Snap Manger for SQL or similar behaviour with NFS

[dpeverley]

Want to start getting some of our SQL server estate away from or current configuration which uses FC attached Luns, SnapDrive and SMSQL.

To use any of the new netapp/vmware technologies to be able to quickly clone test copies of servers etc and look at product such as VMware vCloud Director it looks like having multiple LUNS on multiple volumes aren't really a good configuration.

Is there anything around or on the horizon from Netapp that allows you to do application consitent snapshots for SQL servers running entirely on .VMDK drives on NFS datastores.

I know that you can now see and work with .vmdk drives in snapdrive so wondering if this will be moving up to SMSQL?

[peter_lehmann]

With SMSQL 5.1 this functionality can be provided:

SnapManager® 5.1 for Microsoft® SQL Server® Description Page

New Features

SnapManager 5.1 for Microsoft SQL Server introduces the following new features: Support for virtual machine disk (VMDK) over NFS and VMFS datastores. Dataset integration with Protection Manager is not available for VMDK over NFS and VMFS datastores. Note: Support for performing Snapshot copy operations on virtual machine disks (VMDKs) in an NFS or VMFS datastore requires SnapDrive 6.3 for Windows or later and Virtual Storage Console 2.0.1 or later. Please check the availability of SnapDrive 6.3 for Windows and Virtual Storage Console 2.0.1 and install it before using this feature.

ALSO = http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-4003.pdf

[dpeverley]

That is useful to know and looking through that guide though looking at the Database storage designs on page 74 all the recommended supported configs show vol to lun to SQL user DB's type scenarios.

I am familiar with these from my current setup but wanted to know if there is anything out there which states what can be done with vmware nfs setups using entirley vmdk based installations?

We currently use separate volumes\luns for systemdbs, sqldata, sqllogs, snapinfo and tempdb, if i wanted to move these to NFS would they need to all be on separate volumes\nfs mounts in the same sort of configuration?

[peter_lehmann]

Sorry there is a better TR which writes about SQL on VMDK...

http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3941.pdf

See page 36 ff.

Additionally the Install Guide for SMSQL 5.1 in Chapter 12 has even more information about this.

Peter

[dpeverley]

Thanks will take a look and setup a test server