CrowdStrike Outage: A wake-up call
The unexpected can swiftly become the new normal in today's digital landscape. On July 19, 2024, there was a widespread IT outage across on-premises and public cloud resources due to a CrowdStrike Falcon sensor update. The incident profoundly impacted Microsoft Windows-based VMs and services worldwide, causing them to crash. The repercussions were felt across various industries, including airlines and hospitals, serving as a stark reminder of the paramount importance of robust and reliable backup and recovery solutions like NetApp SnapCenter to ensure business resilience.
Customers who had implemented Netapp SnapCenter could weather the disruption with remarkable resilience. By leveraging the power of point-in-time snapshots captured by SnapCenter, these organizations successfully performed instant VM or bulk restores, minimizing their downtime and swiftly bringing critical systems back online.
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What's new in SnapCenter 6.0
Data is the lifeblood of any business, and securing and protecting workloads and hypervisor environments is paramount. As an IT professional, you're acutely aware of the critical role of snapshots and backups in ensuring business resilience. I'm thrilled to share the new features in SnapCenter 6.0.
Let's dive into the benefits of installing or upgrading to SnapCenter 6.0 and how it can enhance your data protection strategy:
SnapCenter allows you to protect more workloads within your data center.
- Modernizing outdated applications is a significant aspect of contemporary database management. Customers who migrate some of their traditional databases to modern databases for speed and flexibility stumble while designing an efficient data protection strategy. SnapCenter addresses these challenges by providing a dedicated plugin that automates all the critical tasks for DBAs. With the 6.0 release, SnapCenter introduces three new plugins for the most popular workloads, such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB. These plugins enable quick backup & restore in seconds. It also supports instant cloning with 100% storage efficiency for development and testing environments both on-premises and in the cloud (Cloud volumes ONTAP, Azure NetApp files, and Amazon FSxN storage)
- In the increasingly complex and dynamic landscape of information technology, SAP has been a pioneering force for over 5 decades. Until 5.0, SnapCenter could support S/4 HANA and SAP on Oracle and SQL servers; however, the protection story was incomplete without the support for SAP ASE, SAP on IBM DB2, and SAP maxDB. This 6.0 SnapCenter will offer comprehensive protection for the entire SAP landscape (6 databases) in on-premises and cloud (Azure NetApp Files and Amazon FSxN ) storage.
- SnapCenter is introducing a new plugin for Oracle titled “ Oracle applications.” Similar to the one in Snap Creator, this plugin can flexibly protect and manage Oracle databases and application volumes running on Windows or Linux operating systems.
- Lastly, Customers with home-grown applications or other databases like Milvus for AI/ML use cases can now use SnapCenter’s Storage plugin. It empowers them to embed their business logic for database/application quiescing while SnapCenter handles storage tasks like snapshots, restores, and FlexClone. The plugin offers all the knobs to automate, pass pre- and post-scripts for quiescing, umounting, or mounting the workload.
SnapCenter can now be deployed on Linux VMs apart from Windows
- Traditional and modern databases deployed mainly on Unix/Linux environments prefer a backup solution that runs on Linux environments. The new, redesigned SnapCenter 6.0 helps accommodate the protection needs of both Linux and Windows-based customers with separate binaries. The 6.0 version will have separate SnapCenter packages for Redhat and SLES operating systems.
Modern Datacenter Future-proofing
- NVMe/TCP: Customers who have modernized their storage infrastructure using the NVMe/TCP protocol for better performance and throughput can now use SnapCenter 6.0 to seamlessly backup, restore, and clone databases, filesystems, VMware datastores, and virtual machines.
- VMware vVols simplifies operations through policy-driven automation, enabling more agile storage consumption for virtual machines and real-time dynamic adjustments for customers. Customers who have deployed databases and filesystems on vVols can use SnapCenter 6.0 to backup, restore, and clone their workloads.
SnapCenter offers transparent protection of workloads in synchronously replicated storage environments (RPO=0, RTO=0)
- Customers who are using NetApp SnapMirror® active sync in a symmetric active-active architecture across two sites with a zero-recovery time objective (RTO) and a zero-recovery point objective (RPO) for continuous business operations can now back up and recover their applications and virtual machines (VMs) by using snapshots created through SnapCenter. So, if a failure occurs, they can continue to operate backups, restores, and clones from the remaining active site.
Backup, Restore, and Clone Support for Microsoft SQL Server Over SMB3
- Customers with Microsoft SQL Server databases on CIFS shares using the SMB 3.0 protocol in ONTAP, Cloud Volumes ONTAP, Amazon FSxN, and Azure NetApp Files can now perform backup, restore, and clone operations using SnapCenter 6.0. Customers can utilize our extensive features to manage and safeguard SQL databases in the CIFS environment, regardless of the SQL deployment type. This unblocks our Azure and ONTAP customers using SQL server over SMB.
Removal of SnapCenter License Enforcements for CVO
- Protecting applications on Cloud Volumes ONTAP is a crucial task for customers, but previous SnapCenter required a standard capacity license to protect data on Cloud Volumes ONTAP platforms. With the new SnapCenter 6.0, customers can protect applications on CVO without a standard capacity license. CVO can now be added to SnapCenter like FAS and AFF ONTAP systems without needing a SnapCenter Standard capacity license. This dramatically enhances the database/filesystem backup & restore experience for our Cloud Volumes ONTAP customers.
In conclusion, SnapCenter offers comprehensive data protection and incorporates the powerful SnapLock capabilities within its arsenal. With SnapLock, organizations can establish immutable snapshots, safeguarding them against tampering and ensuring the integrity of critical data. Whether facing malicious attacks, natural disasters, or disruptive incidents like the recent Crowdstrike outage, SnapCenter stands ready to protect snapshots and provide a secure and resilient backup solution, enabling swift recovery of critical data. SnapCenter empowers businesses to proactively mitigate risks and maintain data integrity in an ever-evolving threat landscape.
Get in Touch
If you have any feedback or concerns, write to ng-snapcenter-feedback@netapp.com. For Demos or POC requests, scan the QR code or click below to fill out the form.
Additional resources:
Click Here for Documentation. Click Here to Download SnapCenter 6.0