HP Serveur lame HP ProLiant BL465c Gen8 - Manual (Page 27)

1 Overview of Application Agent
Application Agent is designed to reduce the workload on system administrators and to provide efficient
and reliable data protection. This chapter describes the features and functions of Application Agent.
The descriptions in this chapter apply to the Application Agent CLI.
Application Agent features
Application Agent is a software package that simplifies data maintenance operations, especially
those dealing with backup and restoration. Application Agent ensures the protection of important
data while minimizing the effect on other jobs that are being processed. In addition, Application
Agent reduces the workload on system administrators and the cost of data management.
Modern day information systems for enterprises must be able to protect important data without adversely
affecting any other jobs that are concurrently processing. These systems must also be able to quickly
restart any jobs that are being executed, if and when an error occurs. To meet these demands, all
storage systems are RAID-compliant (managed via the RAID Manager software) and include volume
replication functions. These replication functions are able to quickly create a replica of a logical
volume within a storage system without the use of a host. A system administrator who manages
backups can use these functions to then back up the replica (the secondary volume) of a logical volume
(the primary volume) to a tape device without having to disconnect the primary volume from the system.
This allows the primary volume to continue being used for any other jobs that are still being processed.
Until now, system administrators had to deal with the following issues when using volume replication
functions to back up a database during online operations (also referred to as an online backup):
Extensive expertise is required:
To use the volume replication functions included in storage systems, you needed to have extensive
expertise in databases, file systems, the logical volume manager, and RAID devices.
Backup operations are complex:
To back up a database object, many complex operations, some of which are susceptible to human
error, must be performed. In addition, since backup operations differ depending on the type of
database application or file system, learning how to perform all the necessary operations is difficult
and time-consuming.
Application Agent resolves these two issues while enabling high-speed, reliable backup operations
that allow the user to get the most out of the available storage system functions.
Application Agent internally manages the relationships between the objects to be backed up and
their associated logical units among the RAID devices, the relationships between the primary and
secondary volumes, and the backup history. This information is contained in dictionary map files.
Application Agent references the dictionary map files in order to automatically control the database
and RAID devices, thus reducing the workload on system administrators and the storage system's
TCO.
The following figure provides an overview of how Application Agent interacts with various storage
media.
Application Agent CLI User Guide 27