SnapProtect questions

[peluso]

Hi all,

You may have seen the latest announcement for our new product, SnapProtect.  Please ask your questions - we have technical expertise ready to provide answers and point to useful information.  I will post a few questions here as well to break the ice and open up the conversation.  For more information about the product, start with our product pages. http://www.netapp.com/us/products/protection-software/snapprotect.html

Best,

Terri

[DHESSARROW]

Nick, Skinner…or anyone else that can help.

Why is there no Xen support in SnapProtect? and is it "not supported"? or "doesn't work"?

I know Simpana had support as of v9 however however it looks like SP never did support it, and CommVault silently removed it in Simpana 10.

SP is marketed as the "one ring to rule them all" for backup. Is there a supported way or "known workaround" for protecting XenServer VMs inside of SnapProtect? How about backing up the volume as NAS with pre and post commands to create and cleanup snapshots?

[jskinner]

Hi David,

SnapProtect with Xen isn't supported.

It may be possible to use that method but there will not be any granularity or application awareness.

[D_BEREZENKO]

Dear Terri.

What is the SnapProtect licensing model and whare can I find official appropriate document on the subject?

Is there an internal document on comparison SnapProtect and Simpana functionality?

Thanks,

Dmitry

[jbahn]

Licensing model: 

SnapProtect is licensed per controller. If you have an HA pair, you need two licenses. The other thing to know is that you only need to license the primary array. The basic rule is that SnapProtect is only required on systems where local Snapshot copies are created (as opposed to replicated Snapshot copies). If you have an active/active config where each array is creating local snapshots then you would need two licenses.

Here are some scenarios to explain the licensing:

1. Data from FAS A is replicated to FAS B via SnapVault or SnapMirror.

=> License SnapProtect for FAS A only.

2. Data from FAS A is replicated to FAS B via SnapVault or SnapMirror. From FAS B data will be transferred to tape via SnapProtect

=> License SnapProtect for FAS A only.

3. Some data from FAS A is replicated to FAS B via SnapVault or SnapMirror. From FAS B data will be transferred to tape via SnapProtect. In addition some other data from FAS A will be transferred directly to tape.

=> License SnapProtect for FAS A only.

4. Data from FAS A is replicated to FAS B via SnapMirror. From FAS B, the mirrored data will be replicated with SnapVault locally.

=> License SnapProtect for FAS A only. NetApp SnapProtect Sales FAQ 10

5. FAS A and FAS B are both providing primary storage, and are backup targets for each other (active-active): FAS A replicated to FAS B; FAS B replicated to FAS A.

=> License SnapProtect on both FAS A & FAS B

As for the differences between Simpana and SnapProtect, there is no comprehensive comparison matrix, but this should help cover the big things:

-Jim

[jbahn]

And in case the image doesn't make it, the big differences are that the licensing model for SP is controller based, and Simpana does traditional streaming backup, tiering to the cloud, archive and eDiscover, laptop/desktop backup, and bare metal restore.  This isn't a complete matrix, just the big things.

[D_BEREZENKO]

Dear

Thanks for the reply. Let me ask few more questions.

In case when we have two storage systems (they are both HA pairs): primary (production) and secondary for backups and a tape.

1. Do we need to have SnapRestore license on primary and secondary, is it "must have"?
2. Must we have FlexClone license?
3. In what cases it is more comfortably and functionally to have SnapProtect & SnapRestore & FlexClone licenses on both: primary and secondary systems, what is the difference if we will not have them on secondary? In another words: what we will lose if not install the mentioned licenses on the secondary system?
4. And the lest thing is about "covered space" by SnapProtect, it is not clear at all (in case of using SnapProtect for Open Systems & OSSV). Can you please clarified the subject?

Thanks,

Dmitry

[jbahn]

Yes, you need both FlexClone and SnapRestore on both.  FlexClone is used for all indexing and array based restore operations. SnapProtect leverages FlexClone for these operations to avoid competing for cycles with the production / active data.  SnapRestore allows you to revert an entire volume regardless of size back to a given snapshot in a very short period of time.  This is  really useful on very large files (like LUNs which can be several TBs). Through SnapRestore, we are taking advantage of snapshot technology, efficiencies, and speed.  The restore job will first look on its local array and if it finds the backup file; if it finds it locally, it’ll perform a Single File SnapRestore (SFSR) which is just a revert of the file or LUN  – flipping of the bits rather than copy based. That revert job using SFSR is much faster…very powerful technology.  If the backup file isn’t local, but rather on a secondary site, it’ll copy that file back to primary transparent to the user. So when the end user simply selects a file and chooses Restore… SnapProtect has the intelligence to find the file and decipher which function to perform but ultimately SnapRestore license is required on all. 

I'm not sure what you are asking about "covered space".  If you license SnapProtect on the primary controller, it covers all space on the primary and secondary controllers, including all servers, cores, applications, etc.  If you use SPOS to enable backup from non-NetApp storage, then a SPOS license on the first target controller is all you need.  It covers any number of devices backing up to that target controller.  If you're backing up to the primary NetApp controller, which would be unusual, then the original NetApp SnapProtect license would be all you'd need.

Jim

[jessa]

The environment detail below.

#HQ Site:
VCenter
ESX01 V.5.5
ESX02 V.5.5
NetApp C-Mode V.8.2.3
Snapprotect 10SP10 Commserv + Commcell
Library tape

#DR Site:
VCenter
ESX01 V.5.5
ESX02 V.5.5
Snapprotect 10SP10 Commserv + Commcell
Stand alone tape

We have backup data Disk to Tape on HQ site and then offsite the tape to DR site,everthink is find. 
And then we need to restore VMware data on the tape at DR site (differance commserv and commcell).
The problem is SP at DR site cannot get catalogs from the tape for restore. It errorr "Error Code: [62:2481]
Description: Media Password verification failed." . We tried two or three times back to HQ site then erase  tape media and change media password and then new backup again, it still same problem. We need to prove the case we assume when HQ site have disaster ,without export media.

Note : Already install a dual license on both site.

Please suggest.

[frank_iro]

So, SnapProtect (v10 SP11) now supports backup of Hyper-V VMs on NetApp SMB 3.0 shares! Sweet!

My question is, does it yet support backup of MS SQL 2012 with DBs on SMB 3.0?

[steve_2_lowe]

Hi, Using SnapProtect 10 and trying to work out how to automatically move tapes out of the library once they're full, any pointers greatly appreciated.