It’s true. No really, it’s true. Now you can answer with confidence when you hear the question on Jeopardy from Alex Trebek,
“What purpose-built data protection solution for Nutanix users supports both ESX and AHV hypervisors?”
“What is HYCU, Alex!” The good thing is, we’ve been doing it for months. Since the introduction of HYCU 2.0 last fall, we’ve provided support for both AHV and ESX. Which is a good thing. But, the really good thing is the way in which we do it.
We do it differently than many backup and recovery solutions and we provide an extra bonus by doing the following:
- Eliminate VM Stun: As Goran Garevski noted when we originally announced ESX support, HYCU does not rely on the VMware ESX level snapshots for Nutanix environments. This technique minimizes, if not eliminates altogether, VM Stun. VM Stun is the process of quiescing a virtual machine (VM) to create a snapshot that contains a consistent or recoverable backup of the application and/or data residing on the VM. The applications that are most critical or most active are the ones that feel the impact of VM stun and some cases start panicking. One of our customers recently told us, “I am so happy that you have solved the VM Stun issue. I just had to resort to snapshots and replication to another Nutanix cluster because the stuns were cutting off my vCenter!”
- One UI for Multi-hypervisors: We believe the primary purpose of data protection is to keep to the core functions of protecting business data and applications. In our view, everything else should be hidden. And, automated as much as possible. We designed HYCU to be app-centric, understand key requirements (RTO, RPO and retention) and eliminate the need to configure additional infrastructure. You want one common UI for whatever hypervisor you select. HYCU does that. With HYCU, users manage their data without hypervisor or infrastructure specifics in general. In the same user interface, one can manage different platforms and mix the applications, VMs and policies. You do not see the difference between the ESX and AHV infrastructure or need a separate infrastructure to support either. But, we’re also smart enough to know it’s not just the ability to manage both ESX and AHV from a single console, but what you want is the same functionality for both hypervisors.
- Minimize Impact on the Production Application: By using storage level snapshots, HYCU also helps eliminate the impact on production applications. This translates into not only reducing the overall business impact, but allows customers to reduce the safety buffer they plan to use in their production environment. It doesn’t just stop there but also helps to factor in the impact created by the backup.
If you need a visual aid in how we do it, check out Nutanix’s Dwayne Lessner’s cool video demo. Dwayne does a great job in a step-by-step process of backing up ESXi with Nutanix snapshots and HYCU.
If you’re interested in learning more about HYCU, contact us and schedule a demo.