VNX Application Protection Suite Foundation

Welcome to VNX Application Protection Suite Foundations.

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Upon completion of this course, you should be able to identify Application Protection Suite products for the VNX family series.

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This lesson familiarizes the student with VNX Family Application Protection Suite.


In much the same way that EMC has converged and simplified its platforms into a single unified family, EMC has also dramatically simplified its industry leading software portfolio. EMC offers the world’s most powerful solutions for data protection, data management, and data security. EMC provides a vastly simpler way to harness that power more quickly and more cost effectively.

The ultimate expression of EMC’s simple software approach is the VNX Total Efficiency Pack and VNX Total Protection Pack. Each pack offers incredible value: delivering improved capacity efficiency, better performance, and better availability.

This lesson covers the details of the powerful software components that are included in these software suites, specifically the Application Suite.


The VNX Series introduces new hardware and software licensing and packaging. The new software packaging is structured into Suites and Packs. Functionality is purchased in the form of a software suite and combinations of suites are packaged into software packs.

The Total Protection Pack includes all the protection suites for the most comprehensive local and remote protection software as well as full application integration, while the Total Efficiency Pack adds the Security and Compliance Suite and the FAST Suite to the protection components to provide the most comprehensive advanced functionality on the market.

This simplifies the way software features are offered and ordered, with a single software line item covering the required functionality of the customer. What’s more, there is no graduated pricing for the software suites: one software price is all you pay, allowing a customer to physically scale their environments without unexpected software costs. In addition, software pricing is aggressively discounted as customers buy more suites or packs.

All the features offered in the suites or packs (and more) are manageable directly from the Unisphere interface, or are integrated with link and launch to the Unisphere interface. The VNX Series is managed by Unisphere, and the base software includes file deduplication and compression, block compression, virtual provisioning and SAN Copy.


Rather than ordering a number of “a la carte” products, EMC has simplified the optional software into five attractively priced suites:

• The FAST Suite improves performance and maximizes storage efficiency. It includes FAST VP, FAST Cache, Unisphere Analyzer, and Unisphere Quality of Service manager.

• The Security and Compliance Suite helps ensure that data is protected from unwanted changes, deletions, and malicious activity. It includes the event enabler for anti-virus, quota management & auditing, file-level retention and Host Encryption.

• The Local Protection Suite delivers any point-in-time recovery with DVR-like roll-back capabilities. Copies of production data can also be used for development, testing, decision support and backup. This suite includes: SnapView, SnapSure and RecoverPoint/SE CDP.

• The Remote Protection Suite delivers Unified block and file replication, giving customers one way to protect everything better. It includes Replicator, MirrorView and RecoverPoint/SE CRR.

• The Application Protection Suite automates application-consistent copies and proves customers can recover to defined service levels. This suite includes Replication Manager and Data Protection Advisor for Block Replication.

Let’s take a closer look at the components of the Application Suite.

Note: The Block based VNX5100 does not support FAST VP, VEE, FLR, Replicator, or SnapSure. It does not support the Total Efficiency Pack, but a Total Value Pack instead.


The VNX Application Protection Suite includes:

Replication Manager which is a powerful tool designed to automate the creation, management, and use of EMC point-in-time replicas (snapshots, clones, mirrors). No scripting is required! Replication Manager auto-discovers the environment (application host, associated storage, and underlying replication technology) and enables easy point-and-click management by integrating the technology stack from the application to the storage and replicas. Robust functionality options within Replication Manager have the intelligence to manage point-in-time replicas in the context of the application. You will be able to create replicas of your production environment with minimum impact. The easy-to-use, centralized console and GUI make it very easy to create and manage point-in-time copies.

Data Protection Advisor - Replication Analysis provides a unique replication analysis capability that helps companies address cost, compliance, complexity, and confidence in their replication and disaster recovery configurations, helping to expand visibility in their environments.

Data Protection Advisor for Replication discovers and catalogs the application structure and all the associated storage, devices, and replicas. Customers have the ability to define and measure protection policies by application(s) or server(s). With this understanding of the environment, Data Protection Advisor for Replication gives businesses the needed visibility, providing automatic oversight and audit capabilities to all interested parties such as Storage or Database Administrators. Think of Data Protection Advisor for Replication as a 24x7 super IT expert that enables your business to:

• View all recovery points in the environment – local and remote snaps, clones and real-time replication

• Identify recovery gaps and failures, for fast remediation, resulting in improved recoverability

• View remote replication lag to set alerts based on defined thresholds

In RecoverPoint/SE environments, Data Protection Advisor has expanded capabilities such as checking for “link state change, and WAN/SAN usage” as well as the ability to monitor configuration changes on active RecoverPoint appliances and the ability to measure and charge back replication services to lines of business based on the size of data to name a few.


This lesson familiarizes the student with Replication Manager architecture, terminology, and basic features.


With Replication Manager software from EMC, you will be able to virtually eliminate backup windows and be more likely to recover your data in only minutes instead of hours to days, which is more common with traditional methods.

Replication Manager is designed to manage and automate snapshots and clones for EMC’s various replication products. It provides a point-and-click management for VNX SnapView, VNX SAN Copy, VNX SnapSure, and VNX Replicator, as well as the TimeFinder family. Replication Manager integrates the technology stack from the application to the storage and replicas. With robust functionality options all available in a single, host-based product license, Replication Manager can grow with you and your business—you can leverage the features and functionalities you need today, and take advantage of Replication Manager’s advanced functionalities tomorrow, without enduring costly product reinstallations.

Replication Manager provides a simple graphical interface to create, mount, restore, and expire data replicas within and between storage arrays using the arrays native technologies.

Replication Manager creates disk-based replicas of information on Symmetrix and Unified VNX storage arrays. It creates these replicas simply, quickly, and easily by automating many important data replication procedures.

Replication Manager automatically controls the complexities associated with replications of file systems and application volumes, such as Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server volumes, using a GUI to schedule and manage replication jobs.


Replication Manager is part of the Application Protection Suite for both VNXe and VNX Arrays.


Because EMC understands that one size does not fit all, EMC offers a complete set of solutions that provide companies with choices for storage and data protection. Replication Manager supports EMC snap, clone, and continuous data protection (CDP) replicas for Unified Storage and Symmetrix storage arrays, providing users with a common user interface for replica management.


A typical Replication Manager environment is made up of three major components:

• The Replication Manager Console is a GUI component that is installed on any Windows or Solaris workstation or laptop with a TCP/IP connection to the Replication Manager Server.

• The Replication Manager Server, also Windows-based, can be installed on physical as well as VMware ESX Server Windows guest operating systems. It controls replication jobs and stores data about each replica. The Replication Manager Server software has two distinct components:

• The Replication Manager Server controls and coordinates replication and recovery activities for all the storage corresponding to its registered agents and their application sets. The Replication Manager Server also handles all requests from the console.

• The Replication Manager Database is an embedded data repository that stores data about application sets, jobs, and replicas.

• A Replication Manager Agent runs on each of the hosts that participates in the replication process, including hosts that manage production data and mount hosts. There are various flavors of the agent component, depending on the application being replicated. The Replication Manager Agent software has three distinct components:

• The Replication Manager Agent software waits for incoming connections from the Replication Manager Server, and then coordinates all operations on the agent.

• Storage Services software manages the storage relationships between the agent and the storage array where the replica resides.

• Application Agents for each supported information interface; each agent is separate, executable, and dynamically loaded with Replication Manager at runtime.


Replication Manager common terms and definitions are listed here. Please take a moment to pause and read through them all.


If you have Replication Manager connecting to components through a firewall then you will need to verify your port settings. Shown here are the default ports needed, check that these ports are allowed access through the firewall.


Replication Manager has a very easy-to-use Console Window that is separated into distinct parts.

• The Tree panel is the Left panel containing a folder structure

• The Content panel is the Right panel with data about the selected element

There is also a Task Panel that can be brought up for those new to the product. The Getting Started options in it can be used for setting up and creating replicas with Replication Manager. It’s an easy, step-by-step process. For the most part, all applications use similar processes to schedule replicas, mount, and restore. Any differences are usually minor and application-specific.


In the Replication Manager GUI, a VNX or VNXe array will be treated as a folder object, with two sub-levels: Block LUNs and File systems. All other wizards will continue to function as they did with previously for the creation of replications.


Users must enter a username and password to log in to Replication Manager. The EMC Replication Manager Administrator registers each user and assigns one of five different user roles to each user, as follows:

• Operator—Has limited privileges to execute existing jobs to which the user has been given access, schedule those jobs, and view properties associated with application sets to which they have been given access.

• Power User—Has all privileges of the Operator role, as well as privileges to configure new application sets and jobs.

• Database Administrator—Has all the privileges of the Power User role, but also has the rights necessary to restore a replica created by a job to which they have access.

• Power Database Administrator—Has all the privileges of the Database Administrator role, but also has rights necessary to configure storage pools.

• EMC Replication Manager Administrator—Can perform every function available within Replication Manager, such as register new hosts, add and modify users, include and exclude storage, and access all components without restrictions.


Replication Manager has security in accordance with EMC’s security policy. A Security tab for server properties allows security events to be selected for event tracking by the Windows Application Event Log. The Replication Manager Administrator login is used to define logins and passwords and assign Replication Manager roles.

Replication Manager has a mandatory password change for the Administrator password at first login. It is a good idea to create two Administrator accounts, one for day-to-day administration tasks, and the other in case the first account password is lost or the account is deleted. Access to these accounts should be limited to a small number of people, since the Administrator is the super user for the Replication Manager account.

ERM Administrators can set security options for the Replication Manager Server, which allows them to audit their operations by logging certain Replication Manager activities to the Windows Application Event log. In the Security Events box displayed here, you can choose one or more of the following Replication Manager activity types that you want to log to the Windows Application Event log: Account administration, Object management, Replica management, Security, and User login.

Additionally, a user-configurable disclaimer can be added as a logon banner, which is displayed prior to login.


Replication Manager operations include job configuration and replica-related operations. Before you run a replication job, you define an application set to be replicated. Optionally, you can create a storage pool to define the free storage used to hold the replica. Then you create a job.

The next step is to run the job to create the replica. Replicas can be scheduled or run on demand. After the replica is created you can perform any of the tasks listed in the Operations panel in the slide.


The Replication Manager Agent software interfaces with both the storage array and host application to create a replica.

Each agent provides Replication Manager with a logical view of the data that resides on the storage array.

Besides the steps shown on the slide Replication Manager also:

• Specifies which data to replicate

• Ensures that the data can be replicated safely

• Quiesces the database application

• Returns the database to normal operation

• Recovers databases during mounting operations

• Shuts down and/or unmounts databases during restore operations


A separate window displays replica information in four tabs:

• General

• Objects

• Storage

• History Log

The General tab contains information such as the date when the replica was created; the current replica state, host and application set with which the replica is associated; the mount information; and a checkbox to allow users to enable expiration of the replica.

The Objects tab describes the structure of the data stored in the replica, including the nodes that are either portions of a database or file system, depending on the application associated with the replica. For example, if the application set specified an entire SQL Server database, the tab displays the database as the top level, and then displays file groups and data files.


The Storage tab shows the following information:

• The type of storage that holds the replica

• The devices that are available

• The device type for each device

• The size of each device

• The storage array where each device is located

And the History Log tab shows the details of each step Replication Manager took to create the replica. The details shown here are also listed in the Replication Manager log files. You can display the log in Table View (shown here) or click the Text View button to see it in Text View.


Replication scripts can be used to run on the production server before and after replication to further enhance the replica process. Replication Manager offers different levels of pre-and post replication scripts depending upon the application set you have defined. You can specify the following types of scripts:

• General pre- and post replication scripts

• Application specific pre- and post replication scripts


If you want to mount the replica, either on the source host or a different host, select Mount the replica while creating the replica job. The mount can also be accomplished afterwards on a manual mount. In the wizard, the Mount host defaults to the host you are on. Within the wizard click the drop-down and select the mount host you wish to use. It must be possible for the devices in the storage pool to be accessible from the mount host you choose.

When mounting on the source, the production host, you must select an Alternate path. The console selects a default path for you, consisting of the username, application set name, and job name. Instead, you can select Alternate paths using path mapping. This option allows you to store default path names for future use, or pick from the stored list.


It is possible to schedule a job using the Starting the Job panel to choose how Replication Manager should start the job process. You can choose one of the following methods to start the job:

• Start this job manually (or with a third-party scheduler)

• Start this job using Replication Manager's built in scheduler

• Start this job after another job completes (creating a link job)


This graphic shows what occurs when you create a job to replicate the file system that is mounted on /data.

You must take care during a restore of the replica to the mount host. When you request a restore of the file system mounted on /data, the entire replica is copied to the production device. Therefore, as shown in this example, the file systems mounted on /data1 and /data2are also restored.


A volume group contains one or more devices. Replication Manager replicates the entire volume group, even if you choose to replicate only a subset of what resides in the volume group. When you restore the replica, Replication Manager deports the volume group, restores the devices, and re-imports the volume group.

On Windows, only a partition of an entire device can be used. Dividing a device into multiple partitions with the Windows Disk Manager is not supported.


This lesson familiarizes the student with Replication Manager’s more advanced topics and features.


Typically, there are actually three types of licenses used with Replication Manager. They are the RM Server, RM Agent and RM Proxy agent. Since version 5.2, Replication Manager has had universal licensing for the agent licenses. This universal agent license covers all supported replication technologies and operating systems. Replication Manager requires one right-to-use (RTU) agent license for each logical host (production and mount) running the Replication Manager software. One Replication Manager Server management license is required for a new Replication Manager configuration, which can run on one of the hosts being managed or on a dedicated server. It is recommended that one Replication Manager Server only supports up to 30 Replication Manager Agents.


EMC Replication Manager implements electronic licensing.

Replication Manager is licensed by logical server for both production and mount hosts as well as providing an option in VMware environments to license the proxy server for replicating VMFS or NFS datastores containing virtual machines. One Replication Manager Server license will be required for every 30 Replication Manager Agents.

Licensing Authorization Codes (LACs) for Replication Manager will be electronically sent to customers via Email rather than the hard copy license card method. The default for obtaining Replication Manager binaries will be via electronic download on PowerLink. Customers who require hard copy license cards and kits will have the option to request them via the ordering process.

Product activation is done by customers logging into PowerLink and navigating to the License Management page and then selecting Replication Manager. Once there, users will utilize the Quick Keys menu or activation menu to enter the assigned License Activation Code (LAC) that was electronically mailed to them.



The new arrays, both VNX and VNXe, will be licensed by the array serial number.

The RM server license is still required for VNX/VNXe configurations.

• The license is supplied with VNX/VNXe Application Suite

A host creating replicas on a VNX or VNXe need only apply the array license for the targeted array where the replica will be created in order to create and run jobs. No agent or proxy license is required.

Any host not using VNX or VNXe technologies still needs to install the typical licenses as explained earlier for both RM Agent and RM Proxy.


The Replication Manager license is supplied with VNX/VNXe Application Suite. Customers will receive array licenses for RM as part of the standard array license distribution.

You can configure an email notification for a job. Enter an email address for the person responsible. By default, job notification is for every run of the job. Optionally, you can check Send email notification on failures only. You can specify email addresses separated by a semicolon.

Note: The email service depends on the Windows Internet Information Services being setup correctly on the Replication Manager Server.


The Replication Manager Server DR feature allows you to bring a Replication Manager Server online on a secondary failover host when the primary host becomes unavailable due to any failure which prevents the use of the original RM Server or its internal database. Unlike the Microsoft Cluster DR solution, which uses a shared disk, this DR option has disks that are local and not shared to the hosts participating. It uses the Replication Manager Solid database’s replication feature to forward any writes from the primary RM Server to the secondary RM Server.


First and foremost, Replication Manager provides application-centric, simplified replica management for EMC point-in-time replication technology. In this context, Replication Manager enables IT professionals to seamlessly address multiple use cases. The use cases listed below are in order of priority and most commonly used for Replication Manager.

Business continuity provides

• Operational recovery and can

• Coexist with disaster recovery

Data protection provides

• Virtually zero backup windows

• Instant restore from most recent backup/replica

• Remote copy

Data repurposing allows for

• Testing, development, simulation, and reporting

• Software upgrades and QA applications and

• Data warehouse queries

Information lifecycle management

• Move copies of less frequently accessed data to lower-cost storage


Replication Manager offers heterogeneous support to a wide variety of IT environments. Combining Replication Manager’s application-aware backup/restore, repurposing, and ILM capability with EMC’s world-class replication technology provides you with a user-friendly management tool that requires no replication expertise.

Please refer to E-Lab Interoperability Navigator on PowerLink for specific details.


Replication Manager is designed for ease of use through the following:

• Auto-discovery of applications, their associated storage, and the replication technology available

• Intelligence to place applications in the proper state for backup, such as hot backup for Oracle

• Provides flexible scheduling options and integration with pre- and post-processes

• Auto-expiration of old replicas based on requested number to maintain

• Wizards such as an application set wizard, a storage wizard, a job wizard, and a restore wizard just to name a few

• Simulation options to ensure that backups will are successful

• E-mail notification options

Replication Manager uses application sets to define the following parameters:

• What computers host the information you want to replicate

• What information will be replicated—you can choose data from one or more applications

• Which users can have access to the application set, its jobs, and its replicas


The “value table” shown here details the specific benefits that Replication Manager can provide for Microsoft applications. Because EMC is a Microsoft “Gold Certified” partner, Replication Manager is tightly integrated with Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint in both physical and Hyper-V environments. Replication Manager supports a multitude of stand-alone and Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) configurations, therefore eliminating the guesswork and testing required with “home-grown” scripts. Powerful replication tasks are automated, scheduled, and managed through a central console, which employs easy-to-use wizard interfaces. Task delegation can be assigned by creating user accounts with varying privileges.


Replication Manager offers flexibility for creating replication jobs. For example, build in dependencies such that one job runs only after another job or use the replica created by one job as the source for another replication job. Within Replication Manager, you have the ability to create these specialized replication jobs.

Let’s look at these a bit closer.


Replication Manager allows you to create specialized jobs, known as link jobs and copy jobs.

• A Linked Job allows a specified job to start as soon as another job has finished. The wizard gives you the ability to choose the application set and then the job associated with that application set. This allows you to choose any job to link to the current job. If the first job fails, the second job of a linked set still runs. Note: If the job you are trying to link to another source job is already a linked copy job you cannot link it to another job.

• A Copy Job allow a specified job to use a replica created by another job as its source. The copy job cannot run unless its source replica was created successfully.

• A Linked Copy Job combines linking and copying so that one job runs and creates a replica, then a second job starts as soon as the first job completes. The second job uses the replica created by the first job as its source.

Replication Manager gives you the ability to link a copy job to a source job. For example, you can easily configure a set of linked jobs that will create a local clone, incrementally copy that clone to a remote array, and then perform a snap of the remote clone.


Replication Manager offers many different ways to create a replica. Some create a replica on the same storage array as the source data, and others create a replica on another array connected using, for instance, SAN Copy. When you create a replica by setting up an application set and a job, there are certain configurable components that alter how the application is quiesced, where the replica resides, what type of storage is used, the duration of the replica, how often a new replica is created and retained, and whether additional processing occurs before, during, or after the replica has been created. The following sections offer some guidelines that can help you determine the best settings to use when you plan to create replicas for different purposes.

If you plan to use the data in your replica to carry out another function (such as reporting, analysis, or data mining) without impacting the production instance of the application, you should consider using the following settings:

• Mount the replica to an alternate host.

• Use a mount recovery method that allows you to start up the application (so you can access the data) in either a read/write or read-only mode.

• Use post replication scripts to start the processing that you plan to conduct on the replica. These settings reduce the stress on the production instance and the production server. They also allow you the freedom to access (and possibly manipulate) the data to complete your repurposing task without affecting your production data.


If you plan to use the data in your replica to create a backup and potentially restore that backup at a later time, you should consider using the following settings:

• If you are using the replica itself as a backup, set the expiration of the replica far enough in the future to provide adequate protection.

• Consider creating a replica rotation that allows you to preserve a certain number of replicas.

• If you are backing up to tape, you should mount the replica and use Replication Manager to start a backup script automatically.

• Use a mount recovery method that is appropriate for the type of backup you are performing.

• Validate the data (for example, by running Eseutil on an Exchange replica) before you back up that replica.


If you plan to use the data in your replica to restart your application after a disaster, you should consider using the following settings:

• Choose a remote replication so that the replicated data is located in a different physical location than the production data.

• Mount the replica and verify the validity of the replicated data.

• Ensure that the replica includes all the data that you will need to restart the application after a disaster occurs.


Virtualized environments such as VMware and Hyper-V enable consolidation and management efficiencies for IT organizations. Continuing on that methodology, Replication Manager provides significant replica management efficiencies in virtualized environments by providing a common management console for creating and managing EMC snaps and clones. Replication Manager’s intelligence of Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint and Oracle environments provides the ability to create application consistent replicas with a few mouse clicks. It eliminates costly, error prone scripting and instead offers a wizard driven easy to use interface for:

• Backup acceleration, eliminating traditional backup windows for production environments

• Gold replicas for business continuity, instantly restore or perform surgical repairs to the production environment

• Create copies of production data for repurposing activities such as development, test or reporting environments

• Instantly restore a VMFS/NFS datastore containing one or more virtual machines for “instant VM image level recovery”

• Perform a single VM or file level recovery via VirtualCenter from a replica created by Replication Manager

Create and manage replicas in your VMware environment with little to no production performance and low impact on VMware ESX Servers or Microsoft Parent Partitions.


Replication Manager is designed to work with VMware for ease of use through the following:

• Auto-discovery of applications, their associated storage, and the replication technology available, VMFS datastores, virtual machines and their replication configuration during each replica cycle.

• Intelligence to place applications in the proper state for application consistent replicas, such as VMware snapshots for VMFS datastores, online hot backup mode for Oracle and VDI for SQL Server.

• Instant recovery back to production application data for SQL Server and Oracle running on virtual machines using VMDKs (virtual disks), physical RDM or Microsoft iSCSI initiator discovered disks. For VMFS containing virtual machines, create replicas for backup and instant restore through Replication Manager or perform a simple restore via VirtualCenter of a single virtual machine from a mounted replica created by Replication Manager. Exchange is only supported in RDM environments.

• Additionally, you have flexible scheduling options to create reoccurring replication jobs or run one ad hoc. Customers also have the ability to run pre and post processing scripts as well as kick off a backup job all within the Replication Manager replication job and mount replicas back to the production host to an alternate host. Replication Manager auto-expires old replicas based on the specified retention policies of each replication job.

With the built-in automation, application intelligence and flexibility of Replication Manager, protecting your VMware virtual infrastructure is a seamless alternative to scripting.


Hyper-V is a hypervisor-based technology that is a key feature of Windows Server 2008. It provides a scalable, reliable, and highly available virtualization platform. It is part of Microsoft's ongoing effort to provide our customers and partners with the best operating system platform for virtualization.

What are the benefits of using Replication Manager in a Hyper-V Environment?

• Easy management of virtual and mixed physical and virtual environment via a single pane of glass for EMC array-based replication technology

• No impact on production performance by leveraging array-based replication technology

• Near-instant backup and recovery of application data


In summary, Replication Manager provides the automation and application awareness for EMC point-in-time replication technology in physical and virtual environments.

It offers a wizard-driven, common management interface for easy replica management of physical and virtualized environments. With Replication Manager, you can:

• Streamline replica management with several mouse clicks, all while ensuring best practices are used for application-consistent replicas.

• Easily create replicas for backup acceleration to offload production environments and virtually eliminate backup windows.

• Perform instant restores back to production for business continuity or quickly and efficiently create copies of production data for development, test, QA, reporting, or other non-production activities.

• Create image-level backup acceleration and instant restore of virtual machine image-level recovery.

• Free up IT resources from scripting activities to work on more revenue-generating tasks as well as enable others within the organization to be self-sufficient with defined user roles.


This lesson familiarizes the student with Data Protection Advisor’s terminology, architecture, functionality, and components.


Today’s Data Protection Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting have become more and more complicated. Let’s see what’s contributing to some of these challenges.

First, there are data silos that result from having multiple ways to protect data. Since there’s no single view, it leads to a lack of visibility into the overall protection environment.

This leads to a lot of inefficient manual effort to collect and unify this data, by reviewing log files and then trying to do analysis through spreadsheets. Alternatively, companies turn to scripting, which is expensive, time consuming, and never thorough enough to cover all elements in the environment.

And for the most critical data protected by replication, companies often resort to replication disaster recovery testing. This is a time-consuming and expensive manual process. As such, it generally only happens twice a year as an “all-hands-on-deck” exercise. In today’s dynamic, ever-changing environment, there’s just too much change happening to make this effective. In many cases, customers have little or no time to validate the recoverability of their data, which is even worse.

Which leads, in the end, to recovery uncertainty. Is your data recoverable at the application level? Can you meet your audit requirements for data protection? Enterprise Strategy Group research has found that 40 percent of respondents cited “difficulty validating backup/recovery success” as a major challenge in their current data protection environments.


EMC Data Protection Advisor (DPA) is software that monitors the data center. It collects, correlates and analyzes disparate data in order to present actionable advice, alerting, and trending feedback about your backup and replication infrastructure. DPA is capable of meeting the demands of businesses of any size, and offers a single solution to manage customer’s data protection operations. Its powerful analysis engine issues alerts about problematic conditions and failures, and its sophisticated reporting capabilities provide a graphical view of the quality and scope of data protection efforts.


Data Protection Advisor is a customizable backup reporting, alerting, monitoring, and correlation analysis software tool for EMC and other third-party backup software products.

Without Data Protection Advisor, Administrators need to rely on a mix of reporting and analysis tools to manage the backup environment and provide a complete picture of the infrastructure.

Reports with Data Protection Advisor can be customized extensively, to suit the demands of any business.

It should be noted that the backup portion of the full version of the DPA software does not initially come with the version in the Application Protection Suite for VNX. Customers would need to upgrade for that functionality.

DPA is modular in its licensing. There are 3 components to it:

• DPA for Backup

• DPA for Replication Analysis (which is included in the Application Protection Suite)

• DPA for Resource Monitoring


Shown here are areas where Data Protection Advisor can provide overall impact for replication:

• Manual data collection is eliminated because it automates collection of data. Collection will run much more frequently than is possible manually.

• Reduced time to complete audits. One customer who was audited on a regular basis saw a 95 percent reduction in time to complete an audit using Data Protection Advisor, from two weeks down to two hours.

• You’ll be able to report on the achievement of service level agreement to customer . You can report to customers automatically, avoiding penalties by using Data Protection Advisor to track and ensure that recovery point objective (RPO) service level agreements are met.

• You’ll know your Consulting Services costs. Periodic disaster recovery tests can use consulting services to prepare the systems and the services typically take one to two weeks but may last several months. But by automatically finding gaps, much of this effort and cost can be eliminated.

• You can avoid data losses due to outages because when gaps are found before a failure, systems can recover as designed, limiting down time and the associated impact to the business.

• And finally better storage utilization. Data Protection Advisor helps to identify redundant or unused replicas as well as orphaned volumes, allowing users to reclaim storage capacity consumed by replicas no longer needed.


Data Protection Advisor is designed to help users identify and fix performance and capacity management issues within large enterprises. It consists of a number of loosely-coupled processes and data stores for configuration and gathered data. In addition, it has a number of interfaces to import and export information, to allow for integration with other aspects of a large enterprise and to provide a significant part of an overall distributed systems management strategy.

The diagram shown here provides an overview of the complete Data Protection Advisor architecture, showing all of the major components as well as their internal communications and external interfaces. The dotted lines represent binary communications, while solid lines represent XML communications.

The Recoverability Analysis functionality of DPA uses a separate database, called Illuminator, to store the stats gathered from hosts and arrays. As data is discovered, additional nodes and objects are added in the Configuration database.

The Reporter process is connected to the Illuminator process to display the queried results. The Illuminator process is manageable in the same way as any other DPA server process. It runs as a separate service in the Windows service manager. The process generates a log file that can be used to identify any problems with the process.


Data Protection Advisor is comprised of two main components:

• The Server component, which includes all of the server processes required for Data Protection Advisor to run. It also includes a web server from which the graphical user interface can be launched. The Server component can run on either Solaris, Windows, or Linux.

• And the Collector component, which is the process that gathers data from an application or device. A Collector is automatically installed on the Data Protection Advisor server when you install the Server component. You can install the Server component on other devices in the environment to provide enhanced data collection. Remote Data Collection is possible, so there is no need to install a Collector on every single host you want to collect data from. However, not all types of data can be collected remotely.

Please see the Data Protection Advisor product guide for more information.


The DPA database is at the core of the product and it stores all of the data collected by DPA server as well as configuration information about the product.

DPA can work with an embedded iAnyWhere database that is automatically installed on the server during the install process, or with an external database that must be supplied and managed by the customer. If you are using an external database, the database must be installed before the DPA software. DPA supports different external databases depending on the server’s platform. DPA supports the following external databases:

• Oracle in Solaris environments

• Microsoft SQL Server in Windows environments

The Data Protection Advisor database stores three types of data:

• Configuration data, which includes information on the configuration of Data Protection Advisor itself. This information is maintained by the controller process and is generally static and small in size. Default name for this data store is config.

• Gathered data, which is the data gathered by Collectors. The size of this data can become quite large due to the dynamic nature of the collected data. As a result, it is maintained separately from the configuration data. Default name for this data store is datamine.

• Recoverability analysis data, which is gathered by the recoverability engine if you are performing recoverability analysis with your DPA installation. Default name for this store is illuminator.

It should be noted that the iAnywhere Database is recommended for smaller environments (<250 nodes) and not a recommended solution for larger production environments.


DPA maintains information on all users that login to the application. Logging in requires a username and a password (which is case sensitive).

When the product is first installed, four roles are created automatically: Administrator, Engineer, Application Owner and User.

• Users with the Administrator role can perform all configuration and reporting functions.

• Users with the Engineer role have the ability to perform all reporting functions and most configuration functions. Engineers cannot create or modify Users or User Roles, or modify System Settings.

• Users with the Application Owner role can perform all reporting functions and modify credential settings.

• Users with the User role cannot perform any configuration task.

The DPA Administrator can create additional roles. Roles allow the DPA administrator to limit functionality to different types of users.

By default, all passwords are stored in the DPA database in encrypted form.


This is the console screen you’ll see when you first launch the GUI as the administrator user. The objects with which you will interface on a day-to-day basis with are:

• View: The default View provided by DPA is called “Configuration”. You can create Views by using the View Editor and switch between them.

• Nodes: Created under a View, and organized into “Node Groups”. The Configuration View comes with a pre-defined sets of nodes. You will be able to create nodes for your data protection environment to begin collecting data.

• Menu: Appears when right-clicking a Node. The default menu is called “Navigator Menu”. You can customize and create new menus by using the Menu Editor.

• Control Panels/Reports: Are assigned to Menus. When selected, DPA displays results on a separate window.

• Time Window: The timeframe of the collected data.

• Report toolbar: Contains buttons for performing different functions on reports.

• Report display window: Displays reports. You can view multiple reports at the same time and minimize or resize them within this window.


This lesson familiarizes the student with Data Protection Advisor - Replication Analysis topics and features.


Data Protection Advisor provides a unique Replication Analysis capability that helps companies address cost, compliance, complexity, and confidence in their replication and disaster recovery configurations.

Data Protection Advisor discovers and catalogs the application structure and all the associated storage, devices, and replicas. By combining the details gathered from the hosts, application, and storage, Data Protection Advisor’s Replication Analysis capability can build a map of the current replication environment.

Data Protection Advisor captures changes in the environment that affect the ability to recover from any or all replicas. These recoverability gaps are detected by an Analysis engine, which then alerts the user when a recovery point objective may be compromised.

A graphical map created is an intuitive way to quickly see what is working and where problems exist. Applications can be filtered by table space or file system, providing even more granularity when investigating failures.

This enables you to:

• Identify configuration gaps and failures, leading to improved recoverability

• Discover orphaned replicas (business continuity volumes, clones, etc.),

• Understand the recoverability status 24x7


The benefits of using Data Protection Advisor – Replication Analysis are:

• Improved visibility of your replication environment: DPA will automatically generate visual maps, alerts and reports.

• Improved time to complete audits: 95 percent reduction, from 2 weeks down to 2 hours.

• Improved Mean Time To Repair (MTTR): DPA accelerates problem identification and resolution, thereby reducing troubleshooting workload.

• Constant measurement of SLA fulfillment: DPA tracks SLAs and reports whether they have been met or not.

• Reduces number of periodic DR tests: Improved success rate of data replication can drive fewer tests annually.

• Better storage utilization: DPA identifies orphaned volumes and redundant or unused copies.


Data Protection Advisor - Replication Analysis is part of the Application Protection Suite for VNX Arrays.

Customers receive Data Protection Advisor for Replication Analysis capabilities for the VNX arrays to monitor VNX MirrorView Synchronous or Asynchronous, VNX SnapView, and RecoverPoint/SE CDP/CRR.


Data Protection Advisor supports a variety of VNX replication technologies, as well as multiple host operating systems, applications, and virtualization.

Shown here is Data Protection Advisor for Replication Analysis support for the VNX array. Replication Analysis is available for VNX arrays using native array based and/or RecoverPoint technologies replicating Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle and file system data running in multiple host operating environments.

Please refer to the Data Protection Advisor Compatibility Guide on PowerLink for more details.


Replication Analysis discovers file systems and applications such as Oracle, SQL Server, Exchange, along with their mapping to physical storage devices and all the copies (recovery points) of primary data. This diagram shows an overview of the DPA - Replication Analysis architecture. Notice the host called “Connector.” This is a special type of DPA node acting as access point to the VNX arrays.


Shown here is an example of an Oracle environment that helps to illustrate the application, storage, and replica awareness within Data Protection Advisor. In order to determine if an application is recoverable, Data Protection Advisor first needs to be application aware. Data Protection Advisor automatically discovers application instances on the host and understands how the application is logically constructed with data files, redo logs, and archive logs.

DPA-Replication Analysis is aware of the application recovery logic—that is, interrelationships between the application components. For example, redo logs are needed when a replication is created when the Oracle is down. Redo logs are not needed when a replication is created when the Oracle database is up, in which case archive logs may be needed, assuming the database was placed in backup mode. Data Protection Advisor then understands how the database is laid out on the primary storage array down to the logical volume and volume group. Data Protection Advisor is aware of the data protection process as well—Data Protection Advisor tracks and maps each copy of the application LUNs.

Data Protection Advisor contains a sophisticated Analysis Engine that groups all the information to form “recovery points,” which are a set of replica LUNs that can be used to recover the application. A recovery point can consist of a single LUN as well as dozens or hundreds of LUNs.


Some of the most common gaps found in replication environments are shown here. Each category can be broken down into groups containing specific errors, such as missed SLA policies, replication execution errors, incorrectly configured replicas, and equipment issues.

Please take a moment to review these.


This is an example of how Data Protection Advisor has integrated with the application and storage environment to map an application from the host on primary storage to local and remote replicas. The Oracle database is being replicated onto two arrays. All the table spaces, logs and control files have been replicated.


At some later time, a tablespace was added. Unfortunately these new volumes were not replicated to the remote system. This might have been done as a stop gap with the intent of replicating later, or an oversight, or there might be no more space in the remote array to allow additional volumes/replicas.

In this case, recovery of this application will not work, since only part of the data has been replicated. This is the type of information that would be identified by DPA - Replication Analysis.


Except for the physical device failure scenarios just presented, recoverability gaps can also be viewed at the application level, or file system level.

Here, for example, we have four replication scenarios for an application with components residing on mounted file systems. Call the files systems FS1 and FS2.

• In scenario 1, which corresponds to our previous scenario, one or more of the application’s file systems are not correctly replicated, since an image is missing. Therefore, the file system is not complete.

• In scenario 2, file systems are not replicated with the same facility: one of the replicas is a clone, the other is a snap. Therefore, they would not be recoverable.

• In scenario 3, not all of application components were replicated at the same time. There is significant time different between the two replicas. Therefore, this application is not recoverable.

• In scenario 4, the replicated file systems do not have same status: one is split, the other is still synchronized with its source. Therefore, they would not be recoverable.

Again, all of these conditions compromise the recovery point objective, rendering it useless. These are all further examples of scenarios that would be identified by Replication Analysis.


Here we see examples of the most general recoverability gaps DPA-RA can find in your protection environment. Users do not have to configure recoverability checks in order for these gaps to be detected. DPA will find them automatically.

The slide shows 5 replication scenarios.

1. In the first one, we have a storage object that resides on 4 devices being replicated onto 3 replica devices. Here a problem occurs because one replica device is missing: 4 primary storage devices, and only 3 replicas.

2. In the second scenario, we have the same storage object being replicated onto the correct number of devices; however, not all of the devices have been replicated using the same facility: 3 of the devices use clone technology, the other uses snap.

3. The third issue type occurs when not all of the devices are split at the same time. 3 of the devices were split a few seconds apart, which is OK, but 1 was split twenty minutes later. In other words, not all the devices have been split within the same “grace” time window.

4. In scenario 4, all the devices have been replicated using the same facility, namely mirror technology, but 1 of the replicas is not in the same state as the others: 3 have been split, 1 is still synchronized with its source.

5. In scenario 5, we see what happens when one, some, or all of the replica devices are marked as invalid due to hardware failure. Here we have the correct number of replicas, all of them replicated with the same facility and split within the grace period; however, 2 of them have hardware issues.

All of these conditions compromise the validity of the recovery point, rendering it unusable and would be identified by Replication Analysis.


Here is a view of server-to-storage topology mapping showing local MirrorView replicas.

This map provides a simple view of the layout of the application to volumes, to volume groups/logical volumes, to arrays, and to replicas.

This intuitive view quickly shows where volumes may be oversubscribed, leading to potential performance issues. Additionally, this view can be generated in tabular form and saved or e-mailed in multiple formats such as CSV, XLM, JPG, PDF, and HTML.


Here we see an example of an application-centric view of an environment.

First, in the left-hand column you see a view of the production environment by business. There is a red/green dashboard that shows at a glance if there are replication issues that need addressing.

On the right center of the screen, the MirrorView/A replica has been selected. Below that, Data Protection Advisor displays the storage mapping of the file systems. You have the option to view this detail from the application or file system perspective. In the case of custom applications with which Data Protection Advisor has no integration, the data can be displayed from the file system view.

There are no gaps identified here, but if there were then you would select the Gaps tab and would be able to further investigate the cause of the replication gap.


After DPA Replication Analysis has discovered and analyzed file systems, applications and storage arrays, it is time to view available recovery points and any recoverability gap. Most of this work is done in the Service Level Management (SLM) workspace, which allows you to examine the details, status, and mappings of primary storage and replicas. Unlike the reports and Control Panels that you can run in the report display window, the SLM workspace cannot be scheduled, exported, or saved in any format.

The SLM workspace has the following areas to view:

• The Service tree which Mirrors the DPA Navigation tree. The Service Tree lists all of the servers, applications, and storage devices configured in DPA. Replication analysis can be performed on nodes in the Service Tree that have been configured to gather replication data. Icons in the service tree indicate at a glance whether a node has any recoverability gaps.

• The Process view which represents graphically the way in which a node in the Service Tree is replicated throughout the environment. Each logical unit or file space is mapped, from its primary storage to all local and remote replicas, along with the method of replication.

• And the Details view which provides more detailed information on the object selected in the Process view. The Details view displays information on:

The Gaps tab which shows the recoverability gaps and exposures found for a particular recovery point. This list can be sorted.

The Storage Mappings tab which contains a list of the storage volumes that participated in the creation of the recovery points.


Use the Overview Map to shift the structure and minimize and maximize components. To minimize a container or recovery point, double click the title bar. To move a container, click anywhere in the container space and drag. To move the entire structure, click anywhere in the overview in the left corner and drag.

To view the details for a recovery point, hover the mouse pointer over the recovery point icon. The status, recoverability status, age of recovery point, and creation timestamp are displayed.

Right-click anywhere in the view to see the following options:

• Zoom in: Zooms closer to the recovery point mapping.

• Zoom out: Zooms out of the recovery point mapping.

• Actual Size: Zooms the viewer to a default setting.

• Fit Content: Zooms in or out to fit all of the mapping into the viewing space.

• Hide Overview (or Show Overview): Hides or reveals the overview in the left corner.

• Auto Arrange: Re-arranges the mapping structure to the default setting.


This view shows Invalid Replicas in the environment.

You can see the primary host and the production storage with the four replicas. This view provides a quick way to grasp where invalid replicas are in the environment—in this case two of the MirrorView/A replicas require further investigation to remedy the situation because they are red.

More details about the invalid replicas can be obtained through a Detailed Gap report.


If you have a very large environment, it may be easier to automate a detailed gaps report to be run on a periodic basis. By doing so, you can quickly identify replication gaps and resolve them to ensure you’re able to meet your recovery service levels.

You also have the ability to save or e-mail Data Protection Advisor reports in a variety of formats to anyone who needs visibility into the environment. Its an ideal way to show an audit trail of problem identification and resolution.


Data Protection Advisor provides additional monitoring, alerting, and reporting capabilities for the RecoverPoint family (3.1 and higher) for continuous data protection (CDP), continuous remote replication (CRR), and concurrent local and remote (CLR) replication configurations.

Data Protection Advisor actually expands visibility into RecoverPoint environments. Within Data Protection Advisor, you can create analysis rules for RecoverPoint such as checking for “link state change,” “WAN/SAN usage high,” and “Replication lag too high”. You can also monitor configuration changes on active RecoverPoint appliances.

For RecoverPoint, some of the sample reports include Configuration of Consistency Groups, Replication Lag Times, Transfer Speeds, and Chargeback. Service Level Agreement reports include percent downtime, service level status, and service level agreement performance for both local and remote replication.


A RecoverPoint replica spans a sequence of images in the journal. Data Protection Advisor represents a sequence of images in the journal as ranges that start with the timestamp of a base image, and end with a closing timestamp. This closing timestamp can be:

• The current time, if replication is active

• The time of last valid image, if replication is inactive

• A bookmark’s time

• A replication error’s time

By contrast, RecoverPoint bookmarks are rendered as PIT images that begin and end with the same timestamp.


Data Protection Advisor gathers RecoverPoint configuration details that can be presented in report format for consistency groups, consistency group copy details, replication set configurations, splitters, and RecoverPoint appliances. This helps to validate configuration options between RecoverPoint consistency groups and RecoverPoint systems as well as allows exception reports to be generated.


Change within an IT environment is a common cause of failures. The ability to track changes is essential for audit purposes as well as problem resolution. Data Protection Advisor offers change management reports for RecoverPoint environments in which details on changes to the components and settings can easily be tracked and reviewed. Not only can you view the individual changes, but track the frequency of change your environment is experiencing.


Data Protection Advisor provides reports that display the performance of consistency groups and RecoverPoint appliances. The performance reports display replication lag in a number of formats, as well as overall data throughput for consistency groups and RecoverPoint appliances.

Customize performance thresholds for your environment and Data Protection Advisor’s Analysis Engine will generate alerts for performance degradations. Performance data allows you to view the utilization trends over time, assisting in determining infrastructure requirements or potential service impacts for local and remote replication.


Data Protection Advisor provides chargeback reports for RecoverPoint that provide a financial cost analysis for the storage operations that have taken place in a company’s environment. The chargeback reports use models based on the following inputs:

• The Size of data protected which is the amount of data protected by RecoverPoint

• And Size of data transferred which is the amount of data replicated from primary storage by RecoverPoint appliances

A cost based on these storage and transfer metrics is calculated for RecoverPoint hosts and can be charged back to the business unit that is responsible for that client or set of clients. Simply create a chargeback policy for the business unit—provide a cost associated with the initial synchronization as well as a cost for the ongoing changes transferred by RecoverPoint. Data Protection Advisor has the ability to charge two different rates for initial synchronization and ongoing updates. Within each is the ability to charge a different rate for the first quantity of data transferred.


This course covered Application Protection Suite products for VNX & VNXe Series, Replication Manager architecture, and Data Protection Advisor – Replication Analysis.

This concludes the training. Proceed to the course assessment on the next slide.



Documents

VNX Application Protection Suite Foundation