One of the biggest problems with virtualization is that it can increase the number of actual servers that have to be backed up by ten-fold or more.

In a Leveraging Virtualization with Deduplication to Cut Costs webinar presented by ExaGrid Systems and Vizioncore, a way to simplify the backup process for virtual servers is clearly outlined.

Jeff Crum, product marketing manager for ExaGrid, does a good job of explaining how an increase in the number of virtual servers can adversely affect the backup process by significantly increasing the amount of time it takes to backup all the servers. This expansion of the backup window could easily overwhelm the performance attributes of existing tape backup systems.

Crum makes a case for switching to a disk-based backup system that not only includes deduplication software, but is actually an appliance with dedicated processor, memory and bandwidth capabilities that do not put any additional processing requirements on the physical servers hosting the virtual machines. Furthermore, the ExaGrid appliances are designed to provide scalability by plugging into a grid that allows multiple appliances to support the same backup and recovery processes.

George Pradel, director of strategic alliances for Vizioncore, then goes on to describe how company’s vRanger Pro backup software combines with the ExaGrid appliances to reduce backup windows by 30 to 90 percent after a set up time that only takes 20 minutes. And in what is becoming a trend emulated elsewhere, only the physical server requires agent software, as opposed to deploying agent software for each virtual server.

Rating: Good discussion of an increasingly annoying virtualization issue – TWM1.