Database Data Management on Pure Storage
Database Backup, Recovery, & Cloning using Pure FlashArray Storage Snapshots
OVERVIEW
For mission-critical enterprise databases running on Pure Storage FlashArray, Actifio delivers the lowest RTO, RPO, & cloning time with almost no additional storage costs by using its deep application integration and database log backups along with Pure FlashArray storage snapshots.
Thousands of enterprises use Pure Storage FlashArray to deliver blazing-fast performance for mission-critical databases that need 1000’s of IOPs per TB.
As such, DBAs expect blazing fast, application-consistent backup & point-in-time recoveries in just minutes.
To accelerate Dev/Test and Analytics, DBAs also need to provision application-consistent database clones to many test environments.
“We need to get data into the hands of our clients fast. We’re working closely with the federal government on real-time COVID-19 data, telling them which drugs are working, which drugs are not working, with the length of hospital stays and mortality rates. Thanks to Actifio, we are able to get the data into the government’s hands immediately to inform their decisions, leading to the development of more effective treatments.”
— Kim Jacques, CIO Sentry Data Systems
CHALLENGES
The First Challenge – Crash-Consistent Database Snapshots
Many solutions claim integration with Pure storage snapshots. However, most struggle to deliver application-consistency which is critical for database recoverability.
The Second Challenge – Complex Point-in-Time Recovery with Logs
Users struggle to maintain scripts or perform manual tasks to recover databases from storage snapshots and then apply database logs.
The Third Challenge – Degraded SLAs from Secondary Storage Tier
Some solutions can backup Pure storage snapshots to another storage tier or to the cloud. However, they can not deliver instant mount and recovery or rapid database clones from the backups in the secondary storage tier.
HOW PURE STORAGE & Actifio HELP
Leverage the Unparalleled Benefits of Actifio & Pure Storage together.
Reduce RTO, RPO, and database cloning time to just minutes using Actifio’s deep application integration, automated database log backups and Pure FlashArray storage snapshot integration.
Reduce costs with Actifio’s unique capability of replicating the changed blocks between the Pure FlashArray snapshots to secondary storage such as cloud object storage or Pure FlashBlade.
Reduce RTO with instant mount and recovery even from Pure FlashBlade or cloud object storage in AWS, Azure, GCP, and IBM.
Video: How it works & how you get great SLAs with 90% lower infrastructure costs.
Application-Consistent Database Snapshots: For a wide variety of enterprise databases such as SAP HANA, Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Db2, Sybase, etc. Actifio uses its deep application integration to deliver application-consistent database snapshots
Low Recovery Point Objective (RPO): Setup SLAs to snapshot databases every few minutes or hours with database log backups in between those snapshots.
Low Recovery Time Objective (RTO): Select any point-in-time and recover a 100+ TB sized database in just minutes. Actifio automates log restores on top of Pure FlashArray snapshots or backups stored on secondary storage.
Rapid Test/Dev Database Clones: Authorized users can select any point-in-time and provision multiple database clones to test environments in just minutes without consuming any extra storage
Security & Self-Service: Setup Role-Based Access Controls (RBAC) to define who can perform backups, recoveries and database clones.
Automated Sensitive Data Masking: Set up workflows to automate sensitive data masking using DBA supplied scripts or any 3rd party masking tool
Case study
Flexibility and Speed to Help Find
COVID-19 Treatments
How Sentry Data Systems accelerated virtual database “sandboxes” enable a pivot toward analytics for effective treatments.
Additional Resources
Frequently Asked Questions.
Checkout our support matrix for more current information. Actifio supports SAP HANA, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL and other databases using Pure FlashArray storage snapshot integration.
Actifio also manages the backup of database logs and restoring them automatically for point-in-time restores.
Yes. Actifio protects VMware VMs in an incremental forever manner using VADP APIs. and write back to Pure FlashArray storage. Each point-in-time backup is stored as a native Pure FlashArray storage snapshot. Thus, at the time of recovery, Actifio just mounts the native Pure storage snapshot and brings up the VM in an automated manner.
Yes.
Yes. Actifio can efficiently capture just the changed blocks between the Pure FlashArray snapshots and replicate to one or more cloud object storages such as AWS S3, Azure Blob, Google Nearline storage or any of their archive tiers for extended retention.
More importantly, Actifio can deliver 1-click DR orchestration of 1000s of Vms and databases directly from the cloud object storage with instant mounts for low RTO.
Yes. Actifio has the ability to recover the database, the application servers and the web servers with fully automated 1-click DR orchestration.
Yes. You can provision database clones from the same or different points in time to different test environments. These can be provisioned in a self-service manner by Dev & QA teams. Administrators can setup role based access controls for secure access. Actifio also can automate the process of sensitive data masking using any DBA provided scripts or 3rd party tools.
Actifio has a unique capability to intelligently cache reads and writes in an SSD flash storage. Note that such SSD flash storage is not needed 24×7 and is needed only at the time of DR. This intelligent caching delivers up to 90% of an SSD flash performance. But you get that performance at the cost of object storage which is typically 10x inexpensive than SSD storage in the cloud.
- Almost all competitors need on-premises storage for backups. With Actifio, you have the option to directly send the Pure snapshots to a cloud object storage. This reduces your backup storage costs by up to 80%
- Most competitors are VMware VM backup focused and not focused on databases and have a limited support for application consistent database snapshots. With Actifio, you get database consistent Pure storage snapshots. And you also get VMware backups.
- None of the competitors can store point-in-time backups of Databases or VMware VMs as native Pure FlashArray storage snapshots in a secondary Pure Flash Array. Thus restores will have to be rehydrated or presented as mounts over NFS. With Actifio, your backups are stored as native Pure storage snapshots and the recoveries are just mounts of those snapshots at VM level or Database level, thus delivering not only rapid recoveries but also delivers native fiber channel performance.
- Most competitors can not deliver instant mount and recovery from Pure FlashBlade. With Actifio, you can instantly mount and recover 1000s of VMs and databases with 1-click DR orchestration. With Actifio, you can even send another copy to a public cloud object storage such as AWS S3, Azure Blog, and GCP Nearline and get 1-click DR orchestration in the public cloud as well.