What Is an Agentless Backup
-
-
In Veam's own guide to Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5, they openly say (as has always been known) that they use the storage layer's native snapshot mechanism to get the data. Now some snapshot mechanisms, like those in ESXi, are super advanced and way more efficient than others and can do a lot of smart things. But Veeam themselves, the shining example of agentless backups, fundamentally uses snapshots just like everyone else. To be agentless, you have to have the storage layer doing the snapping, and currently snapping is the sole mechanism available whether on a local server, external storage array, RAIN, whatever. Since the 1990s, snapshots are the mechanism available for this. In fact, it's hard to picture what other option could exist, but maybe someday someone will invent one.
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/backup_hiw.html?ver=95
8: "Veeam Backup & Replication requests vCenter Server or ESXi host to create a VM snapshot. VM disks are put to the read-only state, and every virtual disk receives a delta file. "
-
@fateknollogee said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
I don't even think the Scale guys could/would make that claim.
They don't in their whitepaper, but might as well, as they state that for special cases and workloads that agent-based would be an alternative to the built-in backup system. As agentless is the only alternative to agent-based, and built in platform backups are called agentless, they've made it clear that that is what they are considering it, which they should, as that is clearly what it is.
https://www.scalecomputing.com/documents/white-papers/white_papers_backup_hc3.pdf
-
@scottalanmiller said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
@fateknollogee said in How to take advantage of virtualization. Major products get updated:
@scottalanmiller said in How to take advantage of virtualization. Major products get updated:
@fateknollogee said in How to take advantage of virtualization. Major products get updated:
@scottalanmiller said in How to take advantage of virtualization. Major products get updated:
@fateknollogee said in How to take advantage of virtualization. Major products get updated:
@scottalanmiller said in How to take advantage of virtualization. Major products get updated:
It does actually get agentless backup, it's just not a very good one. I have agentless backups on my KVM systems. Better than VMware Free, not anything close to Hyper-V.
What product are you using for agentless backups?
We use KVM via Scale. Scale has built in agentless backups.
Since when?
You're not talking about their snapshot functionality?Yes, that's what agentless backups are, a form of snapshots.
Calling snapshots = agentless backups....now, that's a bit of a stretch.
How is that a stretch in any way? What do you think Unitrends agentless backups are? I think thinking that agentless means anything other than a platform level snapshot is the stretch. Agentless is VERY clearly defined and well known and has always meant one thing. It never implies anything more than that. Just as agent based implies nothing special, either.
Agentless means the backup software is not installed on the VM. Agentless backups are not snapshots, but agentless backups do their backup with the help of snapshots.
"agentless backup" does not equal "snapshot"... rather, agentless backups are created with the help of snapshots, but the backup is not a snapshot.
-
@obsolesce said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
Agentless means the backup software is not installed on the VM. Agentless backups are not snapshots, but agentless backups do their backup with the help of snapshots.
"agentless backup" does not equal "snapshot"... rather, agentless backups are created with the help of snapshots, but the backup is not a snapshot.
Correct, but it was that Scale uses snapshots as a helper in making a backup that was said to make it not agentless. A snapshot alone is not a backup. But Scale, like Veeam, uses snapshots as part of the backup process. As do all agentless systems.
The problem was that saying because snapshots can't be used and still be agentless would make all agentless products... not agentless by that definition, even Veeam.
-
@scottalanmiller said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
@obsolesce said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
Agentless means the backup software is not installed on the VM. Agentless backups are not snapshots, but agentless backups do their backup with the help of snapshots.
"agentless backup" does not equal "snapshot"... rather, agentless backups are created with the help of snapshots, but the backup is not a snapshot.
Correct, but it was that Scale uses snapshots as a helper in making a backup that was said to make it not agentless. A snapshot alone is not a backup. But Scale, like Veeam, uses snapshots as part of the backup process. As do all agentless systems.
The problem was that saying because snapshots can't be used and still be agentless would make all agentless products... not agentless by that definition, even Veeam.
Oh I took how you said it the wrong way. I gotcha now.
-
@obsolesce said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
@scottalanmiller said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
@obsolesce said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
Agentless means the backup software is not installed on the VM. Agentless backups are not snapshots, but agentless backups do their backup with the help of snapshots.
"agentless backup" does not equal "snapshot"... rather, agentless backups are created with the help of snapshots, but the backup is not a snapshot.
Correct, but it was that Scale uses snapshots as a helper in making a backup that was said to make it not agentless. A snapshot alone is not a backup. But Scale, like Veeam, uses snapshots as part of the backup process. As do all agentless systems.
The problem was that saying because snapshots can't be used and still be agentless would make all agentless products... not agentless by that definition, even Veeam.
Oh I took how you said it the wrong way. I gotcha now.
Literally every conversation @scottalanmiller and I have had for like...4 years?
-
@scottalanmiller said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
@obsolesce said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
Agentless means the backup software is not installed on the VM. Agentless backups are not snapshots, but agentless backups do their backup with the help of snapshots.
"agentless backup" does not equal "snapshot"... rather, agentless backups are created with the help of snapshots, but the backup is not a snapshot.
Correct, but it was that Scale uses snapshots as a helper in making a backup that was said to make it not agentless. A snapshot alone is not a backup. But Scale, like Veeam, uses snapshots as part of the backup process. As do all agentless systems.
The problem was that saying because snapshots can't be used and still be agentless would make all agentless products... not agentless by that definition, even Veeam.
Comparing the Scale "snapshot" vs Veeam "snapshot" is an apples-orange comparison.
2nd paragraph, page 4 of the whitepaper says:
"Snapshots alone do not make a backup, even though they are extremely useful for local recovery of data from a number of operational disasters. For a true backup strategy, snapshots must be replicated onto another device, preferably at another site."Do you need another Scale device on the other end or not?
With Veeam (in a non-Scale enviroment), I can send the "snaphots/backups" (or whatever you want to call them) to a generic server/NFS/SMB share etc.
-
@fateknollogee It's not required, but it is the design in a lot of the cases that I've seen.
3 host Scale system, with 2 at one location, and the last in a remote location.
Nothing in the Scale Design requires you to use this approach, you can setup Veeam or some other such solution and backup your VMs to a cloud if you wanted too.
-
@dustinb3403 said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
Nothing in the Scale Design requires you to use this approach, you can setup Veeam or some other such solution and backup your VMs to a cloud if you wanted too.
If you go the Veeam route, would that not make it agent-based?
-
@fateknollogee Whatever requirements you had would determine that. I was simply providing an example.
With Scale you can backup directly to a remote IIRC from the demo that I saw.
Paging @ScaleLegion
-
@fateknollogee Well if that's the case I've been using agentless backups and didn't even know it lol
-
I dont get the controversy here. Every single agentless backup uses snapshots, always has. Veeam, Unitrends, etc. How else could they work?
edit: For example, I can do a snapshot in XS/xcp, then export that snapshot. That is a real agentless backup. This is exactly the same process Unitrends uses, with a bit of flair added on like dedup and some other stuff like automation. -
@scottalanmiller said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
@fateknollogee said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
I don't even think the Scale guys could/would make that claim.
They don't in their whitepaper, but might as well, as they state that for special cases and workloads that agent-based would be an alternative to the built-in backup system. As agentless is the only alternative to agent-based, and built in platform backups are called agentless, they've made it clear that that is what they are considering it, which they should, as that is clearly what it is.
https://www.scalecomputing.com/documents/white-papers/white_papers_backup_hc3.pdf
They can take a snapshot and replicate it somewhere else. That isn't really revolutionary in and of itself (EMC had storage arrays that could do this in the 90's). One challenge to this is what are you recovering?
-
does the application require being put in a backup ready state? (Does the snapshot system support running pre-freeze and post, thaw scripts in the guest to accomplish this?). more importantly is this something I"m going to manually have to do for each application, or does the backup software detect and have awareness of how to do this and report on success/failure?
-
Agentless backups that just block level clones may be useful for some things (Image level restore of an OS drive) but there are other things people often look for. Support for file level, or application level (Brick level sometimes called) restores? Index's built to make the search for that possible? the ability to "search" all the snaps without having to mount them (Veeam Array offload snap protection with Nimble as an example) can mean the difference between 5 minutes, and hours of fighting with an application to get an export of a schema to get some things restored.
-
Testing. Can the Backup and DR platform perform fully isolated testing of recovery (Build an isolated shadow network that's segmented, perform application and service checks). This is where the DR/BC software gets pretty nifty and advanced on making runbook testing easy.
-
Does the application have distributed state? If so you may need to snapshot and quiescent and stun a GROUP of VM's at the same time. There's some real devil in the details with this stuff, but new Scale-out apps this is also a concern.
-
-
@momurda said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
I dont get the controversy here. Every single agentless backup uses snapshots, always has. Veeam, Unitrends, etc. How else could they work?
edit: For example, I can do a snapshot in XS/xcp, then export that snapshot. That is a real agentless backup. This is exactly the same process Unitrends uses, with a bit of flair added on like dedup and some other stuff like automation.This is actually incorrect. There have been agentless systems that can mirror data without using a snapshot by leveraging write splitting technology. RecoveryPoint was an early one in the physical layer (and similar storage virtualization engines). VAIO based replication (RP4VM's, Veritas) also can replicate without a snapshot as the API's allow for write splitting to occur at the hypervisor layer giving you access to a "journal" and window you can recover from.
You may use snapshots, or scripts to stun applications WITH these technologies to improve consistency of recovery, but they have existed for a long time and can run without snapshots.
-
@fateknollogee said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
Do you need another Scale device on the other end or not?
With Veeam (in a non-Scale enviroment), I can send the "snaphots/backups" (or whatever you want to call them) to a generic server/NFS/SMB share etc.This is the core of the TCO battle between "Storage Appliances" and Storage/Backup software. One requires you buy xxx appliance where the software is tied to the hardware. this is fine if forward pricing can be guaranteed at a consistent level, or the ease of "Single SKU purchase/sale" exceeds the lack of cost control. You couldn't replicate a VMAX to a DL380, and nothing is really new here.
Another thing is if you replicate it to "something else" I also need to consider what I need to recover too. Veeam with their DRaaS partners will let you recover from HPE to Dell, or Cisco to Lenovo or whatever the partner is using for hosting. I think they have over a 1000 hosting partners. They even offer the ability to restore to various public clouds (IBM Cloud, VMC on AWS, Azure). IF you are operating a hybrid cloud strategy with one of these providers already (and have the direct connections etc) that can help with the decision. WHERE you are going to put the data is only as important as WHAT you are going to do with it.
Just because a storage/backup solution can send data to a cloud (the cheap part) doesn't mean it can recover local to that cloud, and if you are stuck waiting on the data to egress back out to a copy of that appliance it can cause issues with hitting your RTO.
-
@storageninja said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
@fateknollogee said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
Do you need another Scale device on the other end or not?
With Veeam (in a non-Scale enviroment), I can send the "snaphots/backups" (or whatever you want to call them) to a generic server/NFS/SMB share etc.This is the core of the TCO battle between "Storage Appliances" and Storage/Backup software. One requires you buy xxx appliance where the software is tied to the hardware. this is fine if forward pricing can be guaranteed at a consistent level, or the ease of "Single SKU purchase/sale" exceeds the lack of cost control. You couldn't replicate a VMAX to a DL380, and nothing is really new here.
Another thing is if you replicate it to "something else" I also need to consider what I need to recover too. Veeam with their DRaaS partners will let you recover from HPE to Dell, or Cisco to Lenovo or whatever the partner is using for hosting. I think they have over a 1000 hosting partners. They even offer the ability to restore to various public clouds (IBM Cloud, VMC on AWS, Azure). IF you are operating a hybrid cloud strategy with one of these providers already (and have the direct connections etc) that can help with the decision. WHERE you are going to put the data is only as important as WHAT you are going to do with it.
Just because a storage/backup solution can send data to a cloud (the cheap part) doesn't mean it can recover local to that cloud, and if you are stuck waiting on the data to egress back out to a copy of that appliance it can cause issues with hitting your RTO.
Sure but that is an entirely different conversation from what is going on here. RPO and RTO objectives need to be evaluated long before you pick your backup solution(s).
Never should you have a conversation of "well with this vendor we can do this really cool thing, but it costs X". If you don't need that functionality or can't appropriately leverage it why would you consider it as a must have feature?
-
If your RPO and RTO objects are lax (say 48 hours of downtime) any storage vendor in the world should be able to at a minimum, ship you a copy of your data.
Now this doesn't mean that you'll have somewhere to restore it too, or run it from. But that of course is a part of your recovery and restoration plan. Having a facility that is capable of supporting your staff and systems, a supplier (or spare hardware in working condition), accessibility to that space and systems.
-
For example @hobbit666 wants a hypervisor with Agentless backup functionality, because the other people he work with are "Windows guys".
So his approach is to use XCP-ng and XO, which while simple to use and setup (and find support) might cause more issues down the road.
Is it the correct tool for the job, maybe. . . but maybe Citrix XenServer and Veeam would be a better option, or Hyper-V and Veritas or any other combination.
Maybe an agent based solution would be substantially better, because it's "all gui's" at that point and the "Windows Guys" just need to point and click to restore a file, folder or an entire system.
Taking each part of this conversation as "the only thing that matters now" and discussing it individually without considering the entire picture is a foolish task. As almost certainly there will be a follow up conversation of "why doesn't it do this".
-
@storageninja said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
@momurda said in What Is an Agentless Backup:
I dont get the controversy here. Every single agentless backup uses snapshots, always has. Veeam, Unitrends, etc. How else could they work?
edit: For example, I can do a snapshot in XS/xcp, then export that snapshot. That is a real agentless backup. This is exactly the same process Unitrends uses, with a bit of flair added on like dedup and some other stuff like automation.This is actually incorrect. There have been agentless systems that can mirror data without using a snapshot by leveraging write splitting technology. RecoveryPoint was an early one in the physical layer (and similar storage virtualization engines). VAIO based replication (RP4VM's, Veritas) also can replicate without a snapshot as the API's allow for write splitting to occur at the hypervisor layer giving you access to a "journal" and window you can recover from.
You may use snapshots, or scripts to stun applications WITH these technologies to improve consistency of recovery, but they have existed for a long time and can run without snapshots.
Uhhuh. What is the cost of these solutions? Hundreds of thousands of dollars? Millions of dollars? This is an SMB IT admin forum, not Fortune 100 IT Admin forum.
Any of the solutions you mention here are meant for huge shops with annual multimillion dollar IT budgets.
I could give you specifics, but like all IT products, the price is hidden until you talk to someone on the phone.
I doubt anybody here on this forum is in an environment where these would be considered. One of the examples I see on the web for one of these products is for 2500 vms.
None of them work with anything other than VMware.
