
Just because a solution will scale to 2500 VM's doesn't mean it can't scale down.
None of them work with anything other than VMware.
Veeam works with Hyper-V and Azure, as well as Amazon EC2 via their last acquisition. Dell-EMC RecoverPoint actually predates x86 virtualization being popular and works just fine for Windows, Linux etc.
The nature of IT is systems and solutions that only worked for multi-million dollar projects eventually trickles down to the humble peasants. When I worked in SMB IT in 2007 when Enterprise hypervisors that were production ready became "Free" I jumped to deploy them. The tooling you use today was once something that a company of your scale likely couldn't afford.
I had a chat today with a grocery store chain, who considered IT a "cost" and "We sell tortillas and beer" was I'm sure a response to IT spend. They recently acquired a startup and are now struggling to keep up with containers and devops requests. All it takes is growth in the right area, or the right M&A and overnight what you need to be familiar with could change radically. Everyone company is an IT company these days it seems...
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@dustinb3403 said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
If your RPO and RTO objects are lax (say 48 hours of downtime) any storage vendor in the world should be able to at a minimum, ship you a copy of your data.
Got 100TB that you trickled in using differentials or a seed on a 1.5Mbps T1? Don't underestimate the Glacier of cold data beneath the water that will take forever to pull back.
Now this doesn't mean that you'll have somewhere to restore it too, or run it from. But that of course is a part of your recovery and restoration plan. Having a facility that is capable of supporting your staff and systems, a supplier (or spare hardware in working condition), accessibility to that space and systems.
Spot on. The planning (and TESTING of that plan) are the big thing. I've seen many people who had SAN snapshots who discovered it took them 3 days to make them useable when something went boom.
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@fateknollogee said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
2nd paragraph, page 4 of the whitepaper says:
"Snapshots alone do not make a backup, even though they are extremely useful for local recovery of data from a number of operational disasters. For a true backup strategy, snapshots must be replicated onto another device, preferably at another site."Do you need another Scale device on the other end or not?
No, you do not need another Scale device for the backup. But it's an option. Just like with Veeam.
But even if you needed the backup device to be a Scale, it's still a backup. An expensive one, in that case, but a backup just the same.
No one, literally no one, suggested anything like snapshots themselves being backups. Trying to point out that they are not really doesn't apply here, as that was accepted by everyone before we started.
That agentless systems use snapshots to make backups is always universal and must be accepted.
That Scale has a backup system that is agentless is not affected by what a snapshot is or how it works. Because Scale has backups, and all agentless backups use snapshots.
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@dustinb3403 said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
Maybe an agent based solution would be substantially better, because it's "all gui's" at that point and the "Windows Guys" just need to point and click to restore a file, folder or an entire system.
Taking each part of this conversation as "the only thing that matters now" and discussing it individually without considering the entire picture is a foolish task. As almost certainly there will be a follow up conversation of "why doesn't it do this".Quite true. One thing to note is some agentless systems can offer the "windows guy" hat point and click File Level Recovery (FLR) or application level recovery (RMAN integration for say Oracle) to that DBA who has his own toolchain he likes to use.
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@fateknollogee said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
Comparing the Scale "snapshot" vs Veeam "snapshot" is an apples-orange comparison.
Correct, as Veeam doesn't have snapshots. It relies on the snapshots coming from the hypervisor. So Veeam has to use whatever snapshot mechanism is already there, whereas Scale provides the snapshot themselves.
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@fateknollogee said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
@dustinb3403 said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
Nothing in the Scale Design requires you to use this approach, you can setup Veeam or some other such solution and backup your VMs to a cloud if you wanted too.
If you go the Veeam route, would that not make it agent-based?
Veeam on Scale is agent based. But Scale ITSELF has agentless built in. But no third party agentless is currently available for Scale. But that could change if a vendor cared to partner with them.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
Comparing the Scale "snapshot" vs Veeam "snapshot" is an apples-orange comparison.
Correct, as Veeam doesn't have snapshots. It relies on the snapshots coming from the hypervisor. So Veeam has to use whatever snapshot mechanism is already there, whereas Scale provides the snapshot themselves.
Veeam can also manage snapshots at the storage array level (either using vVols that pass them to the array or through 1/2 a dozen storage vendors they have API integrations with).
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@jmoore said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
@fateknollogee Well if that's the case I've been using agentless backups and didn't even know it lol
Lots of people do, lots of vendors do agentless and don't call it that. And just like you can write your own "agent", you can make your own agentless, too.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
But that could change if a vendor cared to partner with them.
The only implementations I've seen on this for KVM, involved a fork of it with proprietary API's. Does Scale have a standardized CBT/VADP like API system in place to support 3rd party backup hooks?
I asked some backup vendors about KVM support a while back and they all pointed to the lack of a common standard for robust, stable, consistent API's for this. -
@storageninja said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
@dustinb3403 said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
Maybe an agent based solution would be substantially better, because it's "all gui's" at that point and the "Windows Guys" just need to point and click to restore a file, folder or an entire system.
Taking each part of this conversation as "the only thing that matters now" and discussing it individually without considering the entire picture is a foolish task. As almost certainly there will be a follow up conversation of "why doesn't it do this".Quite true. One thing to note is some agentless systems can offer the "windows guy" hat point and click File Level Recovery (FLR) or application level recovery (RMAN integration for say Oracle) to that DBA who has his own toolchain he likes to use.
Agents can do this too. It's not a limitation on either side.
Really, nearly everything "can" be done either way. The BIG differences are around which team has to deploy and manage the infrastructure or which portions are portable in what way.
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@storageninja said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
@scottalanmiller said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
But that could change if a vendor cared to partner with them.
The only implementations I've seen on this for KVM, involved a fork of it with proprietary API's. Does Scale have a standardized CBT/VADP like API system in place to support 3rd party backup hooks?
I asked some backup vendors about KVM support a while back and they all pointed to the lack of a common standard for robust, stable, consistent API's for this.A standard one? No. One available to an interested vendor? I believe so. A vendor would need to approach them to find out.
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@momurda said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
I dont get the controversy here. Every single agentless backup uses snapshots, always has. Veeam, Unitrends, etc. How else could they work?
edit: For example, I can do a snapshot in XS/xcp, then export that snapshot. That is a real agentless backup. This is exactly the same process Unitrends uses, with a bit of flair added on like dedup and some other stuff like automation.Exactly. That's correct. In fact, Unitrends' backup doesn't even do file level recovery when doing agentless! You have to mount the drive image and access it using third party tools, exactly the same as if you took a normal snap and exported it manually.
