LAB VALIDATION REPORT Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec By Claude Bouffard With Tony Palmer December, 2008 Copyright 2008, The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec Table of Contents Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................... i Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 1 Background .....................................................................................................
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec Introduction The Dell PowerVault DL2000 is designed to provide broad-spectrum data protection for physical and virtual systems for small and medium-sized businesses in a turn-key appliance. This ESG Lab Validation explores how the DL2000, pre-installed with Symantec Backup Exec 12.5 software, can be deployed to protect critical data in about 20 minutes.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec that small and medium-sized businesses need cost effective data protection solutions that are easy to buy, deploy, and manage. The Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec provides data protection for small to mediumsized businesses in an integrated Backup to Disk appliance.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec ESG Lab Validation ESG Lab performed hands-on evaluation and testing of Dell‘s PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec at Symantec‘s Austin, Texas facility. The test bed used by ESG Lab is shown in Figure 3. Physical and virtual servers were connected to the Dell PowerVault DL2000 over a gigabit Ethernet LAN.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec Getting Started The Dell PowerVault DL2000 is shipped factory configured with a Windows Server 2008 operating system and Symantec Backup Exec 12.5 backup software. Configuration is accomplished via wizard-driven automation that guides users through the process of setting up the backup to disk appliance, including storage provisioning and backup software setup. ESG Lab Testing ESG Lab began by powering on the DL2000 system.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec Backup Exec created a disk group and designated a hot spare based on the number of drives installed in the appliance. Next, Backup Exec determined the total amount of disk space available in the disk group. ESG Lab was then prompted to confirm the creation of virtual disks. Using the Automatic Configuration policy, Backup Exec created a RAID 5 virtual disk from the physical disks it detected in the DL2000 appliance.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec The Symantec Backup Exec management console was used to examine the configuration that had been automatically created during the wizard-driven configuration process. ESG Lab noted that the look and feel was exactly the same as that experienced by any existing Backup Exec customer, regardless of whether that customer is currently backing up to tape, to disk, or a combination of both.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec Twenty minutes after starting an initial configuration from scratch, the first backup job was started using the Backup Exec wizard as shown in Figure 7. In this screenshot, the destination for the backup data is being selected. Selecting the ―All Virtual Disks‖ option enabled Backup Exec to use disk capacity on either of the available virtual disks pools. FIGURE 7.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec Exchange Recovery The PowerVault DL2000 disk-based appliance provides continuous data protection of mission critical applications for quick, reliable backups and restores as well as integration with tape for long term archival.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec An individual user‘s entire Inbox was deleted to simulate the recovery process after an end-user accidentally deletes one or more important e-mails as shown in Figure 9. FIGURE 9. INBOX DELETED A restore operation was initiated using the Backup Exec Restore wizard. The Restore Wizard guided ESG Lab through the creation of the restore job.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec Administrators can browse through the entire Exchange database during a restore operation as shown in Figure 10. In this example, ESG Lab selected the Inbox of a simulated user. FIGURE 10. MICROSOFT EXCHANGE RESTORE JOB PROPERTIES The Backup Exec restore wizard browses the details of each backup job, including when the backup was run, which files were backed up, and individual file details.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec FIGURE 11. INDIVIDUAL INBOX RESTORED Figure 11 displays the restored Inbox. ESG Lab noted a message from Backup Exec, which explained that one or more items had been restored to the mailbox. The wizard-driven restore of a deleted Inbox was effortless and completed in less than two minutes.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec Protecting Virtual Servers By its definition, server virtualization centralizes processing power within a data center. As a result, it is imperative that these assets are properly protected, especially as this technology is becoming part of the mainstream production environment.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec ESG Lab Testing ESG Lab performed full image backups of a virtual server on a VMware ESX server using the Backup Exec Agent for VMware Virtual Infrastructures with Backup Exec‘s Granular Recovery Technology installed and enabled. As shown in Figure 13, ESG Lab selected the virtual server w2k3sql001 for backup. FIGURE 13. BACKING UP A VIRTUAL SERVER - 13 Copyright 2008, The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec Once the virtual server (w2k3sql001) was backed up, ESG Lab performed a series of successful restore operations. Figure 14 shows the explorer-type user interface that was used to perform file level restores. FIGURE 14.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec Safeguarding Desktops/Laptops Protecting distributed data is a challenge for small to medium-sized organizations. While data residing on servers is usually protected, data residing on desktops and laptops is often at risk. Users are often required to copy their files to a network share to ensure that their data is included in scheduled server backups. This manual, ad-hoc process leaves data vulnerable to loss.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec ESG Lab Testing ESG Lab began testing by installing the desktop agent using Backup Exec‘s push-install capability. The pushinstall process was configured by simply supplying the network address and user credentials for a simulated remote user‘s PC. The agent was automatically started on the desktop computer in less than two minutes without requiring a system reboot.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec The Backup Exec Desktop and Laptop Option supports file versioning. When a file is changed and backed up, Backup Exec stores the changed file as a ‗revision.‘ Revisions are versions of a file at a specific point in time. Backup Exec stores and maintains a specific number of revisions for all files in a backup selection based on the backup profile.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec FIGURE 18. RESTORING SPECIFIC FILE VERSIONS ESG Lab restored each version of the file in turn to the original folder and confirmed that the correct version had been restored in each case. In a matter of seconds, each version of the file was restored to its original location. Why This Matters Today‘s desktop or laptop is like a briefcase.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec ESG Lab Validation Highlights The DL2000 was shipped with pre-installed Microsoft Windows 2008 and Symantec Backup Exec software. The Backup to Disk appliance was protecting data within 20 minutes from the first keystroke. Protecting and recovering servers and applications was easy and intuitive. The DL2000 appliance provided a centralized platform for hands-free continuous data protection.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec ESG Lab’s View As data protection demands on SMBs increase, the shortcomings of legacy traditional tape-based backup and recovery solutions become more apparent. According to ESG research, small businesses report problems with backup and recovery performance, reliability issues (due to media failure, human error, and hardware failure), tape management headaches, and high administrative costs.
ESG LAB VALIDATION Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec Appendix TABLE 1. TEST CONFIGURATION Hardware Software Dell PowerVault DL2000 - CPU – 2 x 2.33 GHz Quad core Xeon - Memory – 8GB - Storage – MD1000 with 8 – 500 GB SATA drives - OS – Windows 2008 Standard Edition Dell PowerEdge 2950 - CPU - 2 x 2.33 GHz Quad core Xeon - Memory – 8 GB Ram - Internal Storage: 2 x 250GB SAS RAID0 Symantec Backup Exec 12.