Data ONTAP protection methods

Data protection methods

Data ONTAP provides a variety of methods for protecting data using FCP. These methods, described in the following table, are based on NetApp's Snapshot^TM technology, which enables you to maintain multiple read-only versions of LUNs online per filer volume.

Snapshots are a standard feature of Data ONTAP. A snapshot is a frozen, read-only image of the entire Data ONTAP file system (or WAFL® volume) that reflects the state of the LUN or the file system at the time the snapshot was created. All the other data protection methods rely on snapshots or create, use, and destroy snapshots, as required.

For information about NetApp data protection products and solutions, see the Network Appliance Data Protection Portal at http://www.netapp.com/solutions/data_protection.html.

Method	Used to...
Snapshot	Take point-in-time copies of a volume.
SnapRestore®	Restore a LUN or file system to an earlier preserved state in less than a minute without rebooting the filer, regardless of the size of the LUN or volume being restored. Recover from a corrupted database or a damaged application, a file system, a LUN, or a volume by using an existing snapshot.
SnapMirror®	Replicate data or asynchronously mirror data from one filer to another over local or wide area networks (LANs or WANs). Transfer snapshots taken at specific points in time to other filers or NetApp NearStore® systems. These replication targets can be in the same data center through a LAN or distributed across the globe connected through metropolitan area networks (MANs) or WANs. Because SnapMirror operates at the changed block level instead of transferring entire files or file systems, it generally reduces bandwidth and transfer time requirements for replication.
SnapVault^TM	Back up data by using snapshots on the filer and transferring them on a scheduled basis to a destination filer or NearStore system. Store these snapshots on the destination filer for weeks or months, allowing recovery operations to occur nearly instantaneously from the destination filer to the original filer.
SnapDrive^TM	Manage a filer's LUNs that serve as virtual storage devices for application data in Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2003 Server environments in an integrated environment with the Windows Volume Manager. Perform online storage configuration, LUN expansion, and streamlined management. Note For more information about SnapDrive, see the SnapDrive Installation and Administration Guide.
Native tape backup and recovery	Store and retrieve data on tape. Note Data ONTAP supports native tape backup and recovery from local, Gigabit Ethernet, and Fibre Channel SAN-attached tape devices. Support for most existing tape drives is included, as well as a method for tape vendors to dynamically add support for new devices. In addition, Data ONTAP supports the Remote Magnetic Tape (RMT) protocol, allowing backup and recovery to any capable system. Backup images are written using a derivative of the BSD dump stream format, allowing full file-system backups as well as nine levels of differential backups.
NDMP	Control native backup and recovery facilities in NetApp filers and other file servers. Backup application vendors provide a common interface between backup applications and file servers. Note The Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) is an open standard for centralized control of enterprise-wide data management. For more information about how NDMP-based topologies can be used by filers to protect data, see the Data Protection Solutions Overview, Technical Report TR3131 at http://www.netapp.com/tech_library/3131.html.