“Using Actifio to put our backup data in Google Cloud is just a first step. It gets us that much closer to DR in the cloud. That’s next.”
KEITH CONGER – SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR
Google Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery
Cloud Backup, Disaster Recovery, Migration, and Database Cloning in Google Cloud
OVERVIEW
Actifio provides a single platform for backup, recovery, cloning and analytics for Cloud and on-premises VMs & Databases, delivering low RTO, RPO, and costs.
Enterprises use Actifio to backup data from data centers and Public cloud platforms onto Google Cloud.
Using a single pane of glass for all workloads, customers can also protect on-premises and Cloud resident workloads, perform 1-click DR orchestration, and lower Recovery Time Objective (RTO) & operational burden.
And lastly, they reuse the backups to provision rapid database clones for test / dev / analytics in Google Cloud.
Get the White Paper: Enterprise Backup & Recovery in Google Cloud
Challenges
Expensive Dedup Appliance Costs
Many enterprises have been stuck with legacy dedup backup appliances that are expensive and deliver very large RTO & RPO.
Large Recovery Time (RTO)
Some enterprises have started backing up to Google Nearline or Coldline (NL/CL). However recovering from their dedup or proprietary backups stored takes forever, increasing the RTO to even days.
Storage Inefficiencies
To overcome the above challenges, some solutions rehydrate data after each backup, from Google NL/CL to Google Cloud Persistent Disk. The unnecessary need to use Persistent Disk 24×7 for backups increases the costs by up to 10x.
Lack of DR Orchestration
Most enterprises lack 1-click DR orchestration to recover VMs, physical servers, and enterprise databases automatically as part of a DR plan, thus shifting the burden to operations.
HOW Actifio HELPS
Backup, Recover, and Clone, in just minutes, multi-tier applications including databases, VMs, Physical servers to Google Cloud.
Cloud Backup with ZERO on-premises Storage
Reduce costs by using Actifio OnVault to backup VMware VMs from on-premises to Google NL/CL with no on-premises storage. Also have an option to have a local on-premises copy.
Reduce Cloud Infrastructure Costs
For all on-premises workloads including Databases, Physical servers, NAS/file servers, VMware, Hyper-V, backup to Google NL/CL and reduce cloud infrastructure costs.
Low Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
Protect all workloads with application consistent, incremental forever backups to Google NL/CL..
Low Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
Using Actifio CloudMobility, instantly mount and recover as Google Cloud Compute Engine (CE) VMs directly from Google NL/CL without having to restore to Google Persistent Disk volumes. This reduces RTO and costs.
High I/O Performance
Get Google Cloud Local SSD performance even after instant mount and recovery from Google NL/CL with Actifio’s intelligent I/O caching.
1-click DR Orchestration
Using Actifio Resiliency Director, create and execute DR plans with automated recovery of databases, VMs, physical servers as Google CE VM instances. This eliminates operational burden for DR and DR testing.
Cloud Snapshot Management
Protect Google Cloud resident workloads using Google Persistent Disk snapshots. Catalog and recover Google CE VM instances from Google Persistent Disk snapshots at scale in any region.
Accelerate Test / Dev / Analytics
Reuse backups in Google NL/CL to provision rapid Database clones to Google CE VM instances for Test/Dev/Analytics, without consuming any extra Google Persistent Disk storage.
Additional Resources
WHITE PAPER
Enterprise Backup & Recovery in Google Cloud
GOOGLE CLOUD PLATFORM
Access Actifio in the Google Cloud Marketplace
SOLUTION BRIEF
SQL Backup & Recovery in Google Cloud
Frequently Asked Questions.
Yes. Actifio can backup physical machines to GCP. It can also recover the entire Windows or Linux physical server as a Google VM. As part of this recovery, Actifio can also perform instant mount and recovery of the non-system volumes and databases, thus deliver instant recovery in the cloud.
Yes. Actifio can perform instant recovery from Google Nearline or Google Coldline, as well as Google Persistent DIsk storage.
There are two forms of replication from on-premises to GCP.
For mission-critical workloads, enterprises use replication between Actifio Sky on-premises to Actifio Sky in Google VM.
For Tier 2 and Tier 3 VMs, enterprises can back up on-premises VMware VMs directly to Google Nearline or Google Coldline storage, thus reducing on-premises storage costs.
Yes.
Actifio performs incremental forever backups of SQL using its own proprietary change block tracking technology and leverages VSS snapshots for database consistency. Yet, each point-in-time incremental backup results in a full virtual copy, i.e., no extra storage is consumed for the virtual full copy, and you can recover a full database without having to apply incremental data to full backups.
Actifio Sky then mounts the point-in-time backup image (which is in native SQL format and not a traditional dump) to the recovery server over iSCSI and recovers the database in minutes. Based on the specified point in time, it automatically replays any transaction logs that are needed.
Actifio does not use the BackInt database dumps, and instead relies upon the SAP HANA native snapshot API (‘HDBSQL’ calls to create a global savepoint for application-consistent backup). Actifio performs incremental forever backups. Yet, each point-in-time incremental backup is synthesized to be a full virtual copy, i.e., no extra storage is consumed for the virtual full copy, and you can recover a full database without having to apply all incremental backups.
Actifio Sky mounts the point-in-time backup image (which is in native HANA Data format and not a traditional dump) to the recovery server over Fibre Channel/iSCSI/NFS and recovers the database (using HANA API ‘recoverSys.py’) in minutes.
Information that is protected by Actifio Sky in Google Persistent Disk for backups can also be leveraged to provision multiple virtual database clones for Dev, QA, UAT, Analytics or other test environments. Sky also enables developer self-service to simplify and accelerate the provisioning of virtual database clones.
Re-writable virtual clones are space efficient and do not use any extra storage. Incremental disk capacity is only consumed when the database is changed as part of the testing process.
Other backup products typically take hours or days to create physical clones with 10x or more storage required in test environments.
Yes. DBAs/administrators can use Google Cloud Coldline/Nearline object storage for long-term data retention. Actifio can replicate backups in an incremental forever manner to a cloud object storage such as Google Cloud Nearline/Coldline object Storage.