ONTAP Discussions

snapmanager for exchange, snapshot, snapmirror

pdg
2,978 Views

I'm looking for steps with how snapmanager for exchange, snapshot snapdrive, snapmirror work to have consistent copies on the DR site.

Any questions or additional information ...is good information

Thank You

4 REPLIES 4

chriskranz
2,978 Views

There's some very good documentation on the technical implementation of these features, so I won't go into too much detail, I'll keep it fairly high level.

SnapManager for Exchange works with the Exchange VSS provider to quiesce the Exchange databases so that a consistent storage based snapshot of the running data can be taken. As far as Exchange is concerned, this snapshot can be addressed as a full backup and is consistent.

SnapDrive gives SnapManager the API interfaces to interact with the NetApp storage system so that a consistent Exchange snapshot can be achieved.

SnapMirror is then triggered so that the consistent snapshot of Exchange can get mirrored to the DR site. At the DR site you can either have a standby server / cluster or even a replicated VM waiting to mount the Exchange databases and recover production.

As a further point to the protection provided, SnapManager for Exchange provides a very quick and easy interface to schedule and perform full eseutil based verification on Exchange backups. Most backup providers don't provide this, and so SnapManager for Exchange actually gives you a greater level of confidence in your backup solution.

As I say, a quick high level answer for you, hope it helps, but please follow up with more questions if you want some more detail in any area.

pdg
2,978 Views

Thank you for your response. I do believe I found the online document to be also very helpfull.

http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3584.pdf

columbiagrain
2,978 Views

Chris,

I can initiate a successful snapmirror update if I perform it manually from my DR filer, but if I have SME request the update after it completes a backup, the update does not take place.  I get error messages on the mail server in the event logs saying that it cannot retrieve the Data OnTap version.  I can ping the DR filer from the mail server and from the source filer, and all my other DR snapmirror updates that perform on a schedule succeed.  This configuration was working while our DR filer was located here in the same office during setup, but since we moved it to its remote location home, it's failed to update via the SME.  What possibly could be broken?

Sincerely,

Paul

alapati
2,978 Views

Hi,

There is an SME demo showing this process and functionality. SME 5.0 also contains Business Continuance Module (BCM) that automates Exchange failover to a DR site that has SnapMirror replication underneath. I just checked PartnerCenter and this SME 5.0 demo doesn't seem to be present there. Please work with your NetApp contact to get the demo content available to you.

Regards

Srinath

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