Percona XtraBackup vs. PowerProtect DD Series

Xtrabackup has many excellent features that are supposed to be in any backup solution. It's well suited for all MySQL deployments but it's not appropriate for any other database. If you are using any MySQL flavor (MySQL, MariaDB, Percona Server for MySQL), it's your only and perfect solution for backup and disaster recovery.

When used as a backup target PowerProtect DD models offer incredible density and can efficiently replicate to another cloud-based or offsite unit. Most complaints about these have been addressed in software over the years and they are now a intuitive and easily managed backup system. You are not buying a Swiss army knife, you are getting a machine designed for a purpose, use it for that and you will not be disappointed. While they have the ability to serve as a CIFS server, they are not a filer and lack many of the features inherent to filers and are a poor substitute.

Incentivized

• The ability to stream backups (using netcat or socat) to a target destination has many uses, for example, 1)We do not need to store a backup locally on the database server 2) We can stream backups into object storage using GCSFUSE.
• The hot-backup functionality is probably the most important function. We are able to take backups of our primary instances with minimal impact on the database instance.
• XtraBackup has many parameters that can be tuned, allowing us to increase performance or reduce by using the parallel thread parameter for example.
• Partial backups.
• The ease of use when doing restores. Simplified, fast and accurate.

• It writes backups quickly. DDBoost add-on is very useful as well for improving backup speeds.
• DD is very efficient in its use of capacity. It dedupes and compresses very well.
• It spans to large capacity amounts.

Incentivized

• Remote execution: Xtrabackup doesn't support remote backup. The backup process has to run locally and have to store data locally.
• LifeCycle management: Xtrabackup doesn't support backup lifecycle management. Users have to manage it themself.
• Stability for large databases.

• Depending on the model of Data Domain, there is a limit to the number of NFS/SMB threads that can run concurrently. When this limit is reached, the system is slow to respond to client requests.
• Data Domain support is very slow to turn out new features and bug fixes in their code.
• OS upgrades are very slow and disruptive.

Incentivized

DD has performed flawlessly for almost 10 years as our backup/recovery storage with offsite replication. Given its track record and great support from EMC, we're unlikely to look elsewhere any time soon.

Incentivized

Takes a bit of getting used to when you first set it up.

Incentivized

Great support, detailed online documentation, and examples in many scenarios. Bugs can be logged and are tracked. Great community support has been built-up due to Percona XtraBackup being a great product. Frequent releases ensure bug fixes are committed as soon as possible. Over and above this, the development team stays up to date with the latest releases of MySQL and ensures it is 100% reliable.

Customer support has had some ups and downs here. We've had several issues with EMC support before and during the acquisition by Dell, but in the last 18 months support has been top notch. Quick and knowledgeable help is but a chat away, or they will call you back so you don't have to wait on hold. The team supporting us is responsive and is quick to assist with any request or issue.

Incentivized

Percona XtraBackup saves us time and money. Besides the performance and reliability, the support and documentation are top-notch. It's not just about the cost savings, but about the functionality and the minimal impact that XtraBackup has on the database server during a backup window. Percona XtraBackup has been integrated into Percona XtraDB Cluster which makes adding nodes easy and fast.

We already had Avamar in place, and since we have a good ecosystem of Dell Solution suite and wanted to evaluate PowerProtect DD also from that perspective, hence we thought of going ahead with it. We knew the limitations with Avamar and PowerProtect DD were right there from that side of the business.

Incentivized

• It is free and the best backup tool that I know of. Using this for free means we save on having to purchase other backup software.
• As a DBA it is the standard backup tool that is used everywhere I have been.

Incentivized

• Positive: The high compression (58.0x) and data reduction (98.3%) have allowed us to optimize the storage for efficient usage.
• Negative: even after adding capacity, we are running out of space. Adding capacity adds to the overall TCO (e.g. lease cost).

Incentivized