Citrix XenDesktop Backups with Xen & Now by SEP

Citrix XenDesktop Backups with

Xen & Now by SEP 

Citrix XenDesktop Backups with Xen & Now by SEP

Introduction and Overview

To address customer requirements for enterprise backups through a single interface, Xen & Now provides Citrix XenDesktop backup capabilities with SEP sesam backup server. The SEP strategy is to provide an enterprise solution that can be managed with a single simplified interface.

For the solution to be truly useful in business, it must be robust, easily manageable and secure. The Xen & Now Citrix XenDesktop backup solution provides:

• Built-in encryption capabilities
• Agent-less Backups
• Guest backup consistency
• Platform independent functionality
• A single enterprise management interface

 Citrix XenDesktop Environment

The Citrix XenDesktop environment is composed of several different components that work together to provide the virtual desktop infrastructure. For smaller environments, these components can be installed on a single server or for larger deployments can be broken out into many back-end servers. The SEP sesam backup solution provides the same backup capabilities regardless of the topology that has been implemented for the Citrix XenDesktop solution. In particular, the Citrix XenDesktop components that must be included in the backup strategy of the virtual desktop environment are:

• Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller datastore
• Citrix License Server
• Active Directory Domain Controller

Citrix XenServer Cluster to host the Virtual Desktops

Windows Desktop Master Image

Windows Quick Deploy Desktops

Windows Dedicated Virtual Desktops

Metadata, Host Specific Information, Templates

SEP’s Xen & Now backup strategy for protecting the above components is detailed in the following sections.

Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller Backup

The Desktop Delivery Controller data store holds all the information about the virtual desktop infrastructure, including the virtual desktops, applications, the license server location and all other configuration settings. Protecting the Desktop Delivery Controller requires the backup up of the following items with a single SEP sesam Windows agent on the server:

• SQL Backup
• Entire File System
• System Recovery Information

Virtual desktops are protected with use of the XenServer agent-less backup (detailed below in the Citrix XenServer Backup Methods) for both online and offline copies, in particular, the Master Image. In addition, if dedicated virtual desktops have been configured, these virtual desktops should also be backed up.

Citrix License Server Backup

The Citrix License Server provides license validation for the different features of the Citrix XenDesktop environment. Protection of the Citrix License Server should be completed for the following components on the corresponding server with a single SEP sesam Windows agent on the server:

• Entire File System
• System Recovery Information

Active Directory Domain Controller Backup

The Active Directory Domain Controller provides user and computer authentication as well as GPO control. Protection of the Active Directory Domain Controller should be completed for the following components on the corresponding server(s) with a Windows agent on each server:

• Entire File System
• System Recovery Information

There are several ways to backup guest virtual machines on Citrix XenServer with Xen & Now:

• Offline Backup – backup that happens when the virtual guest is powered down
• Online Live Memory Backup – backup that includes the virtual guest’s active RAM
• Online Quiesced Backup – backup that uses the XenServer VSS provider to allow a complete backup without interruption to the production system
• Online Normal Backup – backup that is completed without interruption to the production system

All backup methods are fully managed and integrated into a heterogeneous, cross-platform, centralized SEP sesam backup solution.

Offline Backup

The Offline Backup solution will perform a backup of the guest virtual machine by shutting the operating system down. This option allows the backup to occur when no changes are occurring on the virtual guest. While this guarantees the consistency of the guest virtual machine and everything on it as a specific point in time, it is not an optimal solution for applications that require high availability. For more detailed information about Offline Backups, please refer to the Citrix XenServer documentation.

Pros:

• All data is in a consistent state
• Operating System independent
• Application independent

Cons:

• The guest virtual machine is off for the entire backup

 Online Live Memory Backup

The Online Memory Backup solution will perform a backup of the guest virtual machine and the guest virtual machine’s memory. This guarantees the full consistency of the guest virtual machine and the current state of the memory. For more detailed information about Online Live Memory Backus, please refer to the Citrix XenServer documentation.

Pros:

• Consistent state of the machine for that point in time
•  Guest Virtual Machine does not have to be powered off

Cons:

• Locks the guest Virtual Machine in a “frozen” state while backing up the memory, keeping it from responding while the memory file is locked
• Must be used in conjunction with file or database specific component backups to guarantee a fully recoverable dataset

Online Quiesced Backup

The Online Quiesced Backup solution will perform a backup of an active guest virtual machine on the fly. This provides better performance for active users or processes accessing the guest virtual machine, eliminating any requirements for downtime during the backup. This process uses Citrix XenTools to take advantage of the Citrix VSS provider to allow consistent application backups for applications that are VSS aware, like Exchange and SQL. The Citrix VSS provider is only available for Windows Server 2003 and above. The final backup will also have the guest virtual machine configuration, storage information and VIFs. For more detailed information about Online Quiesced Backups, please refer to the Citrix XenServer documentation.

Pros:

• No downtime required on the guest virtual machine
• VSS aware applications setup a consistent state of the files for backup

Cons:

• VSS capabilities are only available for Windows
• Does not work with all applications

Online Normal Backup

The Online Normal Backup solution will perform a backup of an active guest virtual machine on the fly. This provides better performance for active users or processes accessing the guest virtual machine, eliminating any requirements for downtime during the backup. For all operating systems, this process will backup the guest virtual machine configuration, storage information and VIFs creating a backup for any guest virtual machine type. For more detailed information about Online Normal Backups, please refer to the Citrix XenServer documentation.

Pros:

• No downtime required on the guest virtual machine

Cons:

• Cannot guarantee the consistency of the data that is in active memory
• Does not work with all applications

Agent-less Backups

The SEP sesam server is able to communicate natively with the XenServer environment with EAT (Easy Access Technology), eliminating the requirement for a backup agent on the hypervisor. This optimizes performance for backups and reduces the need to communicate with agents on the guest Virtual Machines for full system backups (note: depending on the state of application data this should not be the only backup method utilized to provide consistent backups). Communication to the XenServer can be initiated from a SEP sesam backup server or a SEP sesam Remote Device Server, allowing the backup strategy to be optimized for network performance while still providing centralized management.

Since Xen & Now communicates directly with the hypervisor, it does not matter what operating system is running as a virtual guest. Windows, Linux or any other operating system is treated as a virtual guest and backed up directly via communication with the hypervisor. The SEP sesam server uses Snapshot Detection and Citrix XenTools to analyze the operating system of the guest virtual machine and can initiate a VSS snapshot on the Windows guest.

Security

SEP sesam is capable of providing many options to enhance security and assist in meeting compliance requirements:

• The backup data streams can be encrypted to protect access to the guest virtual machine backup from unauthorized users. 
• Logs can be sent to a syslog server to maintain a single centralized location for tracking information.
• Notifications can be sent to email addresses or cell phones to provide immediate alerts for failed or completed jobs.

These options are all part of the SEP sesam notification system that can be used to bring backup information into a centralized audit system.

Feature Rich

Additional features of using Xen & Now for Citrix XenServer backups:

• Xen & Now leverages Citrix XenServer integrated software compression to stream small files to the backup media.
• The Multiple Stream feature of SEP sesam can also be leveraged to simultaneously back-up and restore multiple VMs to multiple nodes within the XenServer cluster. 
• Xen & Now is optimized to allow enhanced backups for big guest virtual machines on 64-bit platforms.
• The same technology can be used for XenServer and XenDesktop.
• A Remote Device Server can be configured to allow backups to happen at a remote location and still be managed by the main enterprise management console.

High Availability

Xen & Now fully supports backup of all guest virtual machines in a high-availability Citrix XenServer Cluster environment. As the SEP sesam XenServer components communicate directly with the XenServer resource pool, backup tasks are able to properly follow VMs if they have failed over to a different XenServer cluster host.

This diagram shows how the backup server can find any guest on the cluster.

Xen & Now is able to find the specific host anywhere on the cluster and initiate a backup.  Based on the backup selection, the guest will be set to the required level for backup and the entire guest virtual machine will be backed up.

Restore

The simplicity of the SEP sesam Management Interface allows for quick and easy restores.  Xen & Now includes the capability to use a point-in-time backup to restore any snapshot, from any time, for which a backup is available. A guest virtual machine can be restored to the same location or to a different location.  This allows a guest virtual machine to be restored without downtime on any Citrix XenServer connected to the network.  These features can be used to schedule guest virtual machine replication or even to export guest virtual machines to on-site or off-site systems.  After a replication restore has been completed, the startup type can be set to "offline" to avoid network conflicts.  This allows the use of the same UID for the restored virtual guest or even assignment of a new UID during replication.

Conclusion

SEP’s Xen & Now backup solution is one of the most robust and scalable solutions on the market. The single interface to manage all backup agents and device servers, whether local or remote, makes it the perfect solution for the Enterprise. Busy network administrators especially appreciate the ease of implementation of SEP sesam for their XenServer environments.  Installation is quick and seamless due to the direct communication with the XenServer hypervisor.  When using XenDesktop with XenServer, creating a backup task that includes virtual desktops and XenDesktop components is just as quick and easy with Xen & Now.  SEP’s Xen & Now is available for download under a 30 day trial license; experience first-hand the benefits this product has to offer.