EMC Backup and Recovery appliance

hesham.derbala,

Please speak with your sales team on those requirements.  I know that Networker has ddboost functionality built in but I'm unsure of how licensing for it works.

Best Regards,

Patrick

Dear Patrick

Iam not asking for the license iam asking a technical question which is do I have to buy the DDBoost license to complete the requirements of the EMC Backup and Recovery Appliance to start backing up the virtual machines using the datadomain as the target and the networker as the software to backup please

Please review the attached document as it is very newly update in the integration between VMware and EMC

hesham.derbala,

DDBoost has to be licensed on the Data Domain in order for clients to connect.  I mentioned speaking with your sales team as that license may have been part of the agreement when you purchased the EMC Backup and Recovery Appliance or may need to be purchased separately.  That is the part I was unsure of.  Please let me know if you need any further assistance.  You can email me directly at patrick.betts@emc.com if needed.

Best Regards,

Patrick

DD Boost is specific (enhancement) feature which you do not have to use if you don't want to.  With that said, you can use NW8.1 to protect VMs without DD Boost too (but it makes sense to use for sure).

Hrvoje Crvelin, for EBR with Data Domain, DDBoost is required. The EBR appliances themselves (also called Virtual Backup Appliances or VBAs) and any proxy clients (both the proxy instance built into the appliance and any external proxies) use DDBoost to communicate with the Data Domain device.

So, if you do not have DD Boost, stream does not travel via LAN to media server and then DD device?  To my knowledge, data stream should always be able to fail back to normal data flow in case DD Boost is not available and one such condition might be lack of license.  By definition, at least so far, backup stream should be able to failover from direct communication with target to the more classic/regular one.

I'm only going to talk about Data Domain integrated setups here (the VBA can also use its own internal storage to hold the backup data but that's not relevant to your question).

During the backup, the data stream never actually passes through NetWorker. NetWorker communicates with the appliance and the appliance communicates with the proxy. When the job starts up on the proxy, the backup data is streamed directly to Data Domain by the proxy client.

I don't believe there is ever any direct communication between the proxies and the NetWorker environment but I'll admit I'm a little hazy on the exact data flow. It's complicated.

It would be nice to see some sort of theory of operations for this - would make certain things more clear.

I don't think it is new, it is just that we use it with default options... and what you ask is something outside default deployment... I argue that such condition should be supported based on logic and overall usage, but it could be that such setup requires interconnect between components which is only possible with DD Boost - in such case not only you need it but it is the only way to go.  I'm quote sure document won't help if you didn't find answer inside, right?

Thnx!

I'll see what I can do.

hesham.derbala, I am familiar with the solution. DD Boost is required.

Hrvoje Crvelin, the EBR / VBA approach is new in NetWorker 8.1. It doesn't work like the VMware backup in previous versions of NetWorker. One of my colleagues sent over an architecture diagram; unfortunately it's full of internal information so I won't be able to post it.

Basically, the client software on the proxies does not use "save" so the proxies cannot send the data through NetWorker -- all the backup data has to go direct from the proxy to the Data Domain through DD Boost. The only information transmitted from the proxy to the NetWorker server is the job / session information.

I'm not comfortable posting more about the internals in a public forum but if you're familiar with my area of expertise, I think you'll be able to figure out what technology is being used with no trouble.

OK, clear.

Dear Hrvoje

Thanks for your reply but I will try and return back to you if it is needed or not

Thanks