Archival of snapshots to cheaper disk

[MPERIYAK]

I have 3 main data centers where I have 3 backup FAS NetApp's located which take monthly snapshots from my regional NetApp locations around the world. We are supposed to keep 84 monthly's snaps. I want to offload these snaps to a cheaper location may be tape or some place else so I can free up the space on these primary netapps. What are my options here.

I am thinking of Quantum tape. But do I need a 3rd party software to offload these snaps to tape. Can I use smtape. Will it move the snaps or just copy.
NDMP cloud extension NCE seems good but cloud is expensive as we have close to 1 PB of data.

Any other solutions/thoughts to make a cheap archival solution

[ekashpureff]

Mperiyak -

SnapMirror to tape is a very good option.

It creates a full image of the volume along with all of the snapshots to tape.

Another option is to use SnapVault for disk to disk.

SnapVault allows you to retain the snapshots on the destination for much longer than the retention on the primary...

I hope this response has been helpful to you.

At your service,

Eugene E. Kashpureff, Sr.
Independent NetApp Consultant http://www.linkedin.com/in/eugenekashpureff
Senior NetApp Instructor, FastLane US http://www.fastlaneus.com/
(P.S. I appreciate 'kudos' on any helpful posts.)

[MPERIYAK]

Thanks for the response. Can you elaborate more.

I do 30 days local snaps + 1 monthly on my regional netapp and do snapvault (Mirror+Vault Policy) to the backup NetApp located in the main data center (30days + 84 monthlies)

1) Do I need to add a tape device directly to my NetApp....right or use a VTL. Sorry I dont have much experience.

2) If I do snapmirror how will the data be archived..Am I not creating another copy in the tape. It doesnt serve my purpose of archiving right.

[ekashpureff]

Mperiyak -

1) Yes, you'd need to have a tape drive. It could be a VTL.

2) If you're keeping 84 monthly snaps on the vault, then you'd probably want to do the smtap from the primary.

A monthly smtape would have all 30 daily snaps on a single tape image.

It's not a set of UFS dumps, it's a snapmirror image on tape. It's very space efficient.

I hope this response has been more helpful to you.

At your service,

Eugene E. Kashpureff, Sr.
Independent NetApp Consultant http://www.linkedin.com/in/eugenekashpureff
Senior NetApp Instructor, FastLane US http://www.fastlaneus.com/
(P.S. I appreciate 'kudos' on any helpful posts.)