Typical Scenarios

Backup & Recovery

The core functionality of Storware Backup & Recovery is to provide agentless data protection for multiple virtualization, container, and cloud platforms, storage providers, with the option to enhance it with OS agents and custom application backup.

With snapshot-based backups, you don't have to install an agent inside VMs or customize your hypervisors.

Backups performed by Storware Backup & Recovery are usually crash-consistent, but you can enable application consistency or enhance the backup process with your own custom pre-/post-snapshot remote command execution.

Snapshots are exported from your virtualization platform and can be stored in the backup provider of your choice. You can use enterprise-grade backup providers, object storage, or just a file system as your target.

This means that Storware Backup & Recovery can act as a stand-alone solution or as a proxy to your existing storage or enterprise backup provider.

With mounted backups, you can also restore individual files from your backups via a Web UI or directly from the Storware Backup & Recovery Node. If needed, you can quickly preview the VM, and you can also use Instant Restore to boot the VM directly from the backup destination.

Similarly, Storware Backup & Recovery can protect just storage instances - i.e., Ceph RBD volumes, Nutanix Volume Groups, or Nutanix Files - separately from your Virtual Machines.

On the other hand, the OS Agent that comes with Storware Backup & Recovery can also protect individual files on any host (physical or virtual) running Windows, Linux, or macOS.

Disaster Recovery

Real disasters can sometimes occur - with Backup & Recovery, you can configure your backups to be performed in one datacenter and, if necessary, restore them in a second datacenter.

Backup & Recovery can use replicated file systems or other mechanisms built into the backup provider to keep a copy in the secondary data center.

All metadata is kept either in a central, easy-to-replicate DB or alongside backups (e.g., OS Agent backups), making it easy to protect the solution itself.

During DR, you can use Recovery Plans to restore multiple VMs to a predefined location.

Snapshot Management

Backups are usually quite resource-intensive. Snapshots have to be exported and stored, which typically means that you can't perform them too often. With Backup & Recovery, you can use Snapshot Management policies to periodically create additional snapshots on your VMs without needing to export them.

When you need to restore a VM to the most recent saved state, you can quickly revert to a snapshot that Storware Backup & Recovery has created for you.

Application Backup & Recovery

There are many cases where VM-level backup may not be enough. Applications such as databases typically have their own mechanisms that guarantee consistent backups. As we are aware, in many situations, you need the option to customize the backup process; therefore, Backup & Recovery provides a generic mechanism that supports multiple scenarios.

You can prepare a custom script or invoke any backup command that produces backup artifacts (or initiates the external backup process) on a remote host and stores backups in your backup provider.

With Application backup, you can extend your protection capabilities to:

• any remote applications with their own mechanisms

• hypervisor configuration

• files on remote hosts (physical, virtual, or containers)

  • including shares, mounted object-storage buckets, LVM block devices, or virtually anything that can be presented as a file

• initiating external backup processes such as RMAN

Backup Destination integration

With Storware Backup & Recovery, you can use virtually any storage to keep your backups safe. Starting from a plain file system, through different kinds of object storage, and ending with other backup solutions (such as IBM, Dell, etc.).

With pre/post-access customization hooks, you can also run a custom script whenever any task works with the backup destination. This means that it is possible to invoke a synchronization mechanism, mounting custom volumes, etc..