ACTIFIO

Next-generation data management

What is Backup?
• It refers to the process of making copies of data or data files to use in the event the
original data or data files are lost or destroyed
• 3 2 1 backup strategy : Keep at least three (3) copies of your data, and store two (2)
backup copies on different storage media, with one (1) of them located offsite.
• Types of Backup
 Full Backup
Captures a copy of an entire data set; time-consuming and requires a large number of
disks or tapes
 Incremental Backup
Back up only the data that has changed since the last backup
 Differential Backup
Copies all data and data files that have changed since the last full backup
 Synthetic Full Backup
Produces an additional full copy, which is based on the original full backup and data
obtained from incremental copies.
 Incremental-forever backups
Captures the full data set and then supplements it with incremental backups from that
point forward.
 Reversed Incremental Backup
At first a full backup of a VM is created and stored in a resulting full backup file
(.vbk). All subsequent backups are incremental. During incremental backup, software
injects changes into the .vbk file to rebuild it to the most recent state of a VM.
Concept of RTO and RPO

Recovery Time Objective

• Duration of time within which a business process must be restored and all necessary data
and services must be recovered following a disaster in order to maintain business continuity
• If your RTO is 4 hours, it means that the business can maintain operations for that amount
of time without having its normal data and infrastructure available. However If data and
infrastructure are not recovered within that hour, the business could suffer irreparable harm
Recovery Point Objective
• Is a measure of the maximum tolerable amount of data you can afford to lose
• The age of files that must be recovered from backup storage for normal operations
to resume if a computer, system, or network goes down as a result of a hardware,
program, or communications failure
• Useful for determining how often to perform data backups
• For example, imagine that you back up your data once every day at midnight and a
disaster occurs at eight in the morning. In that case, you would lose eight hours’
worth of data. If your RPO is twenty-four hours or longer, you’re in good shape.
But if your RPO is, say, four hours, you're not.
What is Actifio?
• A copy data management software that make information technology infrastructure
more efficient by reducing unnecessary duplication of data
Features include:
• application consistent incremental forever backup
• deduplication
• replication
• low RTO and RPO
• data masking
• role based access control
• no lock-in
Basic Terms In Actifio
• Snapshots - Backup copy used to create the entire architectural instance/copy of an
application, disk or system
• Actifio Appliance - Virtual or physical server that captures and manages data locally and
replicate protected data to other Atifio appliances
•Actifio Sky - Actifio virtual Appliance(use NFS and isCSI interface)
•Actifio CDS - Actifio physical appliance(use fibre channel interface)
•Actifio Connector – Small footprint, lightweight service for discovery, capture and ascces
operation.
•VDP – Virtual Data Pipeline. Underlying architecture of Actifio
•VDisk - Virtual disk. Logical disk taken from a pool of managed disk presented to an Actifio
appliance.
How Actifio works?
Capture
• captures application data at the block level, in native format
according to specified SLA
Manage
• creates, moves and stores a Golden copy of that data
• then, updates the data incrementally with only the changed
blocks of data in an “incremental forever” model
Use/ Access
• then unlimited virtual copies of the data can be accessed
instantly for use, without increasing the physical copies and
taking up additional storage infrastructure
Copy Data Virtualization
What is Virtual Data Pipeline in Actifio?
Actifio Snapshot Pool ( Performance Pool)
• Holds golden copies of application data at point in time specified by SLA

• Instant access but short-term retention

• Four types of VDisk in snapshot pool :

Staging VDisk

• Created when an application is first protected; retained as long as application is protected

• golden copies of application

• Because a staging disk is a complete copy of application data or VM, each staging disk requires as much
space in snapshot pool as protected application or VM requires in production pool

• As subsequent backups change blocks in staging disk, the original blocks are pushed to snapshot Vdisk
( snapshot in staging disk may seem to have constant content but they contain more blocks over time)
Snapshot VDisk

• Preserves the state of staging disk at specified point in time; retained according to predefined policy

Mountable Vdisk

• Mountable images created at restore time from a snapshot on a snapshot disk or a deduped image that has
bbeen rehydrated to a staging disk

Clone VDisk

• Full copies of an application’s production data; not automatically expired

Actifio Deduplication Pool
• Retains deduplicated copies of snapshot data

• Warning threshold 80% i.e above this it cannot run dedupe operations

• Dedupe pool consumption = frequency of snapshots * snapshots size

• Snapshots = proportion of changed blocks(change rate in %) * application size(in GB)

General Guidelines for Dedup Engine Throughput and the Storage
Required to Support It
How are Data Captured/Protected in Actifio?
In-band Capture

• production data storage and change block tracking is controlled by Actifio appliance

• Snapshot pool and Debub pool is mapped to Actifio appliance

Out-of-band capture

• production data managed by a non-actifio storage controller and CBT controlled by actifio
controller or VMware APIs

• a snapshot is made on Actifio appliance

LAN-free Capture

• same as Out-of-band data capture however actifio is the initiator

VMware API Calls And Actifio Connectors
VMware API (VADP) Calls

• Use to capture an entire virtual server

• Performs Change Block Tracking

• Ensures application consistency during capture

Actifio Connector

• Use to capture selected databases

• Uses Microsoft SQL server VSS writer for discovery of databases, quiescing of databases, CBT, and
capture and access operations

• For Hyper-V servers, Actifio connector enables capture of entire VMs

How Does Actifio Capture
Production Data?
1. Create a staging disk. Virtually mount that staging
VDisk on the DB server.
2. Take snapshots using Actifio connector and VSS API.
3. Copy and merge the changed blocks to the staging disk.
4. Unmount staging disk on DB server once the
incremental backup is completed.
5. Actifio then takes an internal snapshot. PIT synthetic
full is ready.
6. For deduplication, snapshot of the snapshot is taken and
is deduplicated.
7. For recovery, Actifio instantly mounts re-writable
staging disk over fiber channel or Ethernet and brings
DB online.
How Does Actifio Replicate Data To A Remote Site?
Dedup Backup to Dedup Replication
• Uses Dedup Backup policy to transmit data from local Actifio appliance dedup pool to the
dedup pool managed by remote appliance
• Propriety dedup-aware protocol enables transmission of only unique blocks, minimizing
bandwidth requirement
• Replication begins after deduplication in local site is completed
• Allows multi-hop
Actifio OnVault
• Uses Snapshot to OnVault policy to send snapshot data to a location defined by Actifio
OnVault Pool
• A schedule is used to send the most recent snapshots (only the changes) to the defined
location
• HTTPS connections used to ensure data security
• Long-term retention but higher bandwidth requirement
Production to Mirror Policy Replication
• Replicates a copy of application or VM data to target Actifio appliance
• data access without a restore window, providing very low RTO
• Data is mirrored between local and remote appliance
Dedup Asynchronous Replication (DAR)

• Takes a snapshot, deduplicates and compresses the data, sends the data over the network at fraction of
bandwidth to a remote pool, rehydrates the data and updates the full copy of data on second appliance for
instant access
• Allows reverse replication of changes made at DR site to primary site
• RTO of 6-12 hours
StreamSnap

• Keeps a remote copy of an application storage and configuration up-to-date and ready for failover
scenarios
• When application fails, you mount this failover image from remote site
• In VMware replication occurs parallel; for others replication starts after local snapshot job is completed
• Reduce RTO from 6 to 24 hours to 1 hour
• Multiple RPOs
How Can I Access My captured Data?
Mounts
• instant access to data without moving data
• standard mount: presents and makes the captured Microsoft SQL Server data available to a
target server as a file system, not as a database; useful if a database is corrupt or lost
• virtual application mount: presents and makes the captured data available to a target server
as database; useful for database reporting, analytics, integrity testing, and test and
development
Live Clones
• independent copy of Server data that can be refreshed when the source data changes
• allows development and test team to work on latest data without having to manage data and
interfere production environment
Workflow
• Gives automatic access of captured data
• can present data as either a direct mount or Live Clone
• Updates the LiveClone and mountable data on a schedule or on demand basis
Restores
• reverts the production data to a specified point in time
• performed to restore a database to a valid state after a massive data corruption or
storage array failure
• Restore time depends on amount of data involved
Cloning in Actifio (My SQL)
• First capture app consistent, POT, incremental forever copy of SQL database.
• The user then can trigger an Actifio workflow that automatically presents a thin clone on
demand to any user.
• The workflow can also trigger external tools that does data masking, sub setting to modify the
SQL clone for information compliance.
• The Actifio connector will then mount a disc volume containing the clone .
• The connector will also bring the database back online using native SQL functionality.
• Developer and tester now have a complete read/write enabled, virtual full SQL database ready
to use. Because they are virtual full, multiple copies can be mounted simultaneously
occupying on MB of space instead of TB of space.
What is SLA in Actifio?
Policy Templates + Resource Profiles = SLA
Policy Templates
• Collection of policies that defines source of data , type of protection operation, frequency of
protection operation, retention period and replication conditions
• Single policy template can define short term and long term retention of data, weather data will be
replicated and how lon g replicated data will be retained
• Policies in a Policy Template are:
Production to Snapshot
• defines when and how often production data will be captured and how many snapshots are
retained
Snapshot to Dedup Backup
• defines when to deduplicate snapshot data and how long to retain the deduplicated data
Production to Mirror
• defines how data will be replicated to a Mirror Pool (a Snapshot Pool on a remote Actifio
appliance)
Dedup Backup to Dedup DR
• defines when to replicate deduplicated data to a remote Actifio appliance’s Dedup Pool and
how long to retain the data in that pool
Production Direct-to-Dedup
• defines when to deduplicate VMware VMs directly from production data and how long to
retain the deduplicated data
Snapshot to On Vault
• defines when to send Production to Snapshot data to the storage defined by an Actifio On
Vault Pool and how long to retain the data
Resource Profiles
• Defines where application data is retained
• Defines which pool to use; snapshot, Dedup, or OnVault

Policy Template and Resource Profile are

• Created in Actifio Service Level Architecture service
• Applied to application in Application Manager service
Actifio Global Manager
• provides centralized management capabilities in a virtual appliance that can be deployed
on standard VMware ESX servers
• web-based UI can be used to manage multiple Actifio CDS and Actifio Sky appliances
and perform various day-to-day copy data operations
Actifio Resiliency Director
• Web application generally used in DR site
• allows to make DR plans
• 1 click can bring up 1000s VMs
Managed Data License
• Measure of Actifio-protected copy data
File system : MDL equals to total size of protected files
Oracle Database : equals to total size of protected database
Volumes : equals to total size of all protected volumes
SQL server, Exchange, SharePoint : total size of protected database files, including log
files
Actifio Garbage Collection
• this process identifies and later reclaims the space occupied by the data that are
no longer needed/exists
• very effective but can impact system performance and is time consuming
How Dedup Pool Space is Consumed and reclaimed?

Simplified Yet Incorrect Dedup Pool Consumption: Snapshots and Expiry

The Simplified, More Correct View of Dedup Pool Consumption: GC Reclaims
Space
The Detailed, Correct View of Dedup Pool Consumption: GC Reclaims Space
Actifio Desktop
• UI for all Actifio related operations
Actifio Dashboard
• Gives you at-a-glance
view of system health
and utilization
• Presents current
information about the
operation of our Actifio
appliance through variety
of widgets
Application Manager
• Used to discover
application and VMs and
to apply policy templates
and resource profiles to
them
• Access application data
The End