In this article I will tell you how I got acquainted with Quest Netvault Backup. About Netvault Backup, when this software was still owned by Dell, I have already heard a lot of positive feedback, but I have not yet had to βfeelβ it with my hands.
Quest Software, also known as Quest, is a software company headquartered in California with 53 offices in 24 countries. Founded in 1987. The company is known for its software used by professionals in the field of databases, cloud management, information security, data analysis, backup and recovery. Quest Software was acquired by Dell in 2012. By November 1, 2016, the sale was completed and the company relaunched as Quest Software.
It was possible to get to know Quest Netvault closely not so long ago. In one of the projects, the Customer asked to find an inexpensive and optimal solution to protect their infrastructure. The customer was looking at various backup software, one of the solutions was Quest Netvault Backup. According to the test results, taking into account the parameters important for the Customer (some of which are given at the end of the article), Quest Netvault Backup was chosen.
In addition to the basic requirements, the Customer wanted the software to be installed on servers running Linux. Such requirements are not met by every backup software, but Quest Netvault Backup can do it.
Initial data and requirements
The task set by the Customer was to design a system that provides data backup in the amount of 62 TB. This data was contained in such application systems as SAP, Microsoft SQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, etc. These application systems ran on physical and virtual servers running operating systems from the Microsoft Windows Server family, Linux, and FreeBSD. The virtual environment was built on the basis of the VMware vSphere virtualization platform. The infrastructure was located on one site.
In general terms, the Customer's infrastructure is shown in Figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1 - Infrastructure of the Customer
In the course of the analysis, the possibilities of Quest Netvault Backup applicable to the Customer's infrastructure were studied, namely: in terms of performing backup, recovery, management and monitoring of data. Typical functionality and operating principles practically do not differ from software from other vendors. Therefore, further I want to dwell on the features of Quest Netvault Backup, which distinguish it from other backup tools.
Interesting features
Installation
The distribution size of Quest Netvalt Backup is only 254 megabytes, which allows you to quickly deploy it.
Plugins for supported platforms and tasks are downloaded separately, but this has a positive effect on the target state of the system, which will have only the functionality that is necessary to protect a certain infrastructure and will not be overloaded with unnecessary features.
Management
Netvault is administered through the WebUI. Login is by name and password.
Figure 1.2 - Login window to the management console
You can connect to the web console from any network computer using a browser.
The WebUI uses a simple and friendly interface, administration does not cause any problems, the control logic is accessible and understandable, if there are questions, the vendor's website contains a detailed .
Figure 1.3 - WebUI interface
WebUI is designed to manage and control Quest Netvault Backup and allows you to perform the following tasks:
- tuning performance, security and other parameters;
β management of clients, storage devices and media;
Figure 1.4 - Management of storage devices
β performing backup and recovery;
β monitoring of jobs, device activity and event logs;
Figure 1.5 - Device activity monitoring
- setting up notifications;
- creating and viewing reports.
Storage devices
Quest Netvault easily implements the 3-2-1 storage rule, as it can work with devices for online storage of backups (disk storage systems), as well as devices for long-term storage (deduplicating devices, physical tape libraries, autoloaders, virtual tape libraries (VTL) and shared virtual tape libraries (SVTL)). Transferable backups can be stored in the cloud, at a remote site, or on transferable media (such as a tape drive).
When working with deduplicating devices, specialized RDA and DD Boost protocols are supported. Using these protocols:
β Reduces network load and improves the performance of backup tasks, as data is deduplicated on the client and only the necessary blocks are transferred. For example, working in conjunction with Quest Qorestor using the RDA protocol allows you to achieve performance up to 20 terabytes per hour and compression 20 to 1;
- protects backups from ransomware viruses. Even if the backup server itself is infected and encrypted, the backups will remain intact. .
Client
Quest Netvault Backup supports over three dozen platforms and applications. You can learn more about the list on the vendor's website at (Figure 1.7). Checking the compatibility of versions of protected systems with Quest Netvault Backup is carried out according to the official document "Quest Netvault Backup Compatibility Guide" located at .
Support for so many systems allows you to design solutions for complex enterprise-level infrastructures. Clients are distributed in the form of plug-ins (analogue for other vendors - agents), which are installed on servers. As a result, data is protected using one system with a single point of control.
Figure 1.6 - List of plugins
After downloading plugins for these platforms, we place them in a shared folder, which we connect to Netvault and then remotely install plugins on protected servers.
Still, one of the advantages, I consider the visibility of the selection of objects to be backed up. For example, in the figure below, we select the server system state and the logical drive c: as objects.
And this figure shows the selection of hard disk partitions.
In addition to plugins for platforms running on individual servers, Quest Netvault Backup also has plugin versions that support various cluster systems. In this case, the cluster nodes are grouped into a virtual client on which the cluster-enabled plugin is installed. Backup and recovery of cluster nodes will be performed through this virtual client. The table below shows the clustered versions of the plugins.
Table 1.2 Plugins with support for cluster systems
plugin
Description
Plug-in for FileSystem
This plugin is used when configuring file system data backup on the following platforms: - Windows Server clusters - Linux clusters - Sun (Solaris SPARC) clusters
Plug-in for Exchange
This plugin is used when setting up a backup of a Microsoft Exchange server running on Database Availability Group (DAG) technology
Plug-in for Hyper-V
This plugin is used when configuring Hyper-V failover cluster backup
Plug-in for Oracle
This plugin is used when setting up an Oracle Database backup on Oracle's Real Application Clusters (RAC)
Plug-in for SQL Server
This plugin is used when configuring a Microsoft SQL Server failover cluster backup.
Plug-in for MySQL
This plugin is used when setting up a MySQL Server backup on a failover cluster.
Implementation result
The result of the work on the project was a backup system deployed by the Customer based on the Quest Netvault Backup software with the architecture shown in Figure 1.8.
Figure 1.7 - Target state of the system
All Netvault Backup components were deployed on a physical server with the following characteristics:
β two processors with ten cores each;
β 64 GB of RAM;
β Two 300GB 10K SAS hard drives (RAID1)
β Four 600GB 15K SAS hard drives (RAID10)
β HBA with two external SAS ports;
β two 10 gbps ports;
- OS CentOS.
Online backups were stored on Quest Qorestor Standard (back end 150TB). Work with Qorestor was carried out using the RDA protocol. The deduplication ratio on Qorestor at the end of the trial operation of the system was 14,7 to 1.
For long-term storage, a tape library with four LTO-7 standard drives was used. The tape library was connected to the backup server via SAS. Periodically, the cartridges were alienated and moved for storage to one of the remote branches.
All necessary plug-ins have been downloaded and placed on a network folder for remote installation. The time to deploy and configure this system was nine days.
Conclusions
According to the results of the project, I can say that Quest Netvault Backup was able to fulfill all the requirements of the Customer and this solution is one of the tools for building a backup system, both for small companies and for Enterprise-level Customers.
Most of the parameters that were used to evaluate the solutions are shown in the comparison table.
Table 1.3 - Comparative table
Criterion
Commvault
IBM Spectrum Protect
Micro Focus Data Protector
Veeam Backup & Replication
Veritas NetBackup
Quest Netvault
Microsoft Windows Support for Media Server
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Microsoft Windows Support for Media Server
No
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Multilingual interface
Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes
Yes
WEB management interface functionality
6 of 10
7 of 10
6 of 10
5 of 10
7 of 10
7 of 10
Centralized management
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Role-based administration
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Agent for Microsoft Windows OS
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Agent for Linux OS
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Agent for Solaris OS
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Agent for AIX OS
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Agent for FreeBSD OS
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Agent for MAC OS
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Agent for Microsoft SQL
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Agent for IBM DB2
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Agent for Oracle Database
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Agent for PostgreSQL
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Agent for MariaDB
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Agent for MySQL
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Agent for Microsoft SharePoint
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Agent for Microsoft Exchange
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Agent for IBM Informix
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Agent for Lotus Domino Server
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Agent for SAP
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Support for VMware ESXi
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Support for Microsoft Hyper-V
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Support for tape storage devices
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
DD boost protocol support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Catalyst protocol support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
OST protocol support
Yes
No
Yes
No
Yes
No
RDA protocol support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Encryption Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Client side deduplication
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Server side deduplication
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
NDMP support
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Usability
6 of 10
3 of 10
4 of 10
8 of 10
5 of 10
7 of 10
Authors:Mikhail Fedotov β Backup Systems Architect
Source: habr.com