Architecture

High-level Architecture

Use vProtect to back up data from your virtualization platforms. You can back up data to and recover data from local filesystem or an NFS/CIFS share, object storage (cloud providers) or enterprise backup providers like Dell EMC, IBM, Veritas.

Detailed Architecture

vProtect consists of 2 main components:

• vProtect Server - central point of vProtect management, provides administrative Web UI, APIs and is a central repository of metadata.

• vProtect Node - data mover that performs backups, restores and mounts:

  • multiple nodes can be deployed for scalability or other reasons,

  • all nodes are managed by the server and need to be registered to the server.

Component placement

• vProtect Server and Node can be installed on the same host

• The Server can be installed on a physical machine or VM - externally deployed nodes require network connectivity to the Server and PowerProtect DD target(s).

• Nodes may be deployed as physical or virtual systems, unless selected backup strategy requires the Node to be installed as a VM on a Hypervisor Cluster (especially when the "disk attachment" export mode is mentioned).

• Both components are installed on a CentOS/RHEL 8 minimal.

For detailed deployment scenarios refer to the following sections:

Virtual Machines

• Deployment on VMware vSphere/ESXi

• Deployment on Hyper-V

• Deployment on Nutanix Acropolis (AHV)

• Deployment on Red Hat Virtualization

• Deployment on oVirt

• Deployment on Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager

• Deployment on Proxmox VE

• Deployment on KVM/Xen

• Deployment on OpenStack

• Deployment on Oracle VM

• Deployment on Citrix Hypervisor (XenServer)

• Deployment on XCP-ng

• Deployment on HPE SimpliVity

Containers

• Deployment on Kubernetes

• Deployment on Red Hat OpenShift

• Deployment on Proxmox VE

Cloud

• Deployment on AWS EC2

Storage Providers

• File System

• Ceph RBD

• Nutanix Files

Typical workflows

There are several standard workflows in vProtect and they result in a set of tasks:

• Backup

  • Export - task that creates snapshot and exports data to the staging space

  • Store - task that moves data to the backup destination

• Restore to filesystem

  • Restore - a task that gets data from a backup provider and puts data in the staging space

• Restore to virtualization platform

  • Restore - a task that gets data from a backup provider and puts data in the staging space (if it is a full backup that is being restored residing on the file system backup provider - this task just informs where files are waiting for import task)

  • Import - task that imports data to the virtualization platform and recreates VM

• Restore for mount (file-level restore)

  • Restore - a task that gets data from a backup provider and puts data in the staging space (if it is a full backup that is being restored residing on the file system backup provider - this task just informs where files are waiting for mount task)

  • Mount - mounts backup on the vProtect Node and either allows user to browse files or exposes backup over iSCSI, so that remote iSCSI initiator can access it)

• Snapshot

  • Snapshot - a task that creates a local persisted snapshot of a VM in the hypervisor environment according to a policy that was assigned to the VM - snapshots that are no longer needed (according to the policy) will be removed