Dell PowerProtect DD Installation Manual

PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition in the

Azure Cloud

Version DDVE 4.0

Installation and Administration Guide

REV 05

March 2020

Dell believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice.

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2	PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition in the Azure Cloud Installation and Administration Guide

Revision history

Preface		7
Chapter 1	Introducing DDVE	9
	Introducing DDVE..............................................................................................	10
	DDVE features ..................................................................................................	10
	DDVE cloud features ........................................................................................	10
Chapter 2	Deploying DDVE	15
	Preparing your environment to deploy DDVE on Azure......................................	16
	Deploying DDVE from the Azure Marketplace....................................................	17
	Adding metadata disks in Azure.........................................................................	19
	Adding managed disks in Azure.............................................................	19
	Adding unmanaged disks in Azure........................................................	20
	Resizing the DDVE instance in Azure ...............................................................	20
Chapter 3	Completing Initial DDVE Configuration	23
	Initial system configuration ..............................................................................	24
	Configuring DDVE on Azure hot blob storage using DD System Manager.........	24
	Configuring DDVE in Azure using the CLI..........................................................	26
	Recovering DDVE with System Headswap.........................................................	31
	Using the system recovery command...............................................................	32
	Configuring the system for data access ...........................................................	33
Chapter 4	Administering DDVE	35
	Adding virtual storage ......................................................................................	36
	Extensions to DDOS for DDVE..........................................................................	36
	perf......................................................................................................	36
	system vresource.................................................................................	36
	DDVE-only commands.......................................................................................	37
	Modified DD OS commands..............................................................................	39
	Unsupported DD OS commands .......................................................................	41
	Troubleshooting performance issues.................................................................	46
Appendix A	Best Practices for Working with DDVE in the Cloud	49
	Supportability...................................................................................................	50
	Azure licensing..................................................................................................	50
	Power control...................................................................................................	50
	Storage best practices......................................................................................	50
	Security best practices......................................................................................	51
Appendix B	Networking Best Practices for DDVE in the Cloud	55

PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition in the Azure Cloud Installation and Administration Guide

Contents

	Network setup in Azure....................................................................................	56
	Setting up NTP time synchronization in Azure..................................................	57
Appendix C	Installing and Configuring DDVE on Block Storage in the Cloud	59
	Deploying DDVE on Azure block storage...........................................................	60
	Azure system configuration requirements ...........................................	60
	Specifications for DDVE on Azure block storage..................................	60
	Creating DDVE from Azure Marketplace..............................................	60
	Adding disks in Azure...........................................................................	60

4	PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition in the Azure Cloud Installation and Administration Guide

Revision history

Table 1 DDVE 4.0 in Azure Installation and Administration Guide revision history

Revision	Date	Description


05	March 2020	Editorial updates

04	January 2020	Editorial updates

03	September 2019	Editorial updates

02	March 2019	Editorial updates

01	December 2018	Initial Publication (with DD OS 6.2.0.5)

PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition in the Azure Cloud Installation and Administration Guide

Revision history

6	PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition in the Azure Cloud Installation and Administration Guide

Preface

As part of an effort to improve its product lines, we periodically release revisions of its software and hardware. Therefore, some functions described in this document might not be supported by all versions of the software or hardware currently in use. The product release notes provide the most up-to-date information on product features.

Purpose

This manual describes how to install, configure, and administer DD Virtual Edition (DDVE) systems.

Audience

This manual is intended for use by both system administrators and general users of DD Virtual Edition.

Introducing DDVE

This chapter includes the following topics:

•

Introducing DDVE..................................................................................................................	10
DDVE features ......................................................................................................................	10
DDVE cloud features .............................................................................................................	10

PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition in the Azure Cloud Installation and Administration Guide

Introducing DDVE

DD Virtual Edition (DDVE) is a software-only protection storage appliance: a virtual deduplication appliance that provides data protection for entry, enterprise and service provider environments. Like any DD system, DDVE is always paired with backup software.

DDVE runs the DD Operating System (DD OS), and includes the DD System Manager graphical user interface (GUI) and the DD OS command line interface (CLI) for performing system operations.

DDVE includes the following features:

•High-speed, variable length deduplication for a 10 to 30 times reduction in storage requirements

•Unparalleled data integrity to ensure reliable recovery, and seamless integration with leading backup and archiving applications

•DD Boost to speed backups by 50 percent

•DD Encryption for enhanced security of data

•DD Replicator for network efficient replication that enables faster time-to-DR readiness

DDVE runs on two types of platforms:

•On premises, DDVE supports VMware, Hyper-V, KVM, and VxRail.

•In the cloud, DDVE also runs in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) (cloud and gov cloud), Azure (cloud and gov cloud), VMware Cloud (VMC) on AWS cloud platforms, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

For more information about the features and capabilities of DD systems (both physical and virtual), see the DD Operating System Administration Guide.

DDVE features

Resource configurations depend on your DDVE configuration. For features for cloud configurations within the admin guide for your specific cloud provider, see DDVE cloud features on page 10.

The DD OS Administration Guide, DD Boost OST Guide, and DD Boost for Partner Integration Administration Guide provide additional information about the supported protocols and features.

DDVE cloud features

DDVE provides the capabilities of a cloud DD system using the following resource configuration sizes:

•DDVE supports:

nAzure Standard Cloud

nAzure Government Cloud

n(DDVE does not support U.S. DoD Cloud)

•DDVE supports two types of data storage for Azure:

nDDVE on Block storage

nDDVE on Hot Blob storage (recommended)

10 PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition in the Azure Cloud Installation and Administration Guide

Introducing DDVE

Table 2 DDVE on Azure resource configuration size

Type	Resource configuration size


DDVE on Block storage	•	DDVE on Block storage: Up to 16 TB.
	•	DDVE on Block storage: Up to 16 TB.
	• Actual DDVE capacity is available in 1 TB
		increments starting at 512 GB, and up to
		8 TB or 16 TB respectively for 8 TB and 16
		TB instance type.
			Note: DDVE supports the use of
			Note: DDVE supports the use of
			managed or unmanaged disks. Dell
			EMC recommends managed disks for
			the operating system disk, NVRAM
			disk, and data disks.

DDVE on Hot Blob storage (recommended)	•	Actual DDVE capacity is available up to 96
	•	Actual DDVE capacity is available up to 96
		TB.
			Note: DDVE supports the use of
			Note: DDVE supports the use of
			managed or unmanaged disks. Dell
			EMC recommends managed disks for
			the operating system disk, NVRAM
			disk, and metadata disks.

The following diagrams show the disk and container layouts for DDVE on block storage and Hot Blob storage, using both managed and unmanaged disks.

Figure 1 DDVE in Azure block storage with managed disks

PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition in the Azure Cloud Installation and Administration Guide

Dell PowerProtect DD Installation Manual

Introducing DDVE

Figure 2 DDVE in Azure block storage with unmanaged disks

Figure 3 DDVE in Azure hot blob storage with managed disks (recommended)

12 PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition in the Azure Cloud Installation and Administration Guide

Introducing DDVE

Figure 4 DDVE in Azure hot blob storage with unmanaged disks

The following sections list supported DD protocols and features in DDVE.

Supported DD protocols

•DD Boost over IP

•DD Boost FS

Supported DD features

•DD Boost managed file replication (MFR)

•Encryption

•MTree replication

•DD System Manager GUI for DDVE management

•Secure multitenancy (SMT) with Network Isolation Support

•DD Boost/BoostFS for Big Data

•Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP)

•More restricted IPtables settings

•Azure for Government Cloud

Note: DDVE supports these replication capabilities:

•Managed file replication and MTree replication

•Replication across availability zones and regions

•Bidirectional replication between on-premises and Azure

PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition in the Azure Cloud Installation and Administration Guide

Introducing DDVE

The DD OS Administration Guide, DD Boost OST Guide, DD Boost for Partner Integration Administration Guide provide additional information about supported protocols and features.

14 PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition in the Azure Cloud Installation and Administration Guide

CHAPTER 2

Deploying DDVE

This chapter includes the following topics:

•

Preparing your environment to deploy DDVE on Azure..........................................................	16
Deploying DDVE from the Azure Marketplace........................................................................	17
Adding metadata disks in Azure.............................................................................................	19
Resizing the DDVE instance in Azure ....................................................................................	20

PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition in the Azure Cloud Installation and Administration Guide

Deploying DDVE

Preparing your environment to deploy DDVE on Azure

While DDVE is running in Azure cloud, you can backup and restore your operational data from Azure hot blob storage.

The following sections provide general guidelines to deploy, configure, and run DDVE on Azure with Active Tier on Azure hot blob storage. The high-level steps are as follows:

1.Set up the network environment. For secure access to the DDVE instance, Dell EMC recommends that you use the virtual network architecture provided by Azure. Set up and configure the following components:

•Resource group

•Virtual network

•Subnets

•Network Security groups

•Service endpoint for connectivity to Microsoft.Storage Virtual Network service endpoints provides more information.

Networking Best Practices for DDVE in the Cloud on page 55 provides more information.

2.Create a StorageV2 storage account in the same region where DDVE will be deployed and add a new hot blob container as the backup storage. Select the following values:

•Performance—Standard

•Account kind—General-purpose V2

•Access tier—Hot

Ensure that the container is empty.

Create an Azure Storage Account provides instructions. What is Azure Blob Storage? provides more information.

3.For secure login to DDVE through SSH, create an SSH key pair. How to use SSH keys with Windows on Azure provides instruction.

4.Ensure that your system meets the requirements for DDVE on Hot blob storage.

Azure provides several disk types. Standard HDD is recommended for the DDVE OS disk and the vNVRAM disk. You can use either Standard HDD (cost effective) or Standard SSD (better performance) for metadata disks.

Ensure that you select the correct DDVE virtual machine instance type for your capacity and workload.

Table 3 DDVE instance type and storage capacity

Instance type	Standard_F8	Standard_D4_v2	Standard_D16_v3


CPU	8	8	16

Memory (GiB)	16	28	64

System Disk	250 GiB Standard HDD	250 GiB Standard HDD	250 GiB Standard HDD
	Root disk	Root disk	Root disk

	10 GiB Standard HDD	10 GiB Standard HDD	10 GiB Standard HDD
	NVRAM disk	NVRAM disk	NVRAM disk

Storage	16 TB	32 TB	96 TB
capacity

16 PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition in the Azure Cloud Installation and Administration Guide

Deploying DDVE

Table 4 Azure Hot Blob Storage Stream Counts

Configuration	Num of			Stream Counts
(TB)	metadata

		Read	Write	Replication In	Replication	Combined
	disks (Each 1	Read	Write	Replication In	Replication	Combined
	disks (Each 1				Out
	TB)				Out
	TB)


16 - standard F8	1	12	36	36	24	36
(16 GB)

	2	24	36	36	36	36

32 -	1	12	48	48	24	48
standard_D4_v2
(28 GB)

	2	24	72	72	48	72

	>=3	40	72	72	72	72

96-	1	12	48	48	24	48
Standard_D16_v3
(64 GB)

	2	24	96	96	48	96

	>=3	40	144	144	72	144

The metadata requirements listed in the following table are based on 10X deduplication ratio and 2X compression. If your workload has a higher deduplication ratio, add more metadata disks as required.

Table 5 DDVE on Azure hot block storage: Metadata disks

Instance Type	Block Storage Volumes			Object Storage	Network Interface
				Capacity

	Root Disk	vNVRAM Disk	Metadata Disk
	Root Disk	vNVRAM Disk	Metadata Disk


Standard_F8	Standard	Standard	Standard HDD or	0-16 TB	Default = 1
	HDD/250 GiB	HDD/10 GiB	SSD (1 - 2 TiB)

Standard_D4_V	Standard	Standard	Standard HDD or	0-32 TB
2	HDD/250 GiB	HDD/10 GiB	SSD (1 - 4 TiB)

Standard_D16_	Standard	Standard	Standard HDD or	0-96 TB
V3	HDD/250 GiB	HDD/10 GiB	SSD (1 - 10 TiB)

Note: Disk host cache is not supported for DDVE on Azure.

Deploying DDVE from the Azure Marketplace

Use this procedure for initial deployment of DDVE from the Azure Marketplace.

About this task

The URLs for Azure storage accounts and other services are as follows:

•Azure Global Cloud: *.blob.core.windows.net

•Azure Government Cloud: *.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net

PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition in the Azure Cloud Installation and Administration Guide

Deploying DDVE

Procedure

1.Log in to the Azure portal.

For Azure Gov Cloud: https://portal.azure.us:

a.Log in through Powershell: Powershell> LoginAzureRmAccount - Environment azureusgovernment

b.Set the correct subscription for the Powershell session: Select AzureRmSubscription - SubscriptionId <subscription_id>

2.Search for Dell EMC to find Power Protect DD Virtual Edition in Azure Marketplace.

3.Begin the deployment.

4.Configure the following settings:

• Name: Enter a name for DDVE. (Maximum length is 10 characters. For Azure Gov Cloud, maximum length is six characters. )

Note: The maximum length of the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) can be no longer than 63 characters.

•VM disk type: Select Standard HDD.

•Username: Enter sysadmin.

•Authentication type: Both SSH publicKey and password authentication are supported. (SSH publicKey authentication type forces a password change at first login.)

nSSH public key: Copy and paste the SSH publicKey.

nPassword: Enter the sysadmin password.

•Subscription: Specify a subscription.

•Resource group: Specify or create a resource group.

5.Choose VM size: Select the VM size according to the DDVE specification table and DDVE capacity.

6.Configure option features:

•Select managed disk storage (recommended) or un-managed disk storage.

•Storage account: Specify the storage account if an unmanaged disk is selected.

•Network: Specify the virtual network, subnet, network security group, and public IP address. For security, deploying DDVE in a private subnet and leaving the public IP address as None is recommended.)

•Extensions: No extensions

•High availability: None

•Monitoring:

nBoost Diagnostics: Enabled

nGuest OS Diagnostics: Disabled

nDiagnostics Storage Account: Specify the storage account in which to save the diagnostics logs.

7.Review the summary: Verify that the configuration summary for creating the DDVE is correct.

8.Click Create.

The Azure portal starts the DDVE deployment.

18 PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition in the Azure Cloud Installation and Administration Guide

Deploying DDVE

Adding metadata disks in Azure

Although Azure provides two types of disk storage, Premium and Standard, DDVE supports only Standard. After DDVE is deployed in Azure, a 10 GiB vNVRAM disk is created automatically.

Note: DDVE supports both Standard HDD and Standard SSD. Dell EMC recommends Standard HDD for cost-effectiveness or Standard SSD for performance.

•You can add managed or unmanaged disks to DDVE in Azure. For template-based deployments, only unmanaged disks are supported.

•It is not necessary to shut down the virtual machine before adding storage.

•The virtual disk cannot be resized. You must create a new virtual disk to add additional storage to the virtual machine.

Required capacity

•Metadata disk capacity—The required metadata capacity varies based on workload. Dell EMC recommends that metadata capacity be equal to 10% of the total DDVE capacity, which is sufficient for most workloads. The addition of additional metadata disks can increase cost.

•Licensed capacity—Make sure you have enough licensed capacity available to add new capacity to DDVE and make sure the DDVE instance can support the new capacity. If the new capacity is more than the DDVE instance's supported capacity, please upgrade the DDVE instance.

Metadata disk requirements

New storage for DDVE on hot blob storage must meet the following requirements:

•The minimum size of the first metadata disk is 1 TiB.

•Azure limits metadata disks to a maximum of 4,095 GiB.

•The recommended size for all metadata disks is 1 TiB. For example, if 10 TiB of metadata capacity are required, configure ten 1 TiB metadata disks.

•For unmanaged metadata disks, create separate containers with different names for the metadata disks and the object-store profile.

nIn template-based deployments, the default container name for metadata disks (DDVE on hot blob storage) or data disks (DDVE on block storage) is <vmName>-vhds.

nIn marketplace deployments, the default container name for metadata disks (DDVE on hot blob storage) or data disks (DDVE on block storage) is vhds.

•Any subsequent metadata disks must be a minimum of 1 TiB.

Adding managed disks in Azure

Use these procedures to add managed disks to DDVE in Azure.

Procedure

1.Allocate and attach managed disks to DDVE:

a.Log into the Azure portal.

b.Search the name of the DDVE virtual machine.

c.In the right pane under SETTINGS, select Disks.

d.Click Add data disk.

PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition in the Azure Cloud Installation and Administration Guide

+ 43 hidden pages

Dell PowerProtect DD Installation Manual

CONTENTS

Revision history

Preface

Introducing DDVE

Introducing DDVE

DDVE features

DDVE cloud features

Deploying DDVE

Preparing your environment to deploy DDVE on Azure

Deploying DDVE from the Azure Marketplace

Adding metadata disks in Azure

Adding managed disks in Azure