Actifio Copy Data Management
Actifio, Inc., is a provider of data protection and availability products. Actifio’s technology is used in products sold by the company and products and services sold and offered by its commercial partners. The current list of Actifio patents is available online at: http://www.actifio.com/patents/ Actifio believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. Actifio reserves the right to make changes to information published in this document, including without limitation specifications and product descriptions, at any time and without notice. This document supersedes and replaces all information supplied prior to the publication hereof. THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION IS PROVIDED “AS IS.” ACTIFIO, INC. MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND WITH RESPECT TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION, AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. This software and the associated documentation are proprietary and confidential to Actifio. Use, copying, and distribution of any Actifio software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. Any unauthorized use or reproduction of this software and the documentation may be subject to civil and/or criminal liability. Actifio strives to produce quality documentation and welcomes your feedback.
The information presented in this guide is intended for users who are new to managing and accessing data with an Actifio appliance. This document assumes that the Actifio appliance(s) have been installed and are ready to begin managing your data. The AGM Online Help is comprehensive and easily searchable. You can reach it from the ? icon in the top right corner of AGM. Your Actifio appliance’s Documentation Library contains detailed, step-by-step, application-specific instructions on how to protect and access your data. Each guide is in PDF format and may be viewed online, downloaded, or printed on demand. The following guides will be of particular interest: • Setting Up Users and Roles With the Domain Manager • Configuring Resources and Settings With the Domain Manager • Connecting Hosts to Actifio Appliances • Planning and Developing Service Level Agreements • Virtualizing and Protecting Copy Data with the Application Manager • Accessing and Recovering Copy Data with the Application Manager • Replicating Data Using Actifio Appliances
The ActifioNOW Customer Portal During the configuration and initialization of your Actifio appliance your Actifio representative provided you with a user name and password for the ActifioNOW customer portal. From the customer portal you can obtain detailed reports about your Actifio appliance as well as search the portal’s knowledge base for answers to specific questions. To log into the ActifioNOW customer portal: 1. Go to: https://now.actifio.com
Actifio appliances are highly scalable copy data management platforms that virtualize application data to improve the resiliency, agility, and cloud mobility of your business. They virtualize data in much the same way other technologies have virtualized servers and networks. Actifio appliances enable users to capture data from production systems, manage it the most efficient way possible, and use virtual or physical copies of the data whenever and wherever they are needed.
Application data is captured at the block level, in native format, according to a specified SLA. A golden copy of that data is created, moved, and stored once and is then updated incrementally with only the changed blocks of data in an “incremental forever” model. Unlimited virtual copies of the data can be accessed instantly for use, without proliferating physical copies and taking up additional storage infrastructure
Actifio Appliances on page 3 VDisks on page 4 Storage Pools on page 5 Policy Templates and Policies on page 14 Resource Profiles on page 14 Data Capture Methods on page 15 Capture Mechanisms on page 17 Capture Options on page 18 Replicating Data on page 20 Actifio NAS Director on page 23 Managed Data License
Actifio Appliances Actifio appliances capture and manage data locally and can replicate protected data to other Actifio appliances. Local and Remote Appliances Multiple Actifio appliances can be joined in any combination of primary and secondary relationships. An exchange of certificates is required to join appliances. Once joined, application data can be replicated between appliances. Local and remote are relative to where you are logged in. The Actifio appliance you are logged into is the local Actifio appliance and the other Actifio appliances are considered remote. Actifio CDS and CDX Physical Appliances Actifio CDS and CDX appliances are two-node hardware and software solutions. Actifio physical appliances are installed and configured by your Actifio representative. Actifio Sky Virtual Appliance An Actifio Sky appliance is a virtual machine. Actifio Sky appliances are licensed by capacity. An Actifio Sky appliance captures and manages data locally and can replicate protected data to other Actifio appliances. Actifio Sky for AWS Cloud Appliance An Actifio Sky for AWS appliance is a virtual machine that is licensed by capacity and resides in the AWS cloud space. An Actifio Sky appliance captures and manages application data in the AWS cloud and can replicate captured data to another location. The underlying engine for Actifio Sky for AWS is Actifio Sky.
VDisks Actifio appliances use logical
VDisks (virtual disks or volumes) to virtualize data from hosts. VDisks are taken from a pool of managed disks (MDisks) presented to an Actifio appliance from one or more internal and external arrays. From the VDisks, the data can be deduplicated, cloned, mounted and recovered, presented for test and development work, and manipulated in other tasks. VDisks are created as needed on physical disk arrays. There is a fixed limit of VDisks per Actifio appliance. As you create protection policies, your Actifio appliance will warn you when a configuration may exceed VDisk limits. Actifio appliances employ VDisks in slightly different ways, but the information in this section applies to all types of Actifio appliances. Virtualized Applications on Managed Disks in Your Storage
VDisk Consumption How Many VDisks Do I Have? An Actifio appliance creates VDisks as needed from pools of MDisks on the physical disk arrays in the Actifio appliance.
The applications and hosts never see the MDisks. The VDisk limit for the Actifio CDS appliance is 5000 VDisks with the current firmware, and for the Actifio Sky appliance the VDisk limit varies with the installed capacity license (1000, 3000, or 5000 VDisks). If you have enough VDisks for your needs, but they are growing too large for your existing storage, then you must add storage. If you need more VDisks, then you need another Actifio appliance. How Many VDisks Do I Need? In general, each protected application or VM requires one or more VDisks for the staging disk plus the same number more VDisks per snapshot. In addition, note these rules: • VM-level backups with a snapshot SLA consume one VDisk for each virtual disk in the VM. • File system backups in a Windows environment consume one VDisk for each protected file system. • File system backups in a Unix environment consume a VDisk for every 833GB protected times 1+(number of retained snapshots). You can adjust the 833GB value by changing Staging Disk Granularity in Application Advanced Settings, see Virtualizing and Protecting Copy Data with the Application Manager. • Mounts, LiveClones, and Clones of non-VM applications consume VDisks. • On Linux and Solaris systems, filesystems and Oracle databases consume one VDisk plus another for every additional 2TB data is being protected. • Exchange and SQL databases consume one VDisk for every volume that hosts the database. • Each snapshot of a VDisk consumes one VDisk per snapshot per protected disk. • Snapshots show peak usage, as new snapshots are created before old snapshots are expired. • Each VDisk protected by Dedup-Async consumes one additional VDisk for the DAR snapshot and two VDisks on the target appliance. • After failover and syncback, the failback operation cleans out all the syncback and failover VDisks.