SnapVault or SnapMirror

[moffitt]

Which is better to use for backup & recovery - SnapVault or SnapMirror?

[chriskranz]

It depends what you are trying to achieve. On a very generic high level view, SnapVault is best for backup and archive, where as SnapMirror is best for DR and replication.

[lyons]

Also, snapshot backup software has continued to gain share over traditional backups in recent years. This has led to NetApp being consistently rated as “Visionary” in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery Software.

[arqureshi]

Both are methods of replication data from source to destination.

SnapVault, Qtree level replication

SnapMirror, volume or Qtree level replication

SnapMirror, make the destination volume read/write with one command (snapmirror break)

SnapVault, destination volume read only

SnapMirror, destination volume is the exact mirror or source volume

SnapVault, several versions of the source data can be kept at the destination

For volume SnapMirror the source and the destination volumes must be the same size

For SnapVault the source volume can be larger than the destination volume

So both are technologies used for different scenarios. They can also be used together in one environment