SM-SQL & VMDKs / Remote Verification / SnapVault queries

[JOELKENYON]

Hi

We are planning to implement SM-SQL across our environment imminently.

We wish to take advantage of the following:

* Latest version of SM-SQL / SDW
* VMDKs as opposed to RDMs to simplify & ease administration

* Remote verification on our secondary site of SQL snapshots using separate SQL verification server

* SnapVault on our secondary site for longer retentions of SM-SQL Snapshots

Firstly, we believe that if we use VMDKs we will be unable to do remote verification of SM-SQL snaps using DBCC?  Please can this be confirmed by NetApp Admins on this site?  Also if this is correct, are there any plans in the NetApp roadmap for support for remote verification in the near future?

Secondly, we would like to take advantage of SnapVault on our secondary site so we can retain SM-SQL snapshots there for longer retentions, with shorter retentions on our primary site to reduce disk space requirements.  Please advise whether or not SnapVault integration is supported for VMDK disks? - if not, again are there any plans in the NetApp roadmap for support for SnapVault integation in the near future?

Thanks for any assistance in advance,
JK

[radek_kubka]

Hi Joel and welcome to the Community!

Good questions really!

 we believe that if we use VMDKs we will be unable to do remote verification of SM-SQL snaps using DBCC? 

It is possible, but the caveat used to be that you need a separate vCenter server at the destination for this to work - haven't seen anything suggesting it changed recently.

Please advise whether or not SnapVault integration is supported for VMDK disks?

SMSQL is integrated with SnapVault via Protection Manager datasets - I've never heard about this not working with VMDKs, but having someone else's input re this would be nice.

Regards,
Radek

[JOELKENYON]

Thanks for your speedy reply Radek.

Good news that we can indeed do remote verification using a separate VMWare infrastructure (including separate V-Center) at our secondary site.  We will begin testing on this ASAP.

On SMSQL integration with SnapVault via Protection Manager, any comments from others on this subject would be appreciated as we believed that this wasn't supported?

Thanks

JK