SnapDrive overview
SnapDrive for Windows enables you to automate storage provisioning tasks and to manage data in Microsoft Windows environments. You can run SnapDrive on Windows hosts in either a physical or virtual environment.
- What SnapDrive does
SnapDrive software integrates with Windows Volume Manager so that storage systems can serve as virtual storage devices for application data in Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 environments.
- What SnapDrive does not do
Some functionality is currently not supported in SnapDrive for Windows.
- Recommendations for using SnapDrive
Follow these recommendations whenever you use SnapDrive for Windows.
- SnapDrive components
Several components are integrated into the SnapDrive for Windows software. This topic describes those components.
- SnapDrive licensing
Your SnapDrive license can reside either on the local host or on the storage systems that you are using SnapDrive to manage.
- How LUNs work
The following section describes how LUNs work by interacting with Windows hosts and with storage systems.
- Disk allocation considerations
Resources you should consider when you plan disk allocation on the storage system include RAID groups, hot spare disks, and aggregates.
- How volume space is used
SnapDrive uses space on a storage system volume for LUNs and their data, and also for the data that changes between Snapshot copies, the LUN's active file system, and for metadata.
- Volume and storage system options set by SnapDrive
SnapDrive for Windows automatically checks and resets some storage system and volume options.
- What space reservation is
When space reservation is enabled for one or more LUNs, Data ONTAP reserves enough space in the volume (traditional or FlexVol) so that writes to those LUNs do not fail because of a lack of disk space.
- Disk space usage with space reservation
When space reservation is enabled, the amount of space available on a volume containing LUNs determines whether Snapshot copy creation can take place.
- What fractional reserve is
Fractional reserve is a volume option that enables you to determine how much space Data ONTAP reserves for Snapshot copy overwrites for LUNs, as well as for space-reserved files when all other space in the volume is used.
- SnapDrive for Windows GUI icon descriptions
The SnapDrive for Windows graphical user interface (GUI) uses icons to represent objects that are available in SnapDrive, the state of those objects, and actions you can perform from MMC.
