Dell AppAssure
cloud replication
Why Cloud Replication?Cloud replication is one of the most significant new components of a fully contemporary data protection strategy. Legacy file-and-folder based tape and disk backup technologies can no longer keep up with the needs of virtual and hybrid physical/virtual environments. Organizations look to cloud replication for several reasons:
• Allows IT managers and administrators to leverage object storage and deduplication appliances
• Its inherent high reliability and high value allows you to meet higher business continuity standards without breaking the budget • It’s a lasting trend: more than 60% of IT is moving to embrace hybrid clouds
• Replication to the cloud is a part of a hybrid data protection solution
Here’s a look at how Dell AppAssure cloud replication is designed to work for you. What is Replication?
Replication is the process of copying recovery points and transmitting them to a secondary location for the purpose of disaster recovery. Your first step in setting up a Dell AppAssure replication process is to configure a paired source-target relationship between two cores managed on a per-protected-machine basis.
Once it’s configured you will be able to automatically replicate backup snapshots of a protected machine to the secondary core in the cloud. The source core asynchronously and continuously transmits the incremental snapshot data to the target core. All data is compressed and deduplicated to minimize the impact on bandwidth and storage at the target site. You can configure outbound replication to your company’s own data center or to a remote disaster recovery site (that is, a “self-managed” target core), or to a managed service provider (MSP) implementing off-site backup and disaster recovery services. If the data being transmitted to one of these sites is of a sensitive nature, it can be encrypted with AES-256 encryption prior to transmission. When replicating to an MSP, you can leverage built-in workflows that let you request connections and receive automatic feedback notifications. Now let’s review the process in detail.
Cloud-based replication
AppAssure 5 provides replication capability that is both simple to configure and use. The primary requirement to implement replication is a secondary AppAssure Core server to be used as your replication target. This server can be located in one of many locations, such as a local data center, a remote Disaster Recovery Site (DRS), or in the cloud. AppAssure makes no distinction as to where a replication target is located; it is merely another replication target.
There are two options for cloud- based replication:
• Use a third party service provider to manage the remote Core as a service.
• Create your own cloud based AppAssure Core environment using a cloud provider such as Amazon AWS. This paper uses Amazon AWS to illustrate how easy it is to replicate your Core, giving you the step-by-step process with screen shots. The same procedure applies to setting up replication between your data center and a remote disaster recovery facility.
Before you configure replication to the Amazon AWS cloud, you’ll need to stand up a Windows Server on AWS. Configuration of this server is beyond the scope of this paper, so please see the following page http://aws.amazon.com/windows for more detail. For this example, we’ve installed the AppAssure Core on a cloud-based server using the normal install procedure
(see http://docs.appassure.com/display/AA50D/AppAssure+5+Technical+Documentation). Let’s begin!
1. Navigate to the Replication tab of the source AppAssure Core Console and pull down the Actions menu on the right side of the screen. Select “Add Remote Core”.
Figure 1 Starting remote Replication Core configuration
3. The “Add Remote Core” dialog box lists the available machines currently being protected by this Core. Simply check the box next to the machines that are to be replicated. In this example we have selected one machine to be replicated, 192.168.164.64. The other data fields are optional. Press “Submit Request” to apply the changes.
Figure 3- Select the machines you wish to replicate
4. Below is the Replication tab showing the remote Amazon server queued as the replication target. Note that “AMAZONA-VP7ATRE” is listed as a Remote Core with a status of “Pending”.
5. Additional information can be viewed by clicking on the green wrench menu and selecting details.
Figure 5–Details of cloud replication
6. Here is a shot of the main Core console. Note the Alert we’ve bordered in red showing that a Remote Replicated Agent has been added.
Figure 6–Communication between Cores established
7. Communication between the source Core and destination Core has now been established. Permission to start replication must be provided on the receiving Core.
Figure 7–Pending Replication request
8. Review the information in Replication Request and press “Send Response” to allow the replication. Press “Deny” if the information is not correct; replication will not be enabled.
Figure 8–Approving a replication request
9. Once the replication request has been approved, the replication status will be shown. Note that Incoming Replication status is now marked “Established” with our remote machine.
10. Display the Replication tab of the source Core Console display. The status is “Not Yet replicated”.
Figure 10–Replication tab: cloud-based replication is now configured
12. Moving to the Replication tab shows the replication in progress.
Figure 12–Replication tab showing in-process replication to cloud
13. The following screenshot shows the replication task monitor after the two Cores are fully replicated.
Conclusion
Configuring AppAssure to replicate to the cloud is a simple process, and takes only moments to configure once both Cores have been set up. When using replication with AppAssure, you can be assured that your data is safe in case of a disaster. In extreme cases where your local environment may be down or otherwise unavailable, it is even possible to bring up an instance of your backups in the cloud or at a DRS.
