Technical Report

NetApp AltaVault
Cloud-Integrated Storage Appliances
Technology Overview
Christopher Wong, NetApp
April 2017 | TR-4427

Abstract
This technology overview provides insight into the technical capabilities of the NetApp
AltaVault cloud-integrated storage appliances to better assist users in understanding the
technologies available in cloud storage appliances on the market today. AltaVault appliances
provides a simple, efficient, and secure way to move data off site to either public or private
cloud storage providers. Using advanced deduplication, compression, and encryption,
AltaVault enables organizations to eliminate reliance on older, less reliable data protection
solutions while improving backup windows and disaster recovery capabilities.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 Overview ................................................................................................................................................ 4
1.1 Introduction .....................................................................................................................................................4

1.2 Audience .........................................................................................................................................................4

2 AltaVault Appliance Overview ............................................................................................................. 4

2.1 AltaVault Introduction ......................................................................................................................................4

2.2 AltaVault Appliance Deployment Scenarios ....................................................................................................5

2.3 AltaVault Architecture .....................................................................................................................................8

2.4 AltaVault Appliance Data Integrity and Security ..............................................................................................9

2.5 AltaVault Appliance Ecosystem Integration ..................................................................................................11

3 Industry Deduplication Overview ...................................................................................................... 12

3.1 Inline Deduplication .......................................................................................................................................12

3.2 Postprocess Deduplication (Other Vendors) .................................................................................................13

3.3 Additional Deduplication Methodologies .......................................................................................................14

3.4 Fixed-Length Versus Variable-Length Segments..........................................................................................14

3.5 Data Segment Size .......................................................................................................................................15

3.6 Deduplication Feature Summary ...................................................................................................................15

4 Additional AltaVault Features ........................................................................................................... 16

4.1 AltaVault Appliance Replication Capabilities .................................................................................................16

4.2 AltaVault Appliance Eviction Process ...........................................................................................................17

4.3 AltaVault Appliance Disaster Recovery Capabilities .....................................................................................17

4.4 AltaVault Appliance Cold Storage Mode .......................................................................................................19

4.5 AltaVault Share Policy Management .............................................................................................................20

4.6 AltaVault Integration with OST ......................................................................................................................20

4.7 Data Fabric Solution for Cloud Backup .........................................................................................................20

4.8 AltaVault Software Upgrades ........................................................................................................................21

4.9 AltaVault Appliance Support .........................................................................................................................21

Version History ......................................................................................................................................... 22

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1) General AltaVault deployment example. .........................................................................................................5
Figure 2) AltaVault appliance configured for data tiers. ..................................................................................................6
Figure 3) AltaVault appliance configured for multiple data retentions. ............................................................................6
Figure 4) AltaVault appliance features. ..........................................................................................................................9

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Figure 5) AltaVault appliance data flow. .......................................................................................................................10
Figure 6) AltaVault appliance ecosystem. ....................................................................................................................11
Figure 7) AltaVault appliance inline deduplication. .......................................................................................................12
Figure 8) Postprocess deduplication. ...........................................................................................................................13
Figure 9) Original data segments. ................................................................................................................................14
Figure 10) Fixed-length segments after a change in data. ...........................................................................................14
Figure 11) Variable-length segments after a change in data. .......................................................................................15
Figure 12) Data segment size. .....................................................................................................................................15
Figure 13) Dynamic replication thread allocation. .........................................................................................................16
Figure 14) AltaVault appliance DR recovery timeline. ..................................................................................................18
Figure 15) Traditional tape DR recovery timeline. ........................................................................................................19
Figure 16) Backup and cold storage modes. ................................................................................................................19
Figure 17) Storage lifecycle policy with OST. ...............................................................................................................20

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1 Overview

1.1 Introduction
This technical report discusses the technical foundations of the NetApp AltaVault cloud-integrated storage
appliance to better assist users in understanding the technologies available in cloud storage appliances
on the market today. This paper focuses on core technologies used by the AltaVault appliance to keep
data protected and secure from end to end, providing the highest level of integrity and recoverability. This
paper also provides insight on various deployment scenarios for implementing the AltaVault appliance
and a general discussion surrounding how the AltaVault appliance works within the context of backup,
archive, and disaster recovery. It also describes how AltaVault appliance support can make all the
difference in recovering a business environment.

1.2 Audience
The audience for this guide includes NetApp customers, partners, IT architects, technology decision
planners, and professional services engineers who are interested in discovering more about the
technologies used by the AltaVault appliance. NetApp highly recommends that readers have previous
experience with backup applications as well as general knowledge about disk systems and storage
technologies.

2 AltaVault Appliance Overview

2.1 AltaVault Introduction

With the never-ending demand to maintain the highest levels of data integrity for increasingly large
datasets, companies are increasingly challenged to find effective data protection solutions that balance
cost, data protection, and disaster recovery features. Historical approaches such as tape backup and
disk-to-disk replication for protecting data and ensuring recoverability in disaster scenarios face enormous
constraints. That is because of the amount of human interaction, technical complexity, and costs involved
in implementing such solutions to meet recovery requirements.
NetApp AltaVault storage enables customers to securely back up data to any cloud at up to 90% lower
cost compared with on-premises solutions. AltaVault gives customers the power to tap into cloud
economics while preserving investments in existing backup infrastructure and meeting backup and
recovery SLAs.
The AltaVault appliance is a disk-to-disk data storage optimization system with cloud storage integration.
It easily integrates with existing backup and archive applications to securely protect critical production
data off site without the complexity of using tape management solutions or the cost of using in-house
disaster recovery sites and services. The backup server simply connects to the AltaVault appliance using
SMB, NFS, or OST protocols. In addition, AltaVault now supports the ability to directly receive ONTAP
Snapshot backups using SnapMirror, NetApps snapshot replication engine.
When you back up or archive to an AltaVault appliance, it performs inline variable-length deduplication of
the backup data and securely replicates data into the cloud. AltaVault appliances use the local disk to
store enough data for recovery of recent information. For example, with the AVA800 appliance, you can
store up to 384TB of deduplicated data per appliance. Such a mechanism provides LAN performance for
the most likely restores. The AltaVault appliance then writes the deduplicated, compressed, and
encrypted backup data to your public or private cloud storage provider. AltaVault appliances also optimize
replication restores from the cloud because they move only deduplicated data over the WAN.
AltaVault appliances are designed around the need for maintaining the highest data integrity while
delivering the performance and costs that companies need in such a backup and disaster recovery
solution. AltaVault appliances are file-based data deduplication storage devices with SMB, NFS,

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SnapMirror, and OST connectivity to back up applications to a variety of class-leading cloud storage
providers.
These large, sequential data streams are ingested into AltaVault appliances using multiple 1GbE or
10GbE connections and is inline deduplicated, compressed, and encrypted before it is written to the
AltaVault local cache and asynchronously replicated through secure TLS connections to cloud storage.
AltaVault appliances protect data using class-leading deduplication technologies and utilizing scalable
and cost-effective cloud storage to provide long-term data storage for backup data. They also implement
a local disk cache for immediate restore needs.
AltaVault appliances are available in a variety of sizes to scale with business requirements and growth.
They are also available in virtual format editions for virtualized environments such as VMware vSphere,
Microsoft Hyper-V, Linux KVM, and the Amazon EC2 and Microsoft Azure marketplaces for cloud-to-
cloud backups. The flexibility of product types provides alternative methods of performing data recovery in
the event of a disaster when infrastructure and resources might not be available in the same manner as in
the lost primary data center.

2.2 AltaVault Appliance Deployment Scenarios

AltaVault appliances are designed to be easily integrated into a backup application infrastructure. As such
they can be deployed in a number of scenarios depending on the scope and size of the environment
being protected. For example, a typical scenario places an AltaVault appliance directly behind the backup
or archive application, protecting that data to the cloud. Data is stored on the appliance cache for quick
restore of backups and maintained in cloud storage for long-term archive, audit, and compliance.

Figure 1) General AltaVault deployment example.

Many organizations, however, have more complex environments and, as such, might have existing disk
or deduplicated disk infrastructure configurations for retaining data for short-term requirements and tape
for longer-term storage requirements. In these scenarios, these companies typically are cost constrained
when attempting to add more local infrastructure, or manageability of off-site tape might become
problematic as data growth occurs. The AltaVault appliance can work seamlessly by inserting itself as a
lower tier of storage designed to off-load less critical data from the existing disk storage system so that
the disk can be reused for higher-priority data. AltaVault can also provide off-site data protection to
replace the need to have and maintain large tape infrastructure footprints in the data center.

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Figure 2) AltaVault appliance configured for data tiers.

In addition to having storage infrastructure requirements, some organizations have specific requirements
for different retention rates. In these cases, multiple AltaVault appliances might be appropriate to help
divide the storage for each priority tier of data. Take, for example, a case in which some data must be
protected for long-term audits or government compliance and other data follows normal retention policies.
In this scenario, AltaVault appliances can be aligned to particular backup or archive policies to keep the
data separate, such as one cloud storage target per AltaVault appliance.

Figure 3) AltaVault appliance configured for multiple data retentions.

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Starting with version 4.3, AltaVault can now protect data directly from NetApp ONTAP Fabric-Attached
Storage (FAS) and All-Flash FAS (AFF) systems using Snapshot technology based on SnapMirror
replication, and have data protection policies managed through SnapCenter data management software.
As part of the Data Fabric vision, this solution is called Data Fabric Solution for Cloud Backup. The
solution brings native snapshot capability to AltaVault, allowing users to leverage AltaVault as an end
point for data protection of NAS file services workloads from NetApp FAS or AFF systems. With the
ONTAP command-line interface (CLI) or SnapCenter data management software to manage the data
protection workflow, snapshots can be sent through either a direct relationship with a primary NetApp
filer, or as a secondary mirror of an existing mirrored relationship between two NetApp filers, and
protected to the cloud provider of your choice for long term retention and recovery.

Figure 4) AltaVault appliance using SnapMirror relationships.

AltaVault version 4.3 also introduces the support for Amazon Snowball, a seeding appliance that can
drastically improve initial dataset transfer time to Amazon S3 object storage. As dataset growth continue
to increase, pressures on existing Internet links to send data to Amazon have increased. Despite
AltaVaults industry leading deduplication and compression, organizations can sometimes be challenged
on moving very large initial datasets to the cloud. Snowball provides an on-premise storage device which
AltaVault can leverage to quickly move large amounts of data to a secured appliance, which is then
shipped back to Amazon and loaded into S3 object storage.

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Figure 5) AltaVault appliance leveraging Snowball.

Regardless of the scenario, AltaVault appliances provide a flexible storage point for an organizations
growing data requirements so that users can select the location and retention tier in which the AltaVault
appliance is utilized.

2.3 AltaVault Architecture

AltaVault appliances are file-based appliances designed to be easily implemented in an existing backup
infrastructure. They provide flexible high-performance storage for backup applications through Windows
SMB (also known as Server Message Block), UNIX or Linux NFS (also known as Network File System),
NetApp ONTAP SnapMirror, and the Vertias OpenStoage (also known as OST) protocols. Unlike block-
level appliances, AltaVault appliances do not require extensive IT architecture redesign, configuration,
and implementation to integrate into an existing storage infrastructure. Organizations simply connect the
AltaVault appliance directly to the network and quickly set up shared storage folders that backup and
archive applications can easily point to for subsequent backup operations.
AltaVault appliances use proven NetApp enterprise-grade storage chassis engineered to rigorous storage
design standards. All AltaVault appliances utilize dual power supplies for power redundancy to protect the
appliance in the event of an individual power supply failure. Dual boot partitions likewise enable AltaVault
appliances to power and boot properly, even in the event of an unplanned power outage or failed
software upgrade. To provide the required horsepower to efficiently drive the inline deduplication
functions to meet the data ingest rate, AltaVault appliances utilize dual CPUs, each with multiple cores,
and 256GB of low-latency ECC memory.
Within the AVA10S disk shelves are enterprise-grade near-line (NL) SAS disks, configured by hardware-
based RAID controllers into RAID 6 groups for consistent, reliable data read and write performance as
well as data integrity in the event of disk failures. The RAID controllers are protected by a battery-backed
unit for uninterrupted operations, even in the event of a power outage. RAID 6 allows up to two drive
failures, insuring that the time needed to rebuild the array if one disk fails does not impact data integrity if
a second drive fails during the rebuilding process.
Data connectivity is enabled through multiple 1GbE and 10GbE connections, delivering ingest rates of up
to 10TB per hour from backup applications. In addition, the ports can be aggregated together to form
virtual interfaces for easier appliance manageability using the 802.3ad industry standard. The multiple 1-
and 10-gigabit connections provide accessibility for AltaVault management, as well as for outbound data
leaving the AltaVault appliance for public cloud storage. Flexibility is provided to allow users to select
which interfaces to utilize, depending on the complexity of the user network environment in which the
AltaVault appliance is placed. VLAN support is offered starting at version 4.2, which allows large
organizations to place AltaVault within the context of the appropriate backup infrastructure network scope.
AltaVault also has significant expansion capability, with the capacity to support up to a total system
capacity of 384TB of usable cache, which can manage up to 1.92PB of cloud storage. Assuming
deduplication rates of up to 30 times, this means that a single AltaVault solution can support over 57PB of

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logical data in the cloud. By delivering flexible expansion capability, AltaVault can grow as business
needs expand capacity requirements.
Finally, AltaVault appliances include a service processor card to perform platform management. This
important feature provides access to AltaVault appliances that are having normal run-time problems that
prevent regular access through the graphical user interface. It also helps administrators centrally manage
and monitor AltaVault appliances located in remote sites.

Figure 4) AltaVault appliance features.

2.4 AltaVault Appliance Data Integrity and Security

One of the most important facets of any reliable data protection appliance is its capability to provide end-
to-end data integrity while maintaining a high level of internal security for that data while it is owned and
managed by the appliance. AltaVault appliances provide many layers of integrity checks, including
transactional consistency logging and checksum verification at every stage of ingest and recovery.
As backup and archive data is ingested into an AltaVault appliance; it is segmented in real time into small
chunks and placed into AltaVault memory. At the same time this occurs, fingerprint labels are created to
individually identify these chunks of data. The first checksum is generated to verify that the data written to
memory represents the incoming data stream received over TCP/IP from the backup application.
The AltaVault appliance then hashes these fingerprint labels and compares these hashes to hashes that
were previously written by AltaVault. Because AltaVault performs variable-byte-length deduplication using
one of the finest granularities in the industry, the maximum amount of data deduplication can be
achieved. If a match does not occur, then AltaVault compresses the data with the Lempel-Ziv
compression algorithm, encrypts the data with 256-bit AES encryption, and flushes the resulting data
container called a slab to disk. Because encryption is performed in memory, the data is considered
secure at rest after being written to disk. A checksum is generated against the written data to disk, and it
is checked when slabs are loaded for future comparisons.
At the same time the new segment is written, an entry called a label map is created in memory. This
allows the decoding of the data stored by an AltaVault appliance back to the source application in the
event of a restore request. This label map entry is similarly flushed to disk and the checksum is verified as
well. At any point in time, data that is accepted into an AltaVault appliance can be recovered back to its
original form.
Slabs and associated metadata written to the AltaVault appliance are also asynchronously replicated to
cloud storage through TLS v1.1 or 1.2 connections for DR and long-term backup and archive purposes.
Replication consistency to a cloud provider is validated by first transferring the slab data, then performing
a checksum to verify that the content arrived, then sending the corresponding metadata for the slab, and
finally checksum verifying the metadata. Performing replication in this controlled fashion offers crash

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consistency and rollback mechanisms if the replication process is interrupted during the sending of data.
AltaVault appliances can examine and confirm unfulfilled transactions and, in the event of partial slab
synchronization, delete the problematic data and resend the data.
In addition to data security at rest and in flight, AltaVault supports the Key Management Interface Protocol
(KMIP) protocol, allowing Key Management Servers (KMS) to offload AltaVaults secure information, such
as the encryption key and cloud security credentials. This both centralizes security, as well as reduces
risk, of key information being compromised or improperly accessed. Specific versions of KMS are
supported as documented in IMT.
To protect access to the appliance, AltaVault offers role based permissions to control user access to
certain actions, such as exporting the AltaVault configuration, changing cloud credentials, or adding NFS
shares. In addition, AltaVault appliances starting at version 4.3 also support Windows Active Directory
domain authentication when logging into AltaVault. This seamless integration eases the administration
based on Windows AD permissions for users who manage AltaVault appliances.
To provide additional security control for federal organizations, AltaVault supports government clouds,
such as Azure Government Cloud, and Amazon GovCloud, as secure cloud targets for Federal and
higher education data protection workloads. With Amazon, AltaVault also supports Amazons Security
Token Service (STS). This web service enables finer control of security credentials used when
authenticating with Amazon S3, S3-IA and Glacier storage targets.

Figure 5) AltaVault appliance data flow.

All transactions performed on an AltaVault appliance use a transaction log that records the state of data
and the actions taken. It asynchronously replays these same changes with cloud storage through
separate threads. This allows the AltaVault appliance to be consistent in transactions and provides crash-
consistent transactional recovery capabilities for the local storage and cloud replicated copy if power or
other unexpected hardware outages occur.
In addition to the exhaustive set of practices used to protect data being written on AltaVault appliances
and to the public cloud, AltaVault appliances also provide additional data verification tools to perform
manual verifications of data. Those tools are MFSCK and Verify, which correspond to file system checks

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for local systems and the cloud, respectively. MFSCK diagnoses and checks the integrity of the disk
storage file system used by an AltaVault appliance. It provides a thorough check of not only the metadata,
but also the data content itself. If damaged content is discovered, an option is available to retrieve data
from the cloud copy. Verify checks replication consistency and is available to validate that replicated data
is indeed in the cloud storage target specified by the AltaVault configuration.
AltaVault appliances also offer the capability to encode data that conforms to the Federal Information
Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 level 1 standard. The NetApp Cryptographic Security Module (NCSM)
that AltaVault appliances use is validated with the standard to guarantee that data cannot be
compromised by insecure cryptographic algorithms. When the appliance is paired with a compliant cloud
storage provider, users can rest assured that data will be maintained with the highest level of security.
This is important for various business sectors including government, legal, and healthcare.
Further details on security related features are available in the TR-4405 AltaVault Security Guide.

2.5 AltaVault Appliance Ecosystem Integration

Purpose built specifically for backup and archive markets, AltaVault appliances can claim best-in-class
backup application integration. With integration for all leading backup, database, and virtual backup
solutions as well as with all the leading cloud storage providers, AltaVault appliances offer the widest
range of coverage in the industry today, covering all leading backup software and cloud storage
providers, and starting with 4.3, integration with NetApp SnapMirror.

Figure 6) AltaVault appliance ecosystem.

AltaVault appliances have a unique understanding of the nuances of each backup application, and they
optimize data transfers based on the methodologies of the backup application. For example, CommVault
Simpana inserts tape markers into its backup streams. This can impact data deduplication performance if
not handled correctly by the deduplication engine. Similarly, Veeam Backup & Replication uses specific
data read routines when performing vPower-based VM recovery operations. Being able to detect and
properly optimize performance for this type of activity is what separates AltaVault appliances from others
when performing activities with the backup application.
In addition to being fully integrated with backup applications, AltaVault appliances are among the few to
also be certified with the backup applications. AltaVault appliances received Tivoli Ready certification
from IBM for the Tivoli Storage Manager backup family of products. They also are on the hardware
compatibility list (HCL) for Veritas Backup Exec 2016 and Enterprise Vault, and are Veeam Verified for
Veeam Backup & Replication. These certifications are living partnerships with these vendors, and they
guarantee that the highest level of integration and testing has been done to qualify the cross-compatibility
of the two products within business environments. As new backup application versions are brought to

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market, AltaVault performs regular release cycle validation to ensure that the new backup versions are
supported for use. AltaVault identifies the supported versions of backup software in IMT.

3 Industry Deduplication Overview

Deduplication lies at the heart of any cloud storage appliance or deduplication storage device.
Understanding the technology design and what this effectively can provide from a storage perspective is
important when evaluating deduplication storage platforms. Todays deduplication storage products
implement one of two major types of deduplication processes, and, within each, various methods that
achieve the deduplication.

3.1 Inline Deduplication

The first type of deduplication process is inline deduplication, or in-band deduplication. The deduplication
engine in this design examines data as it is received in real time by the storage unit. It then deduplicates
using physical memory to quickly examine the source data stream against previously examined data to
determine if the source data is a duplicate of existing deduplicated data stored on the storage device. If
the source data is a duplicate, then only a small reference counter is incremented for that data and the
data is discarded. If the source data is uniquely different, then that data must be written to the storage unit
at the cost of a single write and read.

Figure 7) AltaVault appliance inline deduplication.

The main benefit of performing data deduplication with this method is that data is stored in its most
efficient format on the storage unit, resulting in the largest amount of available space for source data from
the user environment. Additional important benefits include the performance cost of getting the data to
disk, which in this example requires only one write operation to secure the data and one write to validate
the data. It also includes the capability to immediately replicate that data, such as to the public cloud, with
AltaVault appliances, and the absence of a deduplication window, such as with postprocess deduplication
storage devices. Although storage write performance used to degrade with inline deduplication because
of the CPU overhead required to perform deduplication, the current generation of powerful hardware
systems, which include large amounts of RAM, powerful multicore CPUs, and flash memory, firmly
resolves this concern.

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 3.2 Postprocess Deduplication (Other Vendors)
The second type of deduplication process that an appliance can use is postprocess deduplication, or out-
of-band deduplication. Although AltaVault does not support postprocess deduplication, its important to
understand how it differs from inline deduplication. In this type of storage device, the source data must be
completely written to the deduplication storage units disk storage in its original nondeduplicated form.
Only after the data has been completely written to disk can the deduplication process start (commonly
referred to as a postprocess deduplication window). This includes reading back the data from disk into
memory, reducing the amount of data by examining the source data to compare it to previously
deduplicated data stored, and, finally, writing new unique deduplicated data back to disk. This can be very
time consuming as well as wasteful of space, since data must be written twice and read three times
during this process:
Written once in source form during the initial ingest
Read from disk storage for validation against the source data
Read again in source form during postprocess deduplication
Written back to disk in deduplicated form if the data is unique
Read from disk storage after the write to validate the deduplicated data

Figure 8) Postprocess deduplication.

Because of the very heavy I/O requirements, postprocess deduplication systems typically require many
more CPU and disk resources than inline deduplication storage systems, such as SSDs and additional
storage disks, to handle and store the incoming source data stream in its nondeduplicated format. These
resources are realized as increased capital costs in equipment, energy, and space expenditures, as well
as in performance costs if the system is unable to perform deduplication of the source data during the
now required postprocess deduplication window. Additionally, the ability to protect the system through
replication can be impacted significantly because data remains unprotected while waiting for the

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postprocess deduplication to complete before replication can begin. This can effectively limit the real
capacity of data that the unit is able to store and protect, even if there is sufficient storage for much
greater quantities of data. That is because the source data ingest and postprocess window effectively
reduce the replication window.

3.3 Additional Deduplication Methodologies

Beyond the deduplication technology type used, another important consideration to evaluate is whether
the source data itself is being deduplicated to its most efficient deduplicated size. Deduplication
algorithms typically examine data using two methodologies when performing deduplication:
Fixed-length or variable-length segments
Size of a segment length

3.4 Fixed-Length Versus Variable-Length Segments

In many deduplication strategies, vendors implement algorithms to divide the data for deduplication
comparison. Take, for example, the blocks of data representing a common English pangram phrase
broken into eight character segments. Fixed-length algorithms examine source data based on fixed block
sizes and find matches to deduplicated data. Although this is easier to implement and potentially faster to
execute on a data stream, it does not find nearly as much data to reduce as can be found with more
robust deduplication strategies. Additionally, changes to the data within those blocks can lead to
increased storage consumption, since data shifts within the blocks can greatly increase the amount of
unique data in subsequent writes to the deduplication storage device. Changing the first word from A to
The in the example below affects all of the segments because data shifts and none of the segments is
the same as previously seen.

Figure 9) Original data segments.

Figure 10) Fixed-length segments after a change in data.

On the other hand, deduplication systems such as AltaVault appliances that implement variable-length
deduplication algorithms can see marked increases in storage device utilization. This occurs because
AltaVault appliances can detect the subtle changes in the data stream and account for the shift of data in
the blocks that would otherwise reduce duplicate matches. The result of variable length deduplication is
increased deduplication matches and overall less storage required to hold the changed data blocks. In
this variable length example, the first word change from A to The does not affect all of the segments
because only the first segment was not previously seen. In this case, it grows in variable size to
accommodate the additional characters. All the other segments are still the same, and thus are
considered duplicate segments and are not stored as new segments.

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Figure 11) Variable-length segments after a change in data.

3.5 Data Segment Size

Another consideration regarding deduplication functionality is the size of the data segment being
examined. In general, the larger the data segment size being examined, the more potential there is for
unique data. Conversely, the smaller the data segment size, the more potential there is for duplicate data.
Vendors typically deduplicate data using multikilobyte data segments ranging from 8KB to 256KB
segments. AltaVault appliances use very granular data segments starting at 512 bytes, which in turn with
variable-length segments improves the ability to deduplicate the data efficiently

Figure 12) Data segment size.

Others:

AltaVault:

3.6 Deduplication Feature Summary

The overall deduplication performance of a cloud storage gateway solution can therefore be measured as
a relationship between the deduplication process and the type of length algorithm, segment size, and
comparison methods used. Although good deduplication functionality is important in increasing the
amount of source data that a user can store and protect on a deduplication storage appliance, do not
forget that with cloud storage gateways this becomes even more important. That is because it also affects
the amount of stored data in the cloud, which in turn affects the overall recurring cost per month of cloud
storage consumed. Because they meet this requirement for reducing storage costs, AltaVault appliances
take the best feature of each category and deliver the best deduplication storage appliance experience for
users looking to protect data to cloud storage.

Table 1) Feature comparison.

Feature Comparison Best Performing Reason

for Backups
Inline versus postprocess Inline Fewer reads/writes to disk, fewer resources consumed, allows
deduplication deduplication larger backup windows

Fixed-length versus variable- Variable-length Fewer changed blocks to write, increased storage utilization
length segments segments

Large versus small data Small data Finer granularity for greater deduplication efficiency
segment size segment size

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4 Additional AltaVault Features
In addition to having class-leading enterprise hardware capabilities, end-to-end data integrity and
security, and superior deduplication functionality, AltaVault also has several other functional capabilities
that make it an exceptionally strong fit for todays increasingly large backup and archive workloads.

4.1 AltaVault Appliance Replication Capabilities

Replicating to the public cloud storage provider is an important piece of a cloud storage gateways
capability to protect a business environment. AltaVault appliances contain advanced WAN optimization
capabilities to optimize replication efficiently and effectively to cloud storage while providing users with
options to throttle bandwidth usage and schedule when replication can run.
AltaVault appliance replication is done using cloud provider APIs, which are typically HTTP/REST-based
protocols. These protocols are designed for multisession ingests of small data segments that are stored
collectively in a single target location referred to commonly as a cloud bucket. Work has been performed
with each supported cloud provider to carefully tune networking parameters to optimize throughput
capabilities to cloud storage. This also dynamically and intelligently allocates multiple threads to transmit
data to and from the cloud provider based on networking performance, the data in the queue for
replication, and the cloud provider selected. Transactions are batched together for maximum throughput
and efficiency of the replication threads. Objects sent are typically anywhere from several KB up to a few
MB in size. In the event there is a problem replicating an object, replication automatically pauses and
alerts the user that replication was unable to maintain connectivity to the cloud storage bucket.

Figure 13) Dynamic replication thread allocation.

Replication itself is automatic and provides an estimated time of completion when running so that users
can better understand the time frame required to perform replication. This can be important if restrictions
are placed on bandwidth or if scheduling windows are being used by a user. By establishing a completion
date and time upon replication conclusion, users know clearly when data is in sync with cloud storage and
protected in the event of a disaster in the data center.

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 4.2 AltaVault Appliance Eviction Process
The AltaVault appliance cache is designed to serve as a temporary data storage location for the most
recent backup and archive data in the event of an immediate restore need. This immediate recovery
range can be anywhere from weeks to a month depending on the needs of the business. Because
AltaVault is designed to recover over 90% of the typical use cases, most restores are performed solely
from the local cache.
Over time, data that is ingested and protected by an AltaVault appliance might not be able to fit
completely on the local cache of the appliance. When the appliance storage fills up, eviction might be
required to remove the least recently used but previously replicated data segments from the AltaVault
cache such that new data can be received. Evicted data segments continue to exist as a cloud-only copy
within cloud storage and the backup application continues to see the data segments as if it were local to
the AltaVault appliance.
Eviction is performed when the AltaVault appliance reaches 90% of utilization and removes the least
recently used data segments until the cache falls back under 90% utilization. In addition, policy-based
eviction can also be configured on a given share or export, providing expedited eviction processing on a
share ahead of any recently used data segments. This feature is useful for the archive data use case and
for data that is not needed for quick recovery and is needed only in the event of long-term actions such as
an audit or a disaster. Eviction is automatically performed by AltaVault appliances, so no user interaction
is required to ensure that the AltaVault cache has sufficient space for new data. Typically, eviction occurs
several weeks after an AltaVault appliance is deployed. As such, the least recently used blocks being
evicted represent much older backups that are typically not required for the most common restore
requests.
If the data is required by the backup application for recovery, the deduplicated segments of the file that
are not within the AltaVault cache can be recalled to the AltaVault appliance from the cloud. This process
is done invisibly such that all restores for the backup application look like they are coming back from the
local disk on the AltaVault appliance. Since it is likely that the data being restored still has many of the
segments on the AltaVault cache because those segments are duplicates of other segments that are
more frequently referenced, the amount of cloud access needed to recover evicted segments is typically
very low. This minimizes impacts recovery performance for restores.
To give users further insight into eviction, AltaVault appliances provide comprehensive eviction views
within the graphical user interface. This enables users to identify the remaining cache available in the
AltaVault appliance, the amount of data evicted from the AltaVault cache over time, and the average data
age of the evicted bytes of data. It enables users to clearly understand which local recovery time frame is
now available within the AltaVault cache.

4.3 AltaVault Appliance Disaster Recovery Capabilities

AltaVault appliances can help organizations recover business servers and business processes more
quickly than with traditional tape backup solutions. As a disk-based deduplication solution, recovery for
the most common data loss scenarios that are typically within 24 - 48 hours of the data loss event will
quickly occur because of the data being read back from the local AltaVault appliances. AltaVault
appliances maintain a local cache size varying from 2TB all the way up to 384TB of usable data. This
typically allows a localized recovery to occur of data aged anywhere between one day and a couple of
months. In the event that not all of the data is within the local cache, an AltaVault appliance recalls just
the necessary segments of the missing data needed from the cloud provider to complete the recovery.
Typically these data segments are 1MB to 4MB in size, and they thus save the company money by not
having to recover unnecessary data from cloud storage to complete the restore.
A larger outage might require a significant restore action to be undertaken, which could include
recovering the AltaVault appliance and the backup infrastructure itself in addition to the production
business systems. These are typically true DR scenarios in which the entire working infrastructure is lost,
such as in a fire or flood. The effect on the business can be tremendous, and includes impacts such as

17 NetApp AltaVault Cloud-Integrated Storage Appliances Technology Overview 2017 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved.
lost productivity, lost sales, and the inability to generate products to market. In these scenarios, rapidly
meeting a recovery time objective (RTO) and minimizing the recovery point objective (RPO) are essential
to successful business continuity.
AltaVault appliances can be deployed as a virtual or physical instance within the businesss secondary
data center as a cold standby to perform recovery operations. AltaVault appliances can also be deployed
as cloud-based instances within Amazon EC2 and Microsoft Azure to provide DR recovery into the cloud.
The appliance model deployed for DR need not directly match the original AltaVault model, although this
is recommended if you intend to perform subsequent backups after DR. In a cold standby DR scenario,
the secondary AltaVault appliance uses a wizard-driven process to aid in the recovery of the configuration
from the original AltaVault appliance. This is followed by steps to recover the backup application name
space and then prepopulating the most recently backed up data from the cloud (typically from the last day
or week). Because AltaVault appliances maintain the association between data stored on volumes as it
pertains to the backup application and the data it needs to recover from the cloud, they use smart
prefetch algorithms to efficiently restore the needed data to improve the overall recovery process. The
process can be started within minutes of a disaster if the AltaVault appliance is available at the secondary
data center site. For example, it is possible to deploy and use the virtual AltaVault appliance in evaluation
mode for disaster recovery purposes without any license. This appliance can be obtained by downloading
it from the NetApp Support website.

Figure 14) AltaVault appliance DR recovery timeline.

This type of recovery can save enormous amounts of time compared to traditional tape-based recovery in
which tape volumes must be identified, moved to the secondary data center site, mounted, and then read.
It also reduces the risks associated with physical volume movement (that is, tape corruption, tape
misplacement, tape security, and so on). When combining it with the best practice of securing the backup
application catalog or backup database to the AltaVault appliance, businesses can further reduce RTO by
having the most recent backups available almost immediately. By allowing data recovery to begin in
almost real time in response to a major outage event, users can quickly return to having business
operation capabilities by using AltaVault appliances.

18 NetApp AltaVault Cloud-Integrated Storage Appliances Technology Overview 2017 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved.
Figure 15) Traditional tape DR recovery timeline.

4.4 AltaVault Appliance Cold Storage Mode

Government regulations, legal requirements, and audit compliance have vastly changed the data
retention requirements that businesses must adhere to. Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPPA, and other regulatory
statues mandate that companies regularly archive data information for a minimum of seven years or
more. These regulations cause a huge strain on enterprise data protection budgets to manage what
amounts to cold, or infrequently accessed, data such as audio recordings, medical images, completed
projects, or legal documents.
To assist companies in best utilizing the cloud scale and cost efficiencies of elastic storage to reduce
management costs for this infrequently accessed long-term data, AltaVault can be configured in cold
storage mode. In cold storage mode, the AltaVault appliance cache is used for storing more metadata
and less deduplicated data than in backup mode. This expands significantly the volume of cold data
managed in the cloud. Because less deduplicated data can be stored, eviction of data to the cloud occurs
more frequently. Eviction also expels the corresponding deduplication information when the deduplicated
data is evicted. As a result, most restores of data are done from the cloud instead of from the local cache,
and the overall deduplication rate is typically lower than that in backup mode. However, when configured
in cold storage mode, AltaVault can protect upward of 60 to 250 times more data than in backup mode,
or, in terms of object counts, over 1.3 billion file objects.

Figure 16) Backup and cold storage modes.

19 NetApp AltaVault Cloud-Integrated Storage Appliances Technology Overview 2017 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved.
 4.5 AltaVault Share Policy Management
To offer users with flexibility on how data is maintained on AltaVault, several policy management options
are available to address these requirements. Each SMB, NFS, or OST share can be configured with:
Pinning: Important data that cannot wait for recovery from cloud storage can be made available permanently
on the AltaVault cache by using this option. Data is never eligible for eviction from the AltaVault appliance
cache.
Early Eviction: When AltaVault needs to make additional space available on the cache for new backups,
shares with the least important data can be enabled for early eviction. Data in these shares will be the first
eligible for removal during eviction. Combined with pinning and the normal eviction mechanism of AltaVault,
users can effectively have three tiers of data priority on the AltaVault appliance critical, normal, and least
important.
Disable Deduplication: Most datasets AltaVault will receive will be backup workloads, which can be repetitive
in nature and very efficient to deduplicate. However, workloads such as archives which do not see repeating
patterns may not benefit from deduplication. These datasets can be written to a share that is not enabled for
deduplication, thereby preserving system resources to use for deduplicating datasets which will benefit from
AltaVault deduplication.
Disable Compression: Similar to disabling deduplication, disabling compression for shares with data types
which are already compression efficient can allow AltaVault to better utilize resources for datasets which will
benefit from AltaVault compression. Examples include photo image jpg files, video mp4 files, and archives
such as GNU zip files.

4.6 AltaVault Integration with OST

Veritas NetBackup can communicate directly with AltaVault using the OST protocol and, through this
protocol, allow NetBackup and Backup Exec to manage storage lifecycle policy (SLP) of backup copies
independently on AltaVault cache as well as in the cloud.

Figure 17) Storage lifecycle policy with OST.

4.7 Data Fabric Solution for Cloud Backup

With the Data Fabric Solution for Cloud Backup, storage administrators and IT generalists can perform
Snapshot copy-based data protection operations for Windows and UNIX file shares to and from public or
private cloud object stores. The solution includes NetApp ONTAP, SnapCenter data management
software, and AltaVault cloud-integrated software.
ONTAP provides storage management, and initiation and management of protection operations
SnapCenter performs protection operations initiation and management
AltaVault provides storage optimized space in cloud storage providers for snapshots of file share data
from ONTAP
The Data Fabric Solution for Cloud Backup using SnapMirror technology enables administrators to back
up NFS and SMB NAS file services (NFS v4, SMB3) and home directories to the cloud using AltaVault
cloud provider connections.

20 NetApp AltaVault Cloud-Integrated Storage Appliances Technology Overview 2017 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved.
Advantages of using the Data Fabric Solution for Cloud Backup include:
Storage efficient incremental forever snapshots with ONTAP
Storage efficient backups of snapshots to cloud storage with AltaVault
Data protection flexibility on-premise in the cloud
Simplified management and administration
Optional extended retention through AltaVault for 10 years of daily snapshots
ONTAP SnapMirror operations to AltaVault are performed with an XDP (extended data protection)
relationship. The functionality is similar to the former SnapVault type relationships where snapshots are
retained on the destination separately from the source, and are not a mirror of snapshots. After the
relationship between ONTAP and AltaVault is created and initialized, a baseline transfer occurs sending
the initial data from the volume snapshot. After the initial baseline transfer of data, subsequent updates
will send only the changed blocks between the snapshots which gives block level incremental updates.
Data protection policy management continues to be handled by either ONTAP or SnapCenter. Optionally
it is possible to extend retention through AltaVault, which allows for up to 10 years of daily snapshots.

4.8 AltaVault Software Upgrades

All AltaVault models receive regular software upgrades, allowing users to maintain currency across
clouds, backup applications, and KMIP providers as well as tap into enhancements that are continually
developed and brought to market. Software upgrades are free to download on current release tracks from
the NetApp support website, and are easy to install via the upgrade GUI page. AltaVault software
upgrades can be scheduled to be performed during upgrade change windows to minimize impacts on
operations. Because AltaVault maintains dual boot partitions, AltaVault can roll back to the previous
software version should a software upgrade cause an unintended or serious issue.

4.9 AltaVault Appliance Support

AltaVault appliances include sophisticated technologies to help diagnose and resolve problems quickly.
Every AltaVault appliance comes with built-in detailed system monitoring to identify whether a serious
problem developed in any of its core functions or with the hardware platform itself. Users are alerted to
one of the three prominent status values representing the system state: green for Healthy, yellow for
Degraded, and red for Critical. Users might also elect to receive notifications by e-mail when the system
becomes critical, such as for a bad disk or replication service failure.
User logs and system logs can be easily viewed within the user interface and are color coordinated to the
status values to help users quickly identify key messages that represent the problem an AltaVault
appliance might be experiencing. In addition to taking user-level actions regarding AltaVault appliance
changes in state, users can also have AltaVault appliances capture and automatically submit system
diagnosis information to Support for diagnosis. There is no need to have information downloaded and
manually sent to Support.
Finally, AltaVault appliances provide the NetApp AutoSupport (ASUP) capability for improved support.
AutoSupport sends daily reports of AltaVault health status along with Support logs for helping to
troubleshoot problems that occur. NetApp Support can use this information to help troubleshoot the
AltaVault appliance more effectively, and it can also use this information to proactively notify customers
about such things as available updates or critical notifications. For critical AltaVault events, ASUP will
trigger automatic case generation to ensure that problem analysis and resolution can immediately begin,
even if the user is unaware of the problem.

21 NetApp AltaVault Cloud-Integrated Storage Appliances Technology Overview 2017 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved.
Version History
Version Date Document Version History
Version 1.0 May 2015 Initial version

Version 1.1 August 2015 Updated for 4.0.1 release

Version 1.2 November 2015 Updated for 4.1 release

Version 1.3 April 2016 Updated for 4.2 release

Version 1.4 January 2017 Updated for 4.3 release

Version 1.5 April 2017 Updated for 4.3.1 release

22 NetApp AltaVault Cloud-Integrated Storage Appliances Technology Overview 2017 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved.
Refer to the Interoperability Matrix Tool (IMT) on the NetApp Support site to validate that the exact
product and feature versions described in this document are supported for your specific environment.
The NetApp IMT defines the product components and versions that can be used to construct
configurations that are supported by NetApp. Specific results depend on each customer's installation in
accordance with published specifications.

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23 NetApp AltaVault Cloud-Integrated Storage Appliances Technology Overview 2017 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved.