SnapManager Snapshots & Normal Snapshots

[FCITDEPTAMATTHEYCOM]

Hi,

My questions is about the snapshots that the various snapmanager products create and the normal volume wide snapshots you can schedule on the filer.

We have allot of the snapmanager products and the first one I have setup is snapmanager for SAP. When I schedule it to create a backup I end up with a snapshot. Is this snapshot just of the SAP system or is it the whole volume? Is the snapshot of the entire SAP server or is it just the database?

If each snapmanager snapshot is just for SAP, Exchange, SQL etc then what about the normal volume wide snapshots you can scedule on the filer? wont backups of my SAP servers be in both the filer snapshots and also the snapmanager snapshots?

Originally before we purchased our NetApp system I presumed the SnapManager products acted much in the same was a backupexec agent would. I thought that when a filer volume wide snapshot was about to happen each snapmanager product would quiessce the databases and then the snapshot would happen with consistant data. After my experience setting things up and reading various documents im less convinced this is how things work.

I am concerned that I'll end up with lots of snapshots for SAP and also volume wide snapshots as well.

Can somebody explain how snapmanager snapshots work with the normal snapshots you can schedule on the filer? Are they two seperate things or do they intergrate together so you dont snapshot your servers twice in two different snapshot ways.

Many thanks

Graham

[aborzenkov · Accepted solution]

Every snapshot is always for the whole volume. While it is possible to restore individual files from snapshots, it is quite slow process and to have full benefits you have to separate different databases into different volume(s). This will enable you to do volume level snap restore which is almost instantaneous for any data size. There are additional requirements how various parts of database (data files, logs, etc) should be distributed across different volumes, they are documented in respective Snap Manager manuals.

SM SAP cares only about database. You have to use some different method to back up other parts (/sapmnt, /usr/sap etc).

Snap Manager products do not use snapshots done by external means or for volulme not containing databases. You have to manage them yourself.