{"id":11253,"date":"2022-10-24T16:49:33","date_gmt":"2022-10-24T06:49:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/?p=11253"},"modified":"2022-10-24T16:49:35","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T06:49:35","slug":"basics-of-asset-sources-and-assets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/2022\/10\/24\/basics-of-asset-sources-and-assets\/","title":{"rendered":"Basics \u2013 Of Asset Sources and Assets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you’re new to PowerProtect Data Manager, you may notice it doesn’t<\/em> use a term that most other data protection products use: clients<\/em>. Instead, it refers to asset sources and assets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NetWorker has clients. Avamar has clients. A bunch of other backup and recovery products have clients. So why doesn’t Data Manager?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whenever I used to run training courses for NetWorker, I’d invariably get to the subject of clients<\/em>, and I’d always introduce them as “The clients<\/em> are your servers<\/em>.” There’s no way around it \u2013 NetWorker has a client\/server model, and in that model the NetWorker controller at the heart of the datazone is the server<\/em> and everything else is a client<\/em>. Except, in any context outside<\/em> of backup and recovery, your servers are servers because they<\/em> have clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s another challenge in a modern context for using the term client<\/em>: what is<\/em> a client anyway? Let’s think about a VMware environment \u2013 you attach to the vCenter server, but you protect<\/em> the guest machines. Likewise you connect to a database server (or a database cluster), but you protect<\/em> the databases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, the fact is, while client<\/em> was the default term in a lot of data protection products, it was often jarring for infrastructure and application people, but now in a modern context where we care about the workloads<\/em>, client isn’t really an ideal term any more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we come to asset sources<\/em>, and assets<\/em>. Asset sources and assets make sense as soon as you start thinking that Data Manager exists to protect your workloads<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Diagram<\/a>
VMware Cluster with Assets: Guest Virtual Machines<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From a VMware perspective, this means that a vCenter server \u2013 the virtualisation cluster \u2013 is your asset source<\/em>. The assets<\/em> are the virtual machines you want to protect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Representation<\/a>
Database Server with Assets: Databases<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And likewise, a database server is an asset source<\/em> for the databases<\/em> (assets) running on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So here we get to the view of asset sources<\/em> vs assets<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n