Introduced alongside NetWorker 8.2 SP1 is integration with a new EMC product, CloudBoost.
The purpose of CloudBoost is to allow a NetWorker server to write deduplicated backups from its datazone out to one of a number of different types of cloud (e.g., EMC ECS Storage Service, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Cloud Storage, Amazon S3, etc.) in an efficient form.
The integration point is quite straight forward, designed to simplify the configuration within NetWorker.
A CloudBoost system is a virtual appliance that can be deployed within your VMware vSphere environment. The appliance is an “all in one” system that includes:
- NetWorker 8.2 SP1 storage node/client software
- CloudBoost management console
- CloudBoost discovery service
One of the nifty functions that CloudBoost performs in order to make deduplicated storage to the cloud efficient is a splitting of metadata and actual content. The metadata effectively relates to all the vital information the CloudBoost appliance has to know in order to access content from the object store it places in the selected cloud. While the metadata is backed up to the cloud, all metadata operations will happen against the local copy of the metadata, thereby significantly speeding up access and maintenance operations. (And everything written out to cloud is done so using AES-256 encryption, keeping it safe from prying eyes.)
A CloudBoost appliance can logically address 400TB of storage in the cloud pre-deduplication. With estimated deduplication ratios of up to 4x for data analysis performed by EMC, that might equate to up to 1.6PB of actual stored data, and it can be any data that NetWorker has backed up.
Once a CloudBoost appliance has been deployed (consisting of VM provisioning and connection to a supported cloud storage system), and integrated into NetWorker as storage node with in-built AFTD, getting long-term data out to the cloud is as simple as executing a clone operation against the required data, with the destination storage node being the CloudBoost storage node. Since the data is written to the CloudBoost embedded NetWorker Storage Node, recovery from backups that have been sent to the cloud is as simple as executing a recovery with the copy on the CloudBoost appliance being selected to use.
In other words, once it’s been setup, it’s business as usual for a NetWorker administrator or operator.
To get a thorough understanding of how CloudBoost and NetWorker integrate, I suggest you read the Release Notes and Integration Guide (you’ll need to log into the EMC support website to view those links). Additionally, there’s an excellent overview video you can watch here:
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