new VMware Data Protection 5.8

Пока за океаном шумел VMworld была анонсирована новая версия продукта для резервного копирования от VMware. Уже скоро VDP 5.8 будет доступен для скачивания. Список новшеств вряд ли кого-то удивит, и вызовет ВАУ...

VDP Advanced 5.8 adds support for database administrators who use Microsoft ® Exchange Database Availability Group (DAG) 2013/2010/2007 to improve availability of application data. VDP Advanced will protect Active and/or Passive copies based on the defined policy, where you can set the preference order for backups {Prefer Passive, Active, and Passive}. Prefer Passive backs up a passive copy of each database, if a healthy Passive copy is available. If not, then VDP Advanced backs up the Active copy, thus ensuring a backup is always completed. VDP Advanced also provides Granular Level Recovery (GLR) at the mailbox level.

VDP Advanced 5.8 provides comprehensive support for Microsoft ®SQL Clusters (AlwaysOn Availability Groups and Failover Clusters), including the latest SQL Server 2014 release. SQL Server clustering increases the uptime of SQL Server. The main advantage of clustering is if the primary SQL Server fails on one cluster, the other cluster will immediately take over the operation, thus ensuring business continuity.The VDP Advanced cluster client enables you to backup and restore SQL Server data on shared storage in the cluster, regardless of which node is managing the data at the time of the backup or restore.There are numerous backup capabilities including Full, Incremental and Differential, along with many selective control options.

VDP Advanced 5.8 now supports up to 20 virtual appliances per vCenter to handle larger environments – up from 10 in the previous releases. Each virtual appliance dynamically scales up to 8TB and is managed separately. As environments grow we are seeing more customers taking advantage of VDP Advanced’s integration through DD Boost to EMC Data Domain systems for protection storage. This provides global deduplication, while providing higher efficiency for protection storage.  Plus, Data Domain systems takes your backup data out of your production array, while offering the Data Invulnerability Architecture for extremely high reliability and recovery.

In order to increase backup throughput, VDP Advanced 5.8 will now use up to 8 proxies and 24 concurrent backup streams to shorten backup times. This is very helpful as environments continue to grow. This capability along with Changed Block Tracking makes VDP Advanced extremely efficient for VM backup and recovery.

Now VDP Advanced can replicate and restore anywhere; namelyrestore replicated backups to either primary or secondary DR site. Furthermore, replicated backup data can be replicated again, providing true bi-directional replication. Data is always deduplicated, compressed and encrypted before replication, thus minimizing impact on the network and securing the data in-flight.

VDP Advanced now supports Linux LVM, which is a logical volume manager for the Linux kernel that manages disk drives and similar mass-storage devices. It also supports Linux filesystem EXT4 that modifies important data structures of the filesystem such as the ones destined to store the file data. The result is a filesystem with an improved design, better performance, reliability and features.

Интересным может показаться возможность репликации резервных копий между площадками и возможностью восстановления на любом из сайтов независимо от источника резервной копии.

В целом же, поражает то упорство, с которым компания VMware продолжает развивать свой продукт для резервного копирования. Отставание от клиентов в функционале, высокая стоимость решения, отсутствие эффективных средств диагностики делает VDP Advanced малопригодным для взрослого использования. Бесплатное решение VDP - вращается вокруг SMB и только если "нет денег на что-то другое".