SME Server virtualization Deployment planning backup and disaster recovery

Server virtualization has gone deep into the mainstream of enterprise it. The efficiency and flexibility associated with virtualized server operations have been demonstrated many times in large enterprises. Server virtualization can increase server utilization, reduce power consumption, simplify it workload, and quickly meet changing business needs. More importantly, server virtualization enables organizations to run their applications to any qualified server, based on availability and actual need, without having to deliver the application to one or more servers. That is, IT administrators can allocate applications to take full advantage of hardware and other resources while increasing the availability and performance of these applications. Businesses with enough it technicians and experts can virtualize more easily. A large number of small and medium-sized enterprises are seeking to gain the same benefits as the implementation of server virtualization in large enterprises. However, small and medium-sized enterprises generally do not have enough it technicians, and thus face many challenges in planning, implementing, and managing virtualized IT infrastructures. In particular, backup and disaster recovery for virtualized servers has become a critical barrier for small and midsize enterprises. Small and medium businesses typically lack large amounts of backup storage and extra bandwidth to handle large backups. These resources are generally adequate for normal business operations, but are a bit stretched for special activities such as backup and recovery. Backup and recovery in virtualized environments require different approaches, but most small and medium-sized enterprises use the same protection methods as physical systems when protecting data in virtual machines: Deploying backup agents in virtual machines, backing up with backup agents, and recovering files from virtual machines. They do very little to protect the mirror itself. Challenges for small and medium Enterprise Server virtualization IT staff in small and medium enterprises typically have multiple roles in it, and even in enterprises with hundreds of employees, their limited IT staff must be responsible for addressing it technical issues from helping other departments, including implementation and operation of networks, servers, etc. As a result, the IT operation of small and medium enterprises often takes a reactive approach, which leads to many challenges in implementing and maintaining virtual servers: 1. Lack of planning: small and medium enterprise IT personnel are generally competent to identify and solve technical problems, but lack the resources to plan these technical problems They often implement new technologies without a comprehensive plan and without taking into account worst-case scenarios. 2. Inability to implement specialized solutions efficiently: they lack the training and expertise to implement specialized solutions in specific virtualization areas. For example, backup and recovery in virtualized application environments are very different. Most senior IT professionals spend a lot of time learning the best methods and available technologies, but often there is not enough time. 3. Lack of standardized and proven processes: IT staff in small and medium-sized enterprises often lack the relevant resources and know-how to define and demonstrate their IT processes. 4, focus on the Windows environment. Finally, many small and medium enterprises mainly adopt Windows environment, their internal application and virtualThe machine is more so. Experience with Windows servers and other Windows-oriented technologies is valuable and easy to translate, but this experience does not apply to all virtualized operational environments. Planning for backup and disaster recovery each server's virtualization project must plan for backup and disaster recovery to reduce the risk of loss of enterprise confidential information. Unfortunately, time and resource constraints allow small and medium enterprise IT personnel to consider only the most likely data loss scenarios: A hardware failure or a natural disaster. A full plan for backup and disaster recovery should include the following steps: Step one: The first step in formalizing operational requirements is to formalize the operational requirements for backup and restore, including the size and number of virtual machines, the applications that will run on virtual machines, and their standard and maximum data requirements. Also understand dynamic migration technology and understand how virtual machines work on the server. Step two: Determine system, storage, and network requirements IT teams must determine the system, storage, and network requirements for their backup and disaster recovery processes. Then, carefully examine and study the intensity of the work, and maintain the flexibility to consider the different types of solutions. Different methods may have different systems, storage, and network requirements, so people can have a range of possibilities. This technology will enable IT teams to evaluate different solutions based on the standard requirements established in the first step, even when the operational requirements are formalized. Step three: Evaluate the solution the next step is for the IT team to consider the solution. Small and medium-sized enterprises that implement server virtualization typically consider three major issues: whether it is easy to install and use--the speed of backup and recovery--whether the size and bandwidth consumption of backups is easy to install and use small and medium enterprises often lack time and expertise, So a method that is fast and efficient and that requires little expertise is the best choice. Also, the expertise of many IT specialists in small and medium enterprises is windows-based and it is useful to have a fully graphical user interface for Windows solutions. This is not to say that IT professionals are not able to use the command line, but given their resource constraints and expertise, these enterprises are more likely to choose the Windows user interface than to memorize command line directives. Backup and restore speed IT operations staff often do not have much time to create backups. In this case, if there is a section of automation where the script does not follow the plan, they don't have much time to solve the problem. Also, virtualized shared resource patterns make it more difficult, if not impossible, to determine the timing of backup work. IT staff needs to analyze servers that are rapidly changing due to dynamic migrations to ensure that only a certain amount of backup work can be run at one time. Recovery is more challenging. Data loss in small businesses is as vital as data loss in large enterprises. IT staff must be prepared to diagnose and replace faulty hardware and determine the availability of the latest data and processing status, and to load this data into the appropriate virtual machines. An ideal solution shouldWhen you can provide fast backups, whether incremental or full, and be able to perform a recovery on the business, instead of requiring a shutdown one night or several days to find and replace lost data. The size and bandwidth of a backup consumes many small and medium sized enterprise IT computing and network resources are sufficient for normal operations, but there are very few functions for creating, transporting, and storing backup files. They are often reluctant to buy or lease more functionality because their costs are not one-off and are not directly related to the success of the business. Most organizations are prepared to perform data loss to some extent, but most likely do not have network bandwidth or storage capacity for backups required by multiple virtual machines. Backup and recovery tools should use incremental backups and advanced compression to provide small and medium enterprises with the ability to limit the size of backups. These features also reduce bandwidth consumption for backup and recovery processes, allowing it teams to build and recover backups in less time. Note that there is no combination of attributes and quantities. Small and medium-sized enterprises are generally not interested in multiple features because they often lack the time to learn and implement these features. In addition, many of the complex backup and recovery features are used primarily in large and complex data centers and are not used for small and medium enterprise devices. The most useful solutions take advantage of mirroring based backup and recovery, which is faster than file-based methods. Because the disk is read directly, the cost is reduced and the empty block in the mirror is skipped, resulting in a smaller backup copy than the traditional method, which allows for faster storage of backup copies with fewer blocks, and meets the performance and storage needs of many small and midsize enterprises. Conclusion using the right tools, small and medium enterprises can enjoy the same benefits that server virtualization brings to large enterprises: increasing server utilization, reducing energy consumption, simplifying it load, and adapting quickly to changing business requirements. However, the lack of resources and know-how poses specific challenges for SMEs, particularly in the areas of backup and disaster recovery. As a result, small and medium enterprises need a toolset for backup and disaster recovery that meets their characteristics, technologies, and resource utilization. Specifically, this scenario should be an easy-to-use, mirrored approach that provides fast backup and disaster recovery solutions and minimizes backup size and bandwidth consumption.