Avamar Integration with Data Domain

Benefits of integrating an Avamar system with Data Domain on the backend would be that there is a flexible architecture and lots of plugins for applications.  VMWare integration also takes place with changed-block tracking, file-level restore and Exchange GRT.  It is best utilized in environments where there are large, active databases of greater than 5TB or a high change rate.  There is a maximum of 1000 files per client.

Clients will use DD Boost, so there is no Avamar deduplication and no client cache files to tune.  Avamar runs a process called ddrmaint, which runs on the Avamar utility node for maintenance and garbage collection.  Also, there is no in-flight encryption options with this configuration.

Avamar/DD will support full, incremental, differential and VMWare Changed-block tracking backup.  The full backup must be located on the DD with the incrementals/differentials.  All data goes to the DD except Exchange VSS log files, Exchange VSS backups less than 10MB in size, and SQL-Server tail log backup during a restore.

The Avamar will control the maintenance on the DD as well.  The HFS check will run, but check for the existence of the file and not the file contents.  When backup expires, it moves to teh DELETED folder, and eventually is physically removed when the DD clean operation is run.  This will delete checkpoints and backup that fail as well.  Data shredding is not available in this configuration.

Checkpoint creation copies data from the "cur" directory to "cp<timestamp>", and deleting them moves them to the DELETED directory.  Rollback moves data from "cur" to "cur.<timestamp>", clones cp.<timestamp> to cur and needs to succeed on both the Avamar and DD or the process fails.

Replication is controlled by Avamar, and there needs to be an Avamar and DD at both sites.  The Avamar will replicate itself to the remote Avamar, and the DD will replicate to the remote DD.  In this scenario, we can use a 1-1, one-many, many-one for the data.

To configure the integration, add the Data Domain to the Avamar system and modify the backup policy to use DD as the back end.  This is selected as part of the backup policy (at the data set level).

Avamar 6.1 requires a minimum of DDOS5.0, and licensing for DD Boost and DD Replicator need to be purchased.  DD recommends using the FQDN of the Avamar, and SNMP must be enabled.  Avamar must be configured with the SNMP community string and a read/write user account for it.  Avamar needs to be licensed to include the entire DD capacity, also.