I have just been shown a demo by PHD Virtual of their latest version of ReliableDR, & the first thing I have noticed as the title stated that it is fully business SLAs focused. With the shift today to models like ITaas & IaaS where the availability of the full application from a business perspective is becoming more critical each day, more organizations will be looking for solutions that ensure they are meeting these SLAs. ReliableDR does a great job at this, as it does not only allow a user to configure protection groups based on your business SLAs from a Disaster recovery perspective, but will do the auditing of these SLAs (RPO/RTO) for you.

I have seen it mentioned that you can now test/audit your DR –  RPO/RTO on hourly basis, which I believe might be achievable for a few critical applications.  But, I believe the more realistic approach will be testing/auditing the majority of VMs in a large scale environment on daily/weekly basis. We need to give PHD Virtual credit for creating a solution that can automate the testing of your DR – RPO/RTO without any required user interaction after being setup. They are not just helping you cut the huge cost associated with the labor of carrying regular DR testing and all the long hours and downtime required for it, but they even provide detailed reporting on what SLAs you will be meeting & which ones you will fail to meet based on real testing data specific to your environment. This will provide you with two important advantages:

1. You will have a certified DR – Recovery Point, where you know that an application will work after a disaster strikes your datacenter
2. You have an audited Disaster Recover plan, where you can easily prove to your management/audit team that you are compliance with their DR – SLAs.

Another feature that was announced as a part of the latest version of ReliableDR that got me excited is VMware vCloud Director integration. You heard it right, now you can easily build a disaster recovery solution for your vCloud Director environment without much of scripting or manual intervention. For those who implemented VMware vCloud Director & are looking for an automated DR solution, ReliableDR is a good option to evaluate. It does not stop there, if you have only a virtualized environment today and you want to back it up or move it to a VMware based public cloud, ReliableDR can be the product you are looking for. Actually I might have a second post on what ReliableDR can offer in a vCloud environment after getting to test it in my vCloud Director lab, which is I am currently refreshing at the moment. I believe that would be of a great interest to the larger community.

Here are a few more key features of ReliableDR:

Automated, Continuous, Service-Oriented DR Testing – Maintains the integrity of you DR plan by being service / application centric, not data centric.  It takes a business-centric view of an application and its dependencies and then automates the verification of those applications as many as several times per day.  The typical DR plan is tested 1-2 times per year.  You can test several hundreds or thousands of times per year with ReliableDR!

Application-Aware Testing – Measuring of accurate Recovery Time Actuals (RTOs & RPOs).

Certified Recovery Points – Automatically storing multiple certified recovery points. You can specify how many based on your needs

Compliance Reporting –Demonstrates DR compliance to auditors. Actually it generates a detailed DR Compliance report, that will put a large smile on your auditor face. Further, it will help your business understand what numbers you can meet & which you need to work on.

Test, Failover, and Failback – Automation of failover and failback processes. Disaster Recovery testing will no longer require an army over the weekend with long over-time hours to complete. It can actually be completed on nightly/weekly basis as required without much of user interaction.

Flexible Replication Options - Integration with all major storage vendors, multiple software based replication solutions including PHD Virtual, and also includes its own zero-footprint software-based replication capabilities

vCloud Director Integration – While PHD Virtual is not promoting this feature enough in my opinion, I believe it is one of this product most sought after feature.

The below table demonstrate the different editions available, & yes there is a limited functionality free edition for smaller shops who can not afford it.

Check Out  the below two videos for more info on PHD Virtual ReliableDR:

For more information on PHD Virtual ReliableDR, you might want to visit:  http://www.phdvirtual.com/disaster-recovery-assurance

I am actually considering writing a post on how it work with vCloud Director, but I would like to see how much of interest that would have between my readers. If you think that will be of interest to your, then please leave a comment with what would you like me to cover in that.

Its interesting how fast is the virtual backup space is developing these days. PHD Virtual Backup version 6.0 which was released back at the end of August less than 3 months ago had many amazing features added to it at that time, which I have reviewed in an earlier post at: PHD Virtual Backup version 6.0 is here. Just a quick reminder of a few of these:

1. Application Aware Backups
2. Encryption
3. Instant VM Recovery (Give you an amazing RTO)
4. Backup Testing / Verification

No worry, I am not here to repeat my earlier post about PHD Virtual Backup version 6.0 but as the title say I am going to cover the new features in PHD Virtual Backup v6.1 which should go GA in few days. Oh yeah although when you hear v6.1 you would think its a minor update with few bug fixes specially it hit us less than three months of version 6.0 being released(at least I thought that way at first), but to my surprise it had included major enhancements and even few more features that are no less useful than the ones they introduced in version 6.0. Let’s take a look to what new features PHD Virtual has brought with this new release:

1- Instant VM Recovery for Full/Incremental Backup Mode. When PHD Virtual Backup version 6.0 was introduced its Instant Recovery while being amazing how quick it was able to get you back up and running it was only available with their Virtual Full backup mode. It was not available with Full/Incremental backup mode. This meant that you had to stick with Virtual Full backups every time you were backing up VMs that you wanted to be capable of using Instant VM Recovery for.  For those of you who needed/preferred Full/Incremental backup mode for a reason or another were not able to use the Instant VM Recovery in version 6.0. The good news is that Instant VM Recovery for Full/Incremental Backup Mode will be available in v6.1 which will be released shortly. For the benefits of every one, below you can find the definition of the two backup modes available in PHD Virtual Backup v6.1 to help you decide which one is best fit to your environment.

Full / Incremental mode is a traditional backup method employed by most vendors that stores data in full and incremental backup files.  These files represent a “chain,” starting with the full and ending with the most recent increment.  When a user opts to restore a backup from a particular date, the backup solution will need to pull data from the full and all necessary increments to complete the restore process.  Therefore, each backup file has a dependency on the previous backups in that chain, and periodic full backups need to be taken to prevent the chain from getting too long.  In short, this traditional method uses large backup files which are optimized for writing to network shares (CIFS/NFS) and target-side deduplication devices.

Virtual Full backups are PHD Virtual own unique algorithm of storing backup data.  This is a forever incremental mode with global deduplication across all VMs on the backup target.  This is NOT just a “full” backup.  PHD Virtual Full backup only process changes and store only unique data with this method.  We call it virtual full because instead of the typical full/incremental chain of backup files that most vendors offer, each backup is stored in a way that allows it to be managed completely independent of other backups (i.e. no chain).  This allows for true forever incremental backups with no need to re-run a periodic full.  This mode is great for attached virtual disk backup targets (iSCSI, SAN, Local, or NFS).

2- Rollback Recovery. Rollback Recovery allows users to “roll” a VM back to an earlier point in time by restoring only the virtual disk changes over top of the existing VM.  This greatly enhances the RTO of a full VM recovery back to production storage, sometimes up to a 100X faster as claimed by PHD Virtual. For vSphere environments, PHD leverages the vSphere CBT capabilities to quickly identify the changes between the existing VM and the selected backup.  Because there is generally only about 1-5% of changes occurring in a VM each day, a restore to a previous day will be much faster with Rollback Recovery compared to restoring the entire VM. For Citrix XenServer, PHD leverages its own process for identifying the changes between the existing VM and the backup.  Without CBT, this process will take longer with XenServer than it does with vSphere.  Unfortunately, as a result of these hypervisor differences, the performance benefit of Rollback Recovery for Citrix users is limited.  Therefore, the benefits of Rollback Recovery mainly lie with vSphere environments thanks to VMware vSphere CBT(Another great VMware innovation). It was much appreciated that PHD Virtual has been honest about the Citrix part all from the start!

I can imagine many of you now will be scratching your heads & trying to figure out why would the Rollback Recovery feature be of any use, as you got Instant VM Recovery which is super fast as it allow you to run a VM from backup without restoring it. Let’s think of the following scenario, most organizations backup storage is a lower performance storage when compared to their production storage where it might not satisfy the IOPs requirements of their performance critical VMs. In this case being able to run the VM from the backup storage instantaneously might not be feasible as the application won’t be able to deliver to the customer need & would get that VM to violate performance SLAs till it has finally shifted to the production storage which can take hours depending on the VM size. On the other hand Rollback recovery might require few minutes more to recover the VM(depending on how much the VM changed since the last backup), but it will be recovered to the production storage right away & ready to meet the organization performance SLAs as soon its being started. I believe every datacenter will have a room for both of these features.

 3- Report Enhancements: There are two main enhancements for reporting in v6.1:

• Export Job History: This allows users to export the job history table from PHD Virtual Backup v6.1 UI to Excel in CSV format.  This provides a report, external to the UI, which can be stored for long term needs or provided to management that covers job status across all VBAs managed by the console.  This is a nice addition to the job summary report that was added to v6, which only covers the status of an individual job.

• Last Backup for all VMs: In v6 the Hypervisor Inventory tool was added, which shows a list of all VMs in the environment, as well as some details about their sizes and virtual disks.  In v6.1,  a new column to this table was added, which can be easily pasted into Excel, that shows the date of the last successful backup available on our backup targets for a given VM.  This allows users to quickly get a list of which VMs in their environments haven’t been backed up in a while, or at all.  Therefore, this becomes a great report for data protection risk management.

4- Job Copy: While this might seems a small enhancement in comparison to the other three mentioned about, I still thought its worth mentioning as nothing is more annoying that having to create a backup job from scratch multiple times while you have the same job with only one parameter difference available in the front of your face. I believe this will improve the usability of the product.

Hope this help those out there trying to evaluate PHD Virtual Backup as their backup solution of choice & encourage others to add it to the set of products to evaluate when looking for the next virtual environment backup solution.  If you had PHD Virtual Backup v6, then its time to start looking for an upgrade! Please leave your comments & feedback coming in the below comments area. To find out more on PHD Virtual Backup go to http://phdvirtual.com

By the time this article is published, PHD Virtual Backup version 6.0 has been announced. There were a few features that impressed me and thought I would try it out and see how well it performs in my lab.

I will start covering the features from the least exciting to the most fascinating feature to keep you reading to the end of the post. Yeah! You heard it right they have come up with some fascinating features that worth checking out at VMworld 2012.

PHDVB v6.0 Top Feature #5: PHD Virtual Backup is Easy to install

Many of the fantastic backup solutions out there are so tough to setup, PHDVirtual is not one of them. They have made it even easier to deploy by delivering it as a virtual appliance. Installing PHD Virtual Backup is nothing but a simple 6 step process as illustrated below:

1. Download PHD Virtual Backup v6 here, then Install the PHD Virtual Backup Console and Plug-In by double-clicking the installation executable.

2. When the installation wizard completes, deploy the PHD Virtual Backup VBA by deploying the appliance OVF.

3. When deployment completes, make sure the VBA has an IP address then connect to the PHD Virtual Backup Console by right-clicking the VBA VM and selecting

PHD Virtual Backup > Console.

4. In the Configuration area, General tab, enter the Hypervisor credentials.

5. Next, click the Storage tab and define the backup storage location.

6. Click Save and restart the appliance.

These 6 simple steps will get your PHD Virtual Backup Solution installed and ready for you to start backing up your VMs. In 10 minutes or less.

Figure 1: PHDVB v6.0 is ready to be used to backup my VMs

For those who love to see the instructions in video, then your wish is granted and below a step by step video of how to install PHD Virtual Backup v6

PHDVB v6.0 Top Feature #4: Application Aware Backups

Any backup expert will tell you application aware backups are not usually the easiest things to achieve. Further, It is even harder to achieve application aware backups when involving images/snapshots technologies unless your backup software has such consistency planned and created the modules to ensure it. PHD Virtual backup v6.0 seems to go a long way on this.

PHDVB v6.0 provides the ability to take application aware backups for any application. Application aware backups include the ability to properly quiesce the application prior to backup, as well as perform any post backup processes, such as automated log management (truncate, shrink, etc). This is done by leveraging a very small guest application called the PHD Guest Tools.

Microsoft Exchange is fully integrated with the application consistency feature of the PHDVB v6.0, where most other applications can integrate with it through a bit of scripting. The cool thing is that PHD and its customers can even share these scripts as they become available. I am told that SQL Server is in the works.

Figure 2: PHD Virtual Backup v6.0 Application aware backup setting screen

PHDVB v6.0 Top Feature #3: Encryption

For those customers who require that extra backup data security, PHD Virtual has thought of you as well. PHDVB v6.0 offer multiple types of industry standard encryption levels. PHDVB v6.0 does not only encrypt the data at rest after arriving to the VBA, but as well secure it in transient while the backup is being processed.

PHDVB v6.0 Top Feature #2: Instant VM Recovery

Actually this is the most fascinating feature with this release of the product. The next feature I cover is built upon this one, so I’ll describe it next. Instant VM Recovery is truly my favorite feature of the product. It’s almost as exciting to the backup world as VMotion announcement was to the Virtualization world. Actually I would call such a feature something like backup Motion.

PHD Virtual Backup 6.0 instant VM Recovery is a feature that actually allows you to bring your VMs online from backup instantly. Instant VM Recovery will allow you to power on the VM from backup without having to wait for it being restored. After powering on a VM from the backup, then you can move it to your production datastore using either storage VMotion (Zero downtime) if you are licensed for it. Or, you can use PHD Motion, which requires a brief downtime, which can be scheduled for off peak hours or during maintenance window. This will help you achieve one of the lowest RTO that is achievable by a backup solution available on the market.

While I was a bit skeptical when I first read about Instant VM Recovery, as I thought I can do the same if I do my backup of the full VM folder and make my backup destination just an ESXi host. The problem with that would be the usage of too much disk space, & thought PHD Virtual Backup would fall for the same trap. After investigating in my lab, I have discovered that my expectations were not true at all with PHD Virtual Backup v6.0. They actually use a highly deduped backup datastore, which can save you a lot on backup disk space and still allow you to do instant VM Recovery. This was very cool!

Figure 3: A VM running from backup using VM Instant Recovery

The following video shows the PHD Virtual Backup Instant VM Recovery feature in action.

PHDVB v6.0 Top Features #1: Backup Testing / Verification

Verifying & validating your backup is as important as taking it. No matter how often you take your backup, if you cannot restore it to fully operational state – then it counts for nothing. Many backup admins don’t get to test their backups as often as they would like, as it’s a very time consuming task with traditional backup solutions. For that PHDVB v6.0 has made testing your backup a breeze. You don’t have to restore your backup to test it, but you can just power it on from the backup itself and ensure it powers on, connects & operate as expected. And since this type of test may not necessarily catch data corruption in all areas of the backup, you can also leverage PHD’s block level verification, which occurs during the backup process itself. PHD will help many backup admins sleep better at night.

For more info about PHD Virtual Backup v6, please visit: http://phdvirtual.com/solutions/new-6-version

At last the ITComparison team has just posted a good comparison between Veeam Backup & Replication & PHD Virtual Backup & Replication that can be found at: Veeam vs PHD Virtual. Further, they have opened a space for discussion and comments on the comparison here

If you give PHD Virtual Backup 6.0 a try, then please leave a feedback in the comment area below.

As I have spent sometime evaluating PHD Virtual Backup & Replication for vSphere to post the review on my Backup & Disaster Recovery blog TSMGuru Blog, I have went through the installation process and thought I may as well share them on here for people trying to install or just test PHD Virtual Backup & Replication for vSphere v5.3.1. On here, I will be showing how to quickly get up and running with PHD Virtual Backup & Replication, though if you want to read my review of it before testing it your self you can find it at: PHD Virtual Backup and Replication for VMware vSphere Review

Being distributed as a virtual appliance actually speed up the implementation of PHD Virtual Backup & replication for vSphere. Below is a summary of the steps you need to follow to initially install and configure PHD Virtual Backup & Replication v5.3:

1- Download the PHDVirtual backup software from http://www.phdvirtual.com/trial-vmware-5

2- Extract the PHDVB_5_3_1_VMware.zip to any folder

The PHD Virtual Backup installation package contains:

• PHDVB_Install.exe: The PHD Virtual Backup installation file to install the plug-in and PHD Virtual Backup Console.
• PHDVBA.ovf: The PHD Virtual Backup Appliance OVF.
• PHDVB_Exporter_Install.exe: The PHD Virtual Backup Exporter installation file to install the PHD Exporter Console.
• Documentation: I thought it was nice of them to include the documentation with the installer.

3- Close the vSphere Client before starting the installation. (PHDVB_install.exe must be run from a machine where vSphere client has already been installed)

3- Install the PHD Virtual Backup Console and Plug-in by executing PHDVB_Install.exe and follow instruction on the screen.

4- Deploy a PHD Virtual Backup Appliance PHDVBA.ovf  (File=>Deploy OVF Template)

5- Optionally install the PHD Virtual Backup Exporter if you will be exporting backup files to a staging location for archive or long term storage. This is really helpful if you are going to send your backup to tape drives.

6- Power on the Virtual Appliance (In my case it took an IP from the DHCP server I have, where you could actually assign it an IP manually from the console).

7- From vCenter right click any machine => PHD Virtual Backup => Console

8- on the dashboard next to the credential warning hit configure now and then enter your vCenter credentials

9- Add a VMDK disk to put the backup into or use CIFS or NFS and then next to “Appliance does not have storage defined for backups or replication”  hit configure now & configure your desired backup destination.

10- Restart the appliance to reflect step 8 & 9 changes

11- Right click the VM you want to backup => PHD Virtual Backup => Backup

12- Go through the wizard to configure the backup setting and schedule for that VM.

13- Repeat for other VMs you want to backup.

14- For restore you can either right click the VM you want to restore another version of => PHD Virtual Backup => Restore or you can open the console and from there go to the backup catalog and choose the VM you want to restore from your catalog.

The following Video shows how to carry out PHD Virtual Backup & replication for vSphere in step-by-step:

The following video show how to create a VM backup in step-by-step

The following video show in step-by-step format how to restore a VM with PHD Virtual Backup

The following video show how to do a file level restore from an image backup using PHD Virtual Backup & Replicaiton

The following video shows how to recover Microsoft SQL server databases and tables with PHD Virtual Backup & Replication without having to restore the full image

The following video shows how to recover a single user mailbox in Microsoft Exchange Server using PHD Virtual Backup & Replicaiton

Again if you care to read my review of PHD Virtual Backup & Replication for vSphere you can check it out at: PHD Virtual Backup and Replication for VMware vSphere Review

I hope you found something useful in this post and it help you evaluate it if you are working on that.