Avamar Virtual Edition (AVE) and VM Backup Solutions

Avamar Virtual Edition for VMware also streamlines deployment. But instead of a hardware appliance packaging, the Avamar software is delivered as a virtual appliance that is able to run in a VMware virtual machine and leverage shared server and storage resources. Avamar Virtual Edition has the added benefit of introducing cost-effective virtual-to-virtual (V2V) or virtual-to-physical (V2P) disaster recovery through its replication feature.

Avamar’s de-duplication capability enhances other supported backup approaches for virtual server environments, including VMware Consolidated Backup, a backup agent in the ESX Service Console and a backup agent in the guest operating system. Data de-duplication reduces the traditional backup load on the virtual machine’s shared physical resources—CPU, memory, NIC and disk storage.

VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) performs a snapshot of the production virtual disk (containing the operating system, applications and data for a virtual machine). The VCB snapshot is copied to a proxy server where the backup application can back it up. The virtual disk image (.vmdk extension file) appears as a new file every day, which traditional backup applications will back up every time. The VCB approach removes the backup processing burden from the ESX Server host by offloading it
to the VCB proxy server.  It also enables full-image backups of running virtual machines and file-level backups for Windows virtual machines, and eliminates the need to manage backup agents in each virtual machine for most scenarios.  Installing an Avamar agent on the VCB proxy server enables subfile de-duplication of files and the virtual disk (.vmdk) images.

ESX Server Service Console-Based Backup requires an Avamar software agent installed on the service console of each ESX Server host that needs protection. Using this method, de-duplication occurs at the ESX Service Console and the administrator can choose to back up the virtual machine either online or offline. Advantages of this method include less management overhead since backup agents are not needed inside the virtual machines; no backup proxy server or SAN required since backup occurs on the ESX Server host; and recovery is performed directly to the ESX Server host.
ƒ
Guest Level Backup requires installing a backup agent inside each virtual machine guest to communicate with the backup application (same general approach used to backup a physical server). This method enables full, incremental and application-specific backup, but it is very burdensome on the host system’s shared resources. Client-based de-duplication such as Avamar’s helps significantly. Installing an Avamar agent within each virtual machine guest enables de-duplication within and across
virtual machines to significantly reduce the backup strain on shared physical resources and applications, as well as the amount of data stored to disk.