Introduction to Virtualization

Physical resources used by virtualization:

CPU (is the electronic circuitry within a computer that carries out the instructions of a computer program by performing the basic
arithmetic, logical, control and input/output (I/O) operations specified by the instructions),
RAM (Random-access memory - is a form of computer data storage. A random-access memory device allows data items to be
accessed (read or written) in almost the same amount of time irrespective of the physical location of data inside the memory. In
contrast, with other direct-access data storage media such as hard disks, CD-RWs, DVD-RWs and the older drum memory, the
time required to read and write data items varies significantly depending on their physical locations on the recording medium,
due to mechanical limitations such as media rotation speeds and arm movement.)
STORAGE ( Storage is frequently used to mean the devices and data connected to the computer through input/output operations
- that is, hard disk and tape systems and other forms of storage that don't include computer memory and other in-computer
storage. For the enterprise, the options for this kind of storage are of much greater variety and expense than that related to
memory. This meaning is probably more common in the IT industry than meaning 2 .
2) In a more formal usage, storage has been divided into: (1) primary storage, which holds data in memory (sometimes called
random access memory or RAM) and other "built-in" devices such as the processor's L1 cache, and (2) secondary storage, which
holds data on hard disks, tapes, and other devices requiring input/output operations.)
VM - is an emulation of a particular computer system. Virtual machines operate based on the computer architecture and functions
of a real or hypothetical computer, and their implementations may involve specialized hardware, software, or a combination of
both.
Hypervisor

is a piece of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a
hypervisor is running one or more virtual machines is defined as a host machine. Each virtual machine is called a guest
machine.

is a program that allows multiple operating systems to share a single hardware host. Each operating system appears to
have the host's processor, memory, and other resources all to itself. However, the hypervisor is actually controlling the
host processor and resources, allocating what is needed to each operating system in turn and making sure that the guest
operating systems (called virtual machines) cannot disrupt each other.

Benefits of virtualization:

Server Consolidation

Testing and development

Dynamic Load Balancing and Disaster Recovery

Virtual Desktops

Improved System Reliability and Security

Supported virtualization platforms: VMWare and Hyper V

2 methods of hypervisor installation: bare-metal and OS-based
Host OS - A host OS is most commonly used to describe the operating system that interacts with the hardware and runs a Type 2
hypervisor. A Type 2 hypervisor, also known as a hosted hypervisor, runs on top of a host operating system rather than interacting
directly with the hardware. This Type 2 hypervisor can then create multiple virtual machines (VMs) that will each run a guest
operating system. In this case, guest operating systems do not need to be the same as the host OS.
Guest OS - A guest operating system (guest OS) is an operating system (OS) that is secondary to the OS originally installed on a
computer, which is known as the host operating system. The guest OS is either part of a partitioned system or part of a virtual
machine (VM) setup. A guest OS provides an alternative OS for a device.
SCVMM (System Center Virtual Machine Manager) is a tool for managing your Hyper-V host machines from a central console.
Lab Management communicates with SCVMM to be able to use the virtual machines and templates to create environments. Two
versions of System Center Virtual Machine Manager are supported for Lab Management: SCVMM 2012 or SCVMM 2008 R2.
System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) is a cross-platform data center management system for operating systems and
hypervisors. It uses a single interface that shows state, health and performance information of computer systems. It also provides
alerts generated according to some availability, performance, configuration or security situation being identified. It works with
Microsoft Windows Server and Unix-based hosts.

VMWare licencing
VMware licensing - per CPU | Hyper-V licensing 2cpu/PSYSICAL SERVER
In total, IT organizations can choose between six VMware vSphere editions, or bundles, and one free product. The paid editions
can be configured with a customer's choice of the full ESX hypervisor, or the "light" ESXi. The free edition is available only with
ESXi.
Free VMware ESXi
With a zero-dollar price tag, VMware's free ESXi offering is a compelling option for organizations just trying virtualization.
VMware's free ESXi can be easily downloaded directly from the VMware Web site, and users can readily upgrade to a vSphere
edition as their needs dictate.
The hypervisor included in the VMWare free ESXi download is the same as that in paid versions of vSphere. The free ESXi is
available for hosts with an unlimited number of processors of up to six cores, and for hosts with a maximum of 256 GB of RAM.
There is no limit to the number of virtual machines that can run on a free ESXi host.
Free VMWare ESXi does, however, come with several restrictions. It is designated as single server, so administrators cannot use
the VMware vSphere Client to manage more than one ESXi host at a time. The reason for this restriction is that ESXi does not
include the vCenter Agent, and that its application programming interfaces (APIs) are read-only and cannot be executed against.
The restriction also precludes third-party scripts from changing ESXi hypervisor settings.
Upgrading a free ESXi host to a vSphere license enables the vCenter Agent and unlocks the ESXi APIs, enabling management via
management interfaces such as vCLI, vMA, PERL Toolkit, PowerShell Toolkit and others.
Support for free ESXi is available through self-service Web offerings per incident, or annually. Per-incident email and phone
support is $299 per single incident, $749 for three incidents per year, and $1,149 for five incidents. Annual support is available
starting at $249 per processor for Gold (business hours), or $298 for Platinum (24/7), with a minimum purchase of two processors.
VSphere Essentials for SMBs
For SMBs, VMware offers the Essentials and Essentials Plus bundles, for $495 and $3,495, respectively. Both bundles provide ESX
or ESXi for up to three two-processor servers, where each processor may not have more than six cores. Groups of more than three
hosts licensed with Essentials or Essentials Plus cannot be managed in the same vCenter cluster. Features of the Essentials bundle
include a choice of ESX/ESXi, VMware vStorage Virtual Machine File System (VMFS), support for four vCPUs, the vCenter Server
Agent, vStorage APIs/VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB), vCenter Update Manager, and vCenter for Essentials. The Essentials
bundle includes a one-year subscription; support is offered on a per-incident basis.
The Essentials Plus bundle builds on those features and adds vMotion, VMware High Availability (HA) and VMware Data Recovery.
Unlike Essentials, Essentials Plus requires the purchase of at least one year of support and subscription services (SnS), purchased
separately.
All VMware's enterprise vSphere editions are licensed per processor, where a processor can have either up to six or up to12 cores,
depending on the edition. VMware places no restrictions on the number and kind of virtual machines (VMs) that can be hosted
on a server, but it does require the purchase of at least one year of SnS per license.
VSphere Standard Edition includes a choice of ESX or ESXi, VMFS, four-way virtual SMP (vCPUs), the vCenter Server Agent, the
vStorage APIs or VCB, vCenter Update Manager, vMotion, VMware HA, and vStorage Thin Provisioning. It is priced at $995 per
processor and is available for hosts with up to six-core processors and up to 256 GB of RAM.
VSphere Advanced Edition builds on Standard Edition with the addition of VMotion, hot-add, Fault Tolerance, Data Recovery and
vShield Zones. It is priced at $2,245 per processor, and can support systems with up to 12-core processors and 256 GB of RAM.
VSphere Enterprise Edition builds on Advanced Edition with the addition of Storage VMotion, Distributed Resource Scheduler
(DRS), and Distributed Power Management (DPM). It is priced at $2,875 per processor and supports systems with up to six-core
processors and up to 256 GB of RAM.
VSphere Enterprise Plus Edition includes all the features of the lesser editions, plus Host Profiles and the vNetwork Distributed
Switch. It can be purchased for $3,495 per processor, with support for up to 12 cores per processor with no limit on RAM. For
$3,995, it can also include the Cisco Nexus 1000V virtual switch.
Managing vSphere with vCenter Server
VCenter Server provides a centralized vSphere management console from which administrators can configure, provision, monitor,
troubleshoot and update their virtual environment. It also a prerequisite for many other VMware and third-party management
products and is thus a de facto requirement for most VMware environments.
There are three vCenter Server editions: the version included in the vSphere Essentials bundles, vCenter Server Foundation, which
provides management for up to three servers for $1,495, and vCenter Server Standard, which is priced at $4,995 but does not
impose limits on the number of hosts it can manage.
The following features are included across these three vCenter Server offerings for managing vSphere: a management server, a
database server, a search engine, the vSphere Client, the Web Access portal, and vCenter APIs and a .NET extension to provide
remote access and integration with other systems.

VCenter Server Standard adds two advanced features for managing vSphere: vCenter Server Linked Mode, for connecting multiple
vCenter instances, and vCenter Server Orchestrator, for automating the environment.
As with vSphere, VMware imposes a minimum of one year of SnS on all vCenter licenses.
Local storage
Most storage devices share the same physical and logical structure, in order to be able to locate the data you want, you need a
way to identify where your data resides, so this is the reason of why Hard Disk drives have sectors (or simply "blocks"), in many
cases this reflects the layout of the data written into the physical medium. But accessing your data by addressing the sector
number while not very complex, it's an error prone method and you have to keep track yourself of the data you write and the
sectors you have written to. So this is where a file-system comes to the rescue, a simple file-system will help you by addressing
the blocks used and providing you a common interface to retrieve your data, the most common paradigm used is the folder/file
structure (this is why is it called a file-system).
DAS
The simplest storage is a Hard Disk connected to your computer/server. Hard disk drives need to communicate somehow, and
they need to use a well defined physical interface and protocol in order for your computer to understand them, the most common
interface and protocol employed today for PC is the S-ATA or Serial ATA or Serial Advanced Technology Attachment. So a hard
disk which is physically connected trough the same interface to your PC is identified as a Direct Attached Storage or DAS for short.
To make it clear, ANY block device which is directly connected to your system makes a DAS, even an USB stick is a DAS (but the
interface is USB in this case). And unless you access your disk by block numbers you need a file system on top of it in order to put
it at good use.
NAS
But what if you can provide access to your file-system to other computers (for transferring files)? Many protocols have been
created over the years to accomplish easy file sharing on a Network with other computers, as an example I will only name the
main per Operating System: UNIX and the likes - NFS , DOS/Windows - CIFS/aka.SMB, Apple - AFP. What they do is share files over
a network, of course file implies an underlying file-system structure and file-system implies block device, but because it's done
over a network it's called as NAS - Network Attached Storage. All of this interfaces explicitly prohibit remote lookups of block
addresses (for security reasons first) and normally such interfaces are not even implemented. Network file systems can be
considered safe enough to be used in a concurrent way, the Protocol implementation will take care of problems due to concurrent
access to the same resource (file), normally by locking the file to a single user/requester. While any computer can share files over
a network and could be called NAS, normally by NAS you identify only devices which main purpose is to share files over the
network. Normally NAS operates on IP/TCP Ethernet networks and most can easily provide access to your data over the Internet.
SAN
Let's say that I like to read my data by block numbers, because I've written my own software but I'm in need of many disk drives,
more than a single computer can host. The solution would be to share the disks of other computers, but as said before my NAS
doesn't provide a way to lookup block numbers remotely. So I will need to use another protocol to share my disk drives, one that
doesn't need a file system to operate. The following interfaces/protocols/networks exists today to share disks over a network:
SCSI - The father of all ;) While SCSI is a low level protocol is used encapsulated into secondary or transport protocols to send
commands to controllers or disks
SAS - Serial Attacched SCSI This allows to create entire SANs as SAS supports routing and addressing
FC - Fiber Channel
iSCSI - Internet SCSI Or simply SCSI over Ethernet (in IP networks)
ATAoE and similar - ATA over Ethernet
Virtually any low level protocol can be encapsulated into network packets and sent remotely to allow to access the hard disk as it
was connected locally. Then you can read your data by block numbers or simply create a file-system on the new block device.

Shared storage - is a type of storage resource that is shared or accessed by multiple users. It is generally used in enterprise IT
environments where a central storage infrastructure is shared between multiple users across the organization's network.

VMware features:
VMotion - enables the live migration of running virtual machines from one physical server to another with zero downtime,
continuous service availability, and complete transaction integrity.
storage vMotion - An intuitive interface for live migration of virtual machine disk files within and across storage arrays with no
downtime or disruption in service.
DRS - Distributed Resource Scheduler ggregates computing capacity across a collection of servers into logical resource pools and
intelligently allocates available resources among the virtual machines based on pre-defined rules that reflect business needs and
changing priorities.
DPM - distributed power management - feature that reduces power consumption in your datacenter by powering down hosts in
a DRS enabled cluster during times of excess capacity. DPM works with DRS to determine when resources are in demand/excess
and acts appropriately.
High Availability - provides easy-to-use, cost- effective high availability for applications running in virtual machines. In the event
of physical server failure, affected virtual machines are automatically restarted on other production servers with spare capacity.
Fault Tolerance - is the property that enables a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of (or one or
more faults within) some of its components
Thin provisioning - term used to describe the consolidation and automated process of allocating just "the exact required amount"
of server space at the time it is required.
thick provisioning - provisioning format in which the virtual machine reserves all the space on the VMFS and zeros out the disk
blocks at the time of creation.
Cluster - onsists of a set of loosely or tightly connected computers that work together so that, in many respects, they can be
viewed as a single system. Unlike grid computers, computer clusters have each node set to perform the same task, controlled and
scheduled by software
vSphere Client - is the principal interface for administering vCenter Server and ESXi. When the server is a vCenter Server system,
the vSphere Client displays all the options available to the vSphere environment, according to the licensing configuration and the
user permissions.
VCenter - is basically a management tool that will allow you to manage VM's across multiple VMware hosts at once. You'll connect
to vCenter Server with a vSphere client and instead of one host you'll see multiple hosts at once.
vCloud Director - Delivers cloud computing for existing datacenters by pooling virtual infrastructure resources and delivering them
to users as catalog-based services.

Data protection challenges

Backup:
What is backup - is the activity of copying files or databases so that they will be preserved in case of equipment failure or other
catastrophe.
Types of backups and how they work
Full - A backup of all files in a specified backup set or job
Differential - A backup of all changed and new files since the last full backup
Forward Incremental - produces a backup chain that consists of the first full backup and a set of forward incremental backups
following it. Additionally, the forward incremental backup chain contains synthetic full and/or active full backups that split the
backup chain into shorter series.
Forward Incremental-Forever - produces a backup chain that consists of the first full backup and a set of forward incremental
backups following it.
Reversed Incremental - produces a backup chain that consists of the last full backup and a set of reverse incremental backups
preceding it.
CBT technology native function in VMWare, analyses the data and only backups the changed blocks in order to save time and
ressources.
Retention policy - policies of persistent data and records management for meeting legal and business data archival requirements;
Compression - involves encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Compression is useful because it
helps reduce resource usage, such as data storage space or transmission capacity.

Deduplication - is a specialized data compression technique for eliminating duplicate copies of repeating data.
Application aware image processing freeze applications in order to not impact them negatively during the backup process
Backup window - is the time slot/window when it is most suitable to back up data, applications or a system. It is a
predefined/prescheduled time when the backup software is permitted to start the backup process on a computer system.
On-site & Off-site backups
Long term archiving (tape, secondary storage, cloud)
3-2-1 Strategy
Replication
Downtime
SLA
RTO
RPO
CDP/near CDP continuous data protection

Veeam Availability Suite

Leveraged data
Verified protection
High-speed recovery
Data loss avoidance
Complete Visibility

Agent backups vs. agentless

What objects do we back up? Application objects
What objects do we restore?
Veeam Backup & Replication architecture
VBR server to be installed on a 64 bit server or virtual machine
Proxy 2 in order to achieved the optimal route for data transfers (offhost backup proxy for Hyper-V: Windows 2008
server; 2012, 2012 R)
Repository - holds configuration for backup, backup image for future restores, important metadata
Failover - switch to replica when there are issues on main site
Failback go back to prod site when the problem stops
vPower - vPower NFS Service is a Microsoft Windows service that runs on a Microsoft Windows machine and enables this machine
to act as an NFS server.
On the vPower NFS server, Veeam Backup & Replication creates a special directory the vPower NFS datastore. When you start
a VM from the backup, Veeam Backup & Replication "publishes" VMDK files of the VM from the backup on the vPower NFS
datastore. Technically, Veeam Backup & Replication emulates the presence of VMDK files on the vPower NFS datastore the
VMDK files themselves are still located in the backup file on the backup repository.
The vPower NFS datastore is then mounted to the ESX(i) host. As a result, the ESX(i) host can "see" backed up VM images via the
vPower NFS datastore and work with them as with regular VMDK files. The emulated VMDK files function as pointers to the real
VMDK files in the backup on the backup repository.
Instant VM Recovery
Instant File-Level Recovery / Multi OS file level recovery
Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange
Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Sharepoint
Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Active Directory
Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL
Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots
U-AIR

1-Click restore EM allows you to restore files from backup with one click; you can restore to the original location or download
to the original machine
Backup from Storage snapshots users can create image-based backups and replicas from storage shapshots as often as they
need to, with little or no impact on production: fast backups, improved disaster recovery, support for multiple storage platforms
Secondary backup to NetApp storage - Veeam Backup Snapshot Vaulting creates both primary and secondary backups directly
from NetApp Snapshot copiesinstantly storing one of the backup copies in SnapVault. To do this, Veeam Backup & Replication
first creates an application-aware VM Snapshot copy followed by a storage Snapshot copy. Once the storage Snapshot copy is
created, the VM snapshot is released and Backup from Storage Snapshots reads the data from the snapshot to create the new
backup file. Backup is completely storage agnostic, which allows the backup file to be saved anywhere including on NetApp ESeries storage.
Backup Copy jobs allows to create several instances ot the same backup data in different locations, whether onsite or offsite.
Backup copies have the same format as those created by backup jobs and customers can recover their data from them when
needed.
Built-in WAN Acceleration use of caching, variable block lenght data fingerprinting and TCP/IP protocol optimisations, WAN
speeds up transfer across the WAN up to 50%. It does not require agents, special network setup, or added bandwith.
Veeam Cloud Connect also VM replication, provides fully integrated, fast and secure cloud-based DR through a service provider.
Advanced images based VM replication includes: cloud host for DR, full site failover, single port connectivity via secure SSL/TLS
connection;
End-to-end encryption AES 265 end-to-end encryption: transforms data into an unreadable, scrambled format with the help of
a cryptographic algorithm and a secret key.
Native tape support users can backup and archive files and VM backups to standalone tapes, tape libraries and virtual tape
libraries connected to any Miscrosoft server in their environment. Includes: parallel processing, native GFS retention and support
for media pools.
Deduplication storage integrations - experience up to 10x faster backup performance with new per-virtual machine (VM) backup
file chains option in the backup repository settings. With this option selected, any backup job writing to this repository will store
each VMs restore points in the dedicated backup file. This enables multiple write streams within a single job with parallel
processing enabled. Enabling multiple streams dramatically improves overall job backup performance. Simply put, most enterprise
backup storage systems never saturate from an input/output (I/O) throughput perspective with a single read or write stream!
VeeamZIP - VeeamZIP is similar to full VM backup. When you create a VeeamZIP file, Veeam Backup Free Edition copies VM
data, compresses it and stores it to a full backup file (VBK) that acts as an independent restore point. You can store a created
VeeamZIP file to a folder on the local host or to a network share. In Veeam Backup Free Edition, you can run the VeeamZIP job
only for one VM. If you need to process several VMs, you can start a number of VeeamZIP jobs simultaneously. VeeamZIP jobs can
only be run manually: you cannot schedule them or save and run them later. Similar to backup jobs in Veeam Backup & Replication,
VeeamZIP jobs are run in the background. Even if you close the Veeam Backup Free Edition console, the process will still continue
to operate.
In Veeam Backup Free Edition, VeeamZIP jobs are not registered in the Veeam Backup & Replication database and are not available
in the list of backups. Backups created in Veeam Backup & Replication are not available in the list of backups, too. To restore data
from backups and VeeamZIP files, you will need to import them when working with the Restore wizard.

Planned Failover

1-Click Failover Orchestration

SureBackup

SureReplica

On-demand sandbox

Quick rollback - quick rollback can be invoked everytime you are restoring a full VM or a VM hard disk into the original location.
What it does is an incremental restore: instead of restoring the entire virtual disk, Veeam Backup & Replication recovers only the
needed blocks to revert the VM to the state that is stored in the selected restore point. Restore times are reduced drastically
because only blocks changed since last backup are copied back.

Backup I/O control

Veeam Enterprise Manager

vCloud Director support uses vCloud Director API to help customers backup vApps and VMs and restore them directly to the
Vcloud Director hierarchy.

Licensing model
The difference between Standard, Enterprise & Enterprise Plus editions
Enterprise plus Wan accelerator, SnapShot, SnapMirror, SnapVault, Backup from storage snapshots, recovery delegation, selfservice file restore portal, recovery delegation
Enterprise ROBO features, Veeam explorers, end-to-end encryption, scale-out backup repository, backup storage integration,
bitlooker, advanced replication technologies, advanced tape support, sure backup, sure replica, on-demand sandbox;
Standard instant VM recovery, Full VM recovery, VM files/hard disk recovery, veeam explorer for storage snapshots (EMC, HPE,
NetApp), limited explorer usage, backup retention policy, deduplication, compression, limited end-to-end encryption, backup
copy, tape support-limited, veeam cloud connect, standalone console,

The limitations of Veeam Backup Free Edition

What hypervisors are not supported in VBR Citrix, Oracle, Lynx Software Technologies

VBR features available for VMware and Hyper-V environments ?!

Veeam deduduplication vs storage deduplication

Veeam Backup & Replication offers customers the capability to copy a backup job to additional backup repositories (including
EMC Data Domain), located either on- or off-site for disaster recovery purposes. Copied backup files have the same format as
those created by backup jobs, and you can use any data recovery option for them. However, instead of copying the entire backup,
a Backup Copy job allows you to select individual VMs from one or more source backup files, and use the data to synthesize new
backup files set in a target repository. Such granularity provides an additional level of control not available with storage-based
replication. For example, this allows you to make off-site copies of only the most important VMs, whereas storage-based
replication can only copy entire backup files produced by primary backup jobs. With EMC Data Domain systems, Veeam Backup &
Replication Backup Copy jobs use Data Domain Boost for reading and writing data.

Veeam ONE
What are the main components of Veeam ONE
Monitor
Reporter
Business View
Key component of the fifth pillar: COMPLETE VISIBILITY.
Delivers monitoring, reporting, and capacity planning for the virtual environment (VMware & Hyper-V), AND for the Veeam backup
infrastructure.
It helps deliver availability through:

24x7 real time monitoring notifying IT administrators of issues before they have negative impact with pre-built
dashboards and alarms

Resource Optimization and Capacity Planning to help remove the guesswork from planning and take a less risky
approach to better understand resource allocation (and)

Customizable reports and Documentation to provide consistent visibility, help IT managers prove compliance (HIPAA,
FCC, DoD), and automate time consuming reports: DATA IS SAFE AND PROTECTED!

And over 25 backup reports to help maintain system availability

Over 200 preset alarms

Alarms dashboard reduces troubleshooting time

Additional drill down data behind graphs/charts

Includes extensive knowledge base

Helps isolate root cause and resolve issues quickly

The limitations of Veeam ONE Free Edition less reports, less customisation, not capacity planning
Additional VMware reports (only for VMware)

What additional functionality of Veeam ONE is available when using in the bundle Veeam Availability Suite/Veeam Backup
Essentials
Monitoring of VBR infrastructure
Additional reports for VBR infrastructure
Veeam ONE for Hyper-V

Veeam One: Value

Complete visibility: Single, comprehensive solution for your virtual infrastructure

Risk reduction: spot potential problems and decrease time resolution

Cost reduction: virtual environment will drive up costs if left unmanaged (e.g. VM sprawl)

Veeam MP
SCOM
Veeam MP architecture and components
Single pane of glass view
Reporting
Capacity Planning
Veeam MP for Hyper-V
Integration with VBR