Counting the costs of Virtualisation
The Register recently featured a piece on the hidden costs of a virtualised environment called “Counting the cost of virtualization”. It flags up the often ignored point that while the hypervisor and OS might be free (VMware ESXi, Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V are all free, and some OSs permit multiple guests on one host server at no extra cost), the management & maintenance tools can get expensive.
Backup provision has traditionally been one of those costs. You may need to buy host and application agents for each VM. Unless your backup platform is capable of doing network-wise de-duplication (most aren’t) you’ll see a massive rise in the quantity of backup data as you have to backup multiple instances of an OS and application data. This can mean moving from a standalone drive to an autoloader, and will mean a lot more tapes to juggle. Operationally it’s desirable to have each VM running as lean as possible. The load caused by multiple backup agents on a host server can be considerable, so you may need to revise upwards your CPU and RAM needs.
Asigra Televaulting is the one backup technology that can take a migration to virtualised environment without a huge cost increase. Unlike any other online backup platform in use in Ireland today, Asigra Televaulting does not use agents, so the server can devote all it’s resources to applications, rather than servicing a backup job. Obviously because it doesn’t use agents, there are no charges for agents.
Asigra Televaulting’s compression technology also does an impressive job of controlling storage usage. Enterprise-wide deduplication means you’ll usually only store (and pay for) one copy of the OS, regardless of how many virtual systems it’s installed on. It uses a system of “libraries”. Files that appear more than twice on a site are considered “common” and are stored in the site library. Shortcuts to the library version are created instead of backing up the file again. If a file appears on more than two sites it’s promoted to the account library for all sites to link to, rather than transmit & store their own copy.
Asigra Televaulting has a large number of extra features that position it as the best tool for off-site backups of virtualised platforms today.
- Backup at the host and/or guest layer
- Live whole-VM backup
- File level recovery at the VM and guest OS level
- Any-to-any restore capability (P2P, P2V, V2V or V2P)
- Comprehensive enterprise application support
- Extensive mixed physical/virtual OS support
- Next generation features including global data de-duplication, Continuous Data Protection (CDP), grid-based scalability and intelligent data retention
- Automatic upgrade to newer versions when they are available from CDB’s vault
The Asigra Televaulting service page on our site includes several feature & function specific brochures, including comprehensive coverage of it’s virtualisation support.
- Gary