Data protection means backing up data and being able to recover it. You protect the data by making copies of it so that it is available for restoration even if the original is no longer available.
Reasons that businesses need data backup and protection systems include the following:
Depending on your data protection and backup needs, Data ONTAP offers a variety of features and methods to ensure against accidental, malicious, or disaster-induced loss of filer data. This guide describes how to use Data ONTAP online features like SnapMirror® to protect data. See the Tape Backup and Recovery Guide for information about using tape to protect data.
Data Protection Feature
|
Description
|
|---|
SnapshotTM
|
Backup within a volume.
This feature allows you to manually or automatically create, schedule, and maintain multiple backups (also called snapshots) of data on a volume. Snapshots use only a minimal amount of additional volume space on your filer and do not have a performance cost.
If a user accidentally modifies or deletes crucial data on a volume with Snapshot enabled, that data can be easily and quickly restored from one of the last several snapshots taken.
See Chapter 2, Snapshot Management.
|
SnapRestore®
(license required)
|
Fast, space efficient restoration of large volumes of data backed up to snapshots.
The SnapRestore feature performs on request snapshot recovery from snapshots on an entire volume.
See Chapter 3, Data Reversion Using SnapRestore.
|
SnapMirror®
(license required)
|
Volume-to-volume and qtree-to-qtree replication.
This feature enables you to periodically make snapshots of data on one volume or qtree, replicate that data to a partner volume or qtree, usually on another filer, and archive one or more iterations of that data as snapshots. Replication on the partner volume or qtree ensures quick availability and restoration of data, from the point of the last snapshot, should the filer of the original volume or qtree be disabled.
If you conduct tape backup and archival operations, you can carry them out on the data already backed to the SnapMirror partner filer, thus freeing the original filer of this time-consuming, performance-degrading chore.
See Chapter 4, Data Protection Using SnapMirror.
|
SnapVaultTM
(license required)
|
Centralized backup of multiple qtrees on multiple filers using snapshot technology.
This feature enables you to back up qtrees on multiple volumes and filers to a single Network Appliance SnapVault secondary storage system specialized for quick backup and restore of its filer sources.
You can also install the Open Systems SnapVault agent on non-filer Windows NT, Windows 2000, Solaris, Linux, AIX, or HP-UX systems. This agent allows SnapVault to back up and restore data to these systems also.
If you conduct tape backup and archival operations, you can carry them out on the data already backed up to the SnapVault secondary storage system, thus freeing your filers of this time-consuming, performance-degrading chore.
See Chapter 5, Data Protection Using SnapVault.
|
Tape backup dump and restore commands
|
Tape backup and restore.
The dump and restore commands allow you to back up filer snapshots to tape. The dump command takes a snapshot of the volume and then copies that data to tape. Because the snapshot, not the active file system, is backed up to tape, the filer can continue its normal functions while the tape backup takes place.
See the Tape Backup and Recovery Guide for more information.
|
vol copy
|
Fast block-copy of data from one volume to another.
The vol copy command enables you to quickly block-copy stored filer data from one volume to another.
See Chapter 6, Volume Copy.
|
SyncMirrorTM
(cluster configuration required)
|
Continuous mirroring of data to two separate filer volumes.
This feature allows you to mirror filer data real-time to matching volumes physically connected to the same filer head. In case of unrecoverable disk error on one volume, the filer automatically switches access to the mirrored volume.
Filer cluster configuration is required for this feature.
See Chapter 7, Mirrored Volume Management Using SyncMirror.
|
NVFAIL option
|
Protection against data corruption by failures of non-volatile RAM (NVRAM).
See Chapter 8, Database Protection Using NVFAIL.
|
virus scan support
|
Support for third-party virus-scanning software for files accessed by CIFS clients.
See Chapter 9, Virus Protection for CIFS.
|
MetroCluster
|
SyncMirror functionality enhanced to provide continuous volume mirroring over 500-meter to 10-kilometer distances.
See Appendix A, Disaster Protection Using MetroCluster.
|
