VM Snapshots

Snapshots capture the state and data of a VM at a specific point in time. aSV utilizes the QCOW2 image format's inherent capability to create snapshots using a redirect-on-write mechanism. This provides rapid recovery points for tasks like software updates or patch testing, allowing an immediate rollback if issues arise.

Quick Backup

The backup system employs an initial full backup followed by perpetual incremental backups. Changed block tracking pinpoints modified data sectors since the last backup, ensuring only delta changes are transferred. This design minimizes the backup window and reduces storage consumption for backup repositories.

Quick Restoration

For rapid service recovery, aVM can be started immediately from a backup point before all its data has been fully transferred to primary storage. The system prioritizes fetching data blocks on-demand as the VM accesses them, while continuously streaming the remaining data in the background. This significantly reduces the Recovery Time Objective.

Periodic Full Backup, Compression and Archiving, and Backup Copy

To meet compliance and data governance policies, aSV can be configured to periodically create new full backup chains, compress and move older backups to cost-effective archive storage, and create secondary copies of backups in a different location. This implements the 3-2-1 backup rule for enhanced data resiliency.

Backup Health Check

This feature automatically verifies the integrity and recoverability of backup files. It performs checksum validation and data block readability tests on the backup chain, alerting administrators to corrupted backups and triggering a new full backup if inconsistencies are detected, thus ensuring the reliability of the data recovery mechanism.

Agentless Backup

Third-party backup applications can perform backup and restore operations for aSV VMs without installing agents inside the guest OS. This is achieved through published OpenAPIs and the Sangfor Virtual Disk Development Kit (SFVDDK), which provide standardized access to virtual disk data, simplifying integration and management.

CDP

Continuous Data Protection captures every write I/O made to a VM's disk, providing recovery points as granular as seconds. It maintains a continuous journal of changes alongside periodic baseline backups, enabling near-zero Recovery Point Objectives for the most critical applications and allowing recovery to any specific point in time.

One-Click Data Clearing

For data sanitization, this function securely erases deleted data by overwriting the underlying storage blocks. This prevents sensitive data from being recovered from decommissioned storage devices, which is crucial for regulatory compliance and preventing data leakage.

Silent Operation

Before taking a snapshot or backup, aSV can coordinate with the guest OS (via vmTools) to quiesce the filesystem and applications. This ensures the captured data is application-consistent, preventing data corruption upon restoration, which is vital for transactional applications like databases.