Virtual machines are an important component of an organization's IT infrastructure that handles large compute requirements daily. An organization may incur losses if the infrastructure is not available when it is most required, which makes backup and restore an unavoidable need. In most cases, organizations set up Hyper-V hosts in globally distributed locations to create and manage virtual machines for their IT requirements, yet managing backup and restore for these virtual machines across a geographically distributed infrastructure is a complicated process that requires manual intervention and resources. Druva simplifies the process by providing:
A cloud-based solution that centralizes data management and archival, and
A centralized management console that simplifies host registration, configuration, virtual machine backup, and restore workflows
Druva lets administrators easily manage backup and restore for virtual machines that are hosted on Windows servers and use Microsoft's Hyper-V technology and Microsoft Azure Stack HCI. Druva performs image-level virtual machine backup for virtual machines that run on:
Standalone hosts
Hosts within a cluster
Hosts managed through System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM).
Druva components for Hyper-V
Druva uses server-side and client-side components to interact, manage, and control backups in your virtual machine infrastructure.
Druva is comprised of the following components:
Druva Cloud: Druva Cloud manages storage and stores backup data. It authenticates and authorizes the incoming backup and restore requests from the Enterprise Workloads agent that is installed on your Hyper-V host and redirects it to Druva storage to fulfill the requests.
Management Console: Management Console is a web-based, unified console that provides complete visibility and a high-level understanding of the health and status of virtual machines that you manage, wherever those virtual machines reside. You can view all the Hyper-V hosts in your infrastructure registered with Druva, and discover and configure virtual machines for backup, recovery, and data archival. This console provides administrators the ability to:
Register and configure virtual machines for backup
Control Druva activities by defining the backup policy and triggering restores
Monitor backup and recovery jobs, activities, and reports
Agent: The Enterprise Workloads agent is a client-side component that you install on the Hyper-V host that manages your virtual machines. The agent is a Windows executable that you must deploy and register to back up and restore virtual machines. The agent performs virtual machine backup and restore jobs.
CloudCache (optional component): The Elite and Enterprise licenses include CloudCache; a dedicated server that temporarily stores backup and restore data from the backup proxy. At periodic intervals, CloudCache synchronizes this data to Druva Cloud and relaxes the bandwidth consumption in your infrastructure.
📝 Note
The Hyper-V host mentioned in this documentation is a Windows server on which virtual machines are created and hosted using Hyper-V.