EMC Avamar and VMware View Applied Technology

Abstract

This white paper presents an overview of VMware View, the next generation of VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), and options for protecting this environment using EMC® Avamar® with global source-based data deduplication.

June 2009

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Part Number h6397

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Table of Contents Executive summary ............................................................................................4 Introduction.........................................................................................................4

Audience ...................................................................................................................................... 4 VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and EMC Avamar overview.....4

VMware View ............................................................................................................................... 4 View Manager........................................................................................................................... 5 Components of the VMware View architecture ........................................................................ 5 Difference between persistent and non-persistent desktops ................................................... 6

EMC Avamar................................................................................................................................ 7 Data protection approaches for VDI environments .........................................7

Data Protection Strategy 1 for a VMware View environment ...................................................... 8 Data Protection Strategy 2 for a VMware View environment ...................................................... 9 Recovering VMware View components ..................................................................................... 10

Conclusion ........................................................................................................11 References ........................................................................................................11

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Executive summary There are tremendous benefits associated with centralizing the management and protection of enterprise desktops and laptops, and VMware View is a leader in this space. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solutions allow you to centralize the delivery of corporate desktops and laptops with virtual machines that you can manage from the data center in order to streamline IT operations. The resulting business benefits will be a reduction in total cost of ownership, increase in security, and improved business agility as well as an increase in control over the consistency of desktop/laptop deployment.

Equally important to the business benefits of centrally managing desktops and laptops is the ability to protect these assets both reliably and cost-effectively. The EMC® Avamar® data protection solution provides unparalleled backup and recovery and disaster recovery capabilities for VMware environments, and utilizes global source-based data deduplication to drive down overall infrastructure costs.

The purpose of this white paper is to provide an introduction to the key components of a VMware View environment, and discuss the various methods of protecting this environment using Avamar’s global data-deduplication backup and recovery capabilities that will lower operational costs and improve overall manageability of the data protection environment

Introduction This white paper starts with an overview of VMware View and provides a detailed description of its components and various types of virtual desktops that can be deployed and how they differ. It next describes the Avamar backup and recovery solution using global deduplication as a means to decreasing backup windows, decreasing network utilization, and driving down overall infrastructure costs. The body of the paper describes the two ways to protect a VMware View environment using Avamar, and the pros and cons of both. Lastly, the paper provides a conclusion to assist VMware View users in determining the best approach for their organization, and explains why Avamar’s global source-based data deduplication can yield unparalleled cost savings and data recovery capabilities.

Audience The information in this white paper is primarily intended for business application administrators and backup systems administrators who are responsible for architecting, deploying, and protecting a VMware View environment. They must have a working knowledge of the components that comprise a VMware View solution, including Microsoft Active Directory (AD), VMware View Manager (formerly Virtual Desktop Manager), and VMware Virtual Infrastructure (vCenter and ESX Server).

VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and EMC Avamar overview

VMware View VMware View provides a centralized approach to delivering, managing, and protecting desktop and laptop environments. VMware View is built off of the VMware Virtual Infrastructure server platform. A VDI architecture typically includes several Client Access Device components such as existing PCs, repurposed PCs or thin clients, a connection broker, the virtual infrastructure, and storage.

Figure 1 shows a possible VMware View environment.

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Figure 1. Example of a VMware View environment

View Manager A key component of a VMware View environment is the VMware View Manager, which serves as the connection broker. View Manager is a product component of VMware View that is installed on physical or virtual servers typically residing in a central or regionalized data center. View Manager brokers client connection requests to the users’ entitled virtual desktops. The logic controlling which virtual desktop a client should connect to is handled by View Manager. This makes the process of connecting to a virtual desktop simple for the end user and tightly controlled for the IT administrator.

View Manager seamlessly integrates with Active Directory. Users are able to authenticate to View Manager using the same credentials as a physical PC that is a member of the domain. There is no additional management of user accounts required. All user accounts remain in Active Directory.

View Manager is integrated with VMware vCenter Server. It is able to interact with vCenter to manage virtual desktop instances. For example, View Manager can suspend or power off a virtual desktop when a user logs out and resume the desktop when the user reconnects. View Manager is also used to create new virtual desktops from templates and delete them when they are no longer required. The View Manager Administrator console communicates with both Active Directory and vCenter so an administrator can easily assign virtual desktops to users or user groups.

Components of the VMware View architecture The VMware View architecture includes Microsoft Active Directory, VMware View Manager, templates, user data disks, vCenter Server, and VMware ESX. Each is discussed next.

Microsoft Active Directory (AD) • AD provides authentication and user configuration (home directory mapping) to the VMware View

solution. • View Manager stores the VMware View configuration in an AD schema.

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View Manager • View Manager interacts with vCenter to manage virtual desktop instances. This includes provisioning,

removing, and managing states (powered on, off, suspended). • View Manager authenticates the user and acts as a connection broker to connect the user to the

appropriate desktop. Templates • View Manager deploys the virtual desktop instances from templates that are imported into View

Manager and designated for specific users or groups. • As a best practice, virtual desktop templates should be stored on centralized storage. User data disk • This is the location of unique user data that is mapped to the virtual desktop instance upon user login

and where users store their individual data. • As a best practice, user data disks should be stored on centralized storage. vCenter (formerly VirtualCenter) • This is the centralized management application for the Virtual Infrastructure. ESX server • The ESX server provides the virtualization of the desktop instances.

Difference between persistent and non-persistent desktops VMware View offers “smart pooling” capabilities that more easily manage large numbers of centralized desktops to automatically assign and provision new desktops as needed. There are two options for smart pooling: persistent and non-persistent pools.

Figure 2. Deploying virtual desktops – persistent and non-persistent pools

Persistent desktops The persistent pool contains multiple hosted virtual desktops, which are initially identical and cloned from the same templates. When a group of users is entitled to the persistent pool, every user in the group is

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entitled to any of the virtual desktops in the pool. The View Manager Connection Server will allocate users to a virtual desktop as requested, and this allocation is retained for subsequent connections. When the user connects to the persistent pool on subsequent occasions, the View Manager Connection Server will connect the user to the same virtual desktop that they were initially allocated. A persistent desktop could have unique data that is not stored in the user data disk. In this case it is important to protect the entire desktop using a backup client running on the desktop.

Non-persistent desktops The non-persistent pool contains multiple hosted virtual desktops, which are initially identical and cloned from the same template. The View Manager Connection Server will allocate entitled users to a virtual desktop from the non-persistent pool, on request. This allocation is not retained when the user logs out of the desktop and the virtual desktop is placed back into the non-persistent pool on subsequent occasions. The View Manager Connection Server will connect the user to any virtual desktop in the non-persistent pool. User customizations to the virtual desktop that are not stored in the user data disk are removed and cleared when the desktop is closed.

EMC Avamar VMware View provides many benefits to IT organizations but as the total amount of data stored on virtual machines increases, traditional backup approaches have trouble keeping up.

EMC Avamar, next-generation backup and recovery software with global, source data deduplication, delivers fast and efficient protection for VMware environments. Avamar protects virtual machines by deduplicating data at the source, so that only new, unique sub-file variable length data segments are sent during daily full backups. This dramatically reduces the daily impact on the virtual and physical infrastructure by up to 500x as compared to traditional full-backup methods. While traditional backup software moves upward of 200 percent of the primary backup data on a weekly basis, Avamar moves as little as 2 percent over the same seven-day period, removing backup bottlenecks and enabling even greater levels of physical server consolidation.

Key Avamar benefits include:

• Data deduplicated at the source (Guest, vStorage API proxy server) • Data deduplicated within and across virtual machines • File-level or .vmdk-level backup support • Reduces daily full backup times by up to 10x • Reduces daily infrastructure impact by up to 500x • Reduces required total disk storage by up to 50x • Encryption of backup data in flight and at rest • Daily server integrity and data recoverability checks • Backups stored as “virtual full backups,” ready for immediate restore • Redundant array of independent nodes (RAIN) architecture for high availability • Enables greater physical server consolidation levels, maximizes value from VMware • Flexible deployment options, including EMC Avamar Data Store and EMC Avamar Virtual Edition for

VMware (a virtual appliance)

Data protection approaches for VDI environments In a standard VDI configuration, a user logs in to a Windows domain account, and then is connected to a virtual machine (via RDP) where user credentials determine the type of machine and access level. As with standard AD environments, the user’s home directory is mounted from a file server. After the user has been authenticated and connected, the user has full access to the desktop as though it is local.

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Figure 3. VMware View example

A successful VMware View deployment provides the same challenge as backing up a large group of desktops and laptops. As with most enterprises, the focus is on protection of information and not necessarily all of the data on the desktop. For example, there is generally no need to back up the operating system on a particular desktop. A similar approach should be taken with designing a solution for VMware View.

It is important to understand the limitations of the VMware View solution around backup and recovery. Today the VMware View solution does not provide an interface to restore individual pieces back into the solution.

Data Protection Strategy 1 for a VMware View environment There are two strategies for protecting an entire VMware View environment. The first approach for protecting a VMware View infrastructure can be accomplished by using a combination of hardware and software to make a simultaneous copy of the LUNs where the virtual machine desktops are stored, as well as the View Manager application and configuration information. This solution allows for a total recovery of the entire environment.

Requirements for this approach involve making a duplicate copy of the VMware View environment for presentation to the backup solution. Recovering a VMware View environment in this scenario requires the following steps:

1. Restoring the data contained on the LUNs of all components to new storage of equal size.

2. Rebuilding Active Directory, View Manager, and ESX.

3. Connecting them to the recovered storage.

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4. Restarting the applications.

5. Verifying configuration.

Data Protection Strategy 2 for a VMware View environment The second approach for protecting an entire VMware View infrastructure is to protect the key components independently using the Avamar client software agents. This is considered the best option for enterprises that want to avoid the infrastructure cost of duplicating the entire VMware View solution for presentation to the backup environment.

Figure 4. Individual component protection The following represents the steps toward protecting the key VMware View components.

Microsoft Active Directory (AD)

• Install the Windows Avamar client on the AD server. • To restore AD to the same hardware, Avamar uses the ntbackup utility to export AD data for backup. • To restore AD to different hardware, a combination of Avamar and EMC HomeBase is required. View Manager Server

• Install the Windows Avamar client on the View Manager server. • Using a pre-script, Avamar calls the VDMexport.exe application to export LDAP configuration

information located on the AD server to a flat file. • Avamar backs up the LDAP flat file and the VMware View application located in the following

location: \VMWare\VDMS

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VMware vCenter

• Protecting vCenter requires a Windows Avamar client running on the server to protect the application and a database plug-in to protect the VC database.

Note: If the database is stored on a different server, a second Avamar client with a database plug-in on the database server is required.

Virtual desktop templates

As a best practice, user data disks and virtual desktop templates should be stored on a centralized shared storage device.

Figure 5. Desktop templates and user data disk protection

The Avamar data protection uses an accelerator node to protect SAN/NAS storage devices. Accelerator nodes can access data on the storage solution using NFS, CIFS, or NDMP.

Recovering VMware View components This solution allows for the recovery of the individual components that make up the VMware View solution. Individual components can then be manually brought back into the VMware View solution based on the level of recovery required. Components are as follows:

Microsoft Active Directory (AD)

• Recover Active Directory using the procedures documented in the EMC Avamar System Administration Manual.

• It is important to note that a HomeBase/Avamar solution is required to recover AD to different hardware. If recovering to identical hardware, use ntbackup as described in the EMC Avamar System Administration Manual.

Note: This step is required only if the AD server was recovered without the VDM configuration data in its schema.

VMware vCenter

• Install or recover the vCenter application. • Install or recover the vCenter database application (SQL Server 2005 by default). • Recover the vCenter database using the Avamar database plug-in.

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View Manager Server

• Install or recover the View Manager application. • Recover the VDM AD schema flat file and import it into AD using the VDMimport.exe utility.

Note: This step is required only if the AD server was recovered without the VDM configuration data in its schema.

ESX VMware View servers

• Rebuild the ESX infrastructure that will be used for virtualization of the desktops. • Install the VDM ESX Server Agent on the ESX servers.

User data disks

• Recover the user data disks to the centralized storage solution.

Virtual desktop templates

• Recover the virtual desktop templates to an NFS share or directly to the ESX infrastructure. • Import the templates using vCenter.

Conclusion The purpose of this white paper is to define the individual components of the VMware View solution and discuss various approaches to protecting those components using the Avamar backup and recovery technology. The first approach, which involves creating a duplicate storage-based copy of all of the underlying LUNs, is the least invasive to the applications during the backup process, as there is virtually no impact to the production application components; however, it does require a mirrored storage infrastructure that can be split and presented to the Avamar backup solution. The second approach involves using Avamar client software agents to back up each individual component of the VMware View infrastructure, and does not require a duplicate storage pool. In this scenario, the client agents will need to quiesce the databases’ elements momentarily during the backup process, but will provide fast and reliable deduplicated backups of the data. In both scenarios, the unparalleled deduplication capabilities of the Avamar solution will drive down overall infrastructure costs dramatically, and will enable fast and reliable restore of any or all key components of the VMware View environment.

For more information on best practices for protecting a VMware View environment as well as the return on investment of an Avamar backup and recovery solution, please contact your local EMC or EMC Partner sales executive, or visit us directly at EMC.com.

References For additional information on technologies discussed in this paper, the following resources are recommended:

• VMware VMware View product page on VMware.com http://www.vmware.com/go/view/

• VMware Communities – Enterprise Desktop Products http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/entdesk

• Avamar page on EMC.com http://www.emc.com/products/detail/software/avamar.htm

• Powerlink®, EMC’s customer- and employee-only extranet (registration required) http://powerlink.emc.com

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