MediaAgent in the Cloud

MediaAgent and Cloud Resources

Today, backup administrators have to deal with ever-increasing workloads hosted in the cloud. Cloud providers offer flexibility by providing options to easily adjust resources when needed (i.e., adding RAM or CPU, or the spinning of a new VM). But most importantly, providers save significant costs by having customers only pay for the resources they use.

When protecting cloud environments, note the location of the backup data. Sending the data to a MediaAgent located in a different datacenter removes a complete copy of the data out of the cloud provider's environment. This type of data transfer incurs significant costs from most providers as they are charging fees (per GB) for data egress. A good approach to avoid data egress is to host the MediaAgent directly in the cloud. 

Power Management for Cloud MediaAgent

Hosting the MediaAgent in the cloud also incurs costs. Depending on the workload to protect, the MediaAgent might require a significant amount of CPU and memory resources. To minimize the costs as much as possible, Commvault^® software includes a power management option for MediaAgents hosted in the cloud. This option optimizes the work a MediaAgent must perform to a specific window, and will automatically shut it down when idle for 10 minutes. When scheduled backups start, the MediaAgent will be powered on automatically to execute the jobs. This minimizes uptime and therefore costs incurred by the virtual machine.

As of SP15, the following providers are supported:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Microsoft Azure Resource Manager (ARM)
• VMware vCenter

Operations which turns the MediaAgent on:

• Backup jobs
• Restore jobs
• Auxiliary copy jobs
• Pruning of data

The MediaAgent can also be manually turned on/off. This option is useful if you need to perform configuration on something that requires interaction with the MediaAgent. 

Operations which require the MediaAgent to be turned on manually:

• Creating a deduplicated Storage Pool/Storage Policy (requires you to create a deduplication database partition on the MediaAgent)
• Configuring a new library (requires the MediaAgent to scan/mount it)

Power Management Requirement - The Cloud Controller

This technology is based on a crucial component; the Cloud Controller. The Cloud Controller is a virtual client which monitors the status of MediaAgents for which power management is enabled. The virtual client uses a Virtual Server Agent (VSA proxy) to act as the Controller Node. The Controller Node is responsible for powering MediaAgents on or off. The VSA proxy can be in the cloud or in the data center.

The CommServe^® server can also be used as the Controller Node if the VSA package is installed on it. If a VSA pseudo client already exists to protect the cloud workload, it is recommended to use it as the Cloud Controller.

Note: The requirements to create a virtual client is different for each provider. For more information, refer to Commvault^® online documentation.

Power management of a cloud MediaAgent managed by the Controller Node

Power Management Configuration

Once the VSA proxy has been installed and the Virtual Client created in the CommCell^® console, power management can be configured. The first step is to enable power management for the MediaAgent(s). This can be performed for a single MediaAgent, or if multiple MediaAgents require power management, a client computer group can be leveraged. If a MediaAgent is associated with a client computer group with power management enabled, settings can be overridden for that MediaAgent if required.

For a single MediaAgent, enable power management from the VM Management tab of the MediaAgent Properties page. To enable power management for a computer group, open the Activity Control tab from its Properties page.

Power a Cloud MediaAgent On or Off

Once power management is enabled for a MediaAgent, the system will automatically control powering the virtual machine On or Off. However, there may be a situation where it is necessary to power On the cloud MediaAgent, such as configuring a new storage target. To manually power the MediaAgent On or Off, simply reach its VM Management tab from its Properties page and click the Power button.

Power Management Idle Time

A MediaAgent for which power management has been enabled will be powered Off once it reaches 10 minutes of idle time. This is a global default value for all managed VMs. This value can be changed if needed. It can be set from a minimum value of 10 minutes to a maximum of 1440. The value is defined using the 'Idle time (Minutes) for power managed cloud VMs' from the Service Configuration tab of the Media Manager applet.