Lori,
I'm not familiar with Great Plains but I think it sits on top of SQLServer. So you should use SnapManager for SQLServer (SMESQL). SnapManager knows SQLServer and how to put it into hot backup mode so you can get a usable snapshot. SnapManager actually sits on top of SnapDrive. SnapDrive works on Windows OS level to flush all the buffers to disk for a coherent snapshot. However, if you try to use just SnapDrive on SQLServer, you are still going to miss the memory buffer and cache that SQLServer keeps.
You should use SMESQL if possible. This will allow you to take snapshots on the fly. However, it will require you to have at least 2X the amount of disk space that you are using for the lun. I heard some rumor about 7.x allowing for less than 2X the amount but I have yet to try that. It does not look like you have enough disk space right now to run SMESQL. So unless you can expand the volume, you will need to shutdown the database and then take a snapshot. If you turn off space reservation for the lun, you should be able to ndmpcopy the volume elsewhere.
Derek
-----Original Message----- From: Lori Barfield [mailto:itdirector@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, December 23, 2005 11:30 AM To: Lai, Derek Cc: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Re: backing up Great Plains
On 12/23/05, Lai, Derek Derek.Lai@onyxco.com wrote:
You are most likely running into problem with space reservation for luns. By default it is set to on. Do a lun show -v and send the
output.
fs03> lun show -v /vol/vol1/sql/sqldata.lun 429.0g (460656806400) (r/w, online, mapped) Serial#: hoh9OJ0o5Ttw Share: none Space Reservation: enabled Multiprotocol Type: windows Maps: viaRPC.iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:oujisama.square-enix-usa.com=0
i'm getting an education today. :)
if i understood the NetApp tecchie correctly, there is space set aside in the LUN for snapshot that the database itself reserves and is aware of. so snapshots from within the Snap Manager tool will use this space and not the global snapshot space the filer OS uses. (makes me wonder why there is snapshot space on the filer at all, then).
a gent named paul asked this question:
Are they talking about shutting down the SQL server so the databases aren't active so they can be backed up?
i believe Snap Manager will quiesce the database and take a snapshot. after that i am hoping i can just snapmirror that shot over to another filer. but just now someone told me that Snap Manager does not do this- Snap Disk is what is used to take the snapshot and that's all.
and Alan sent me some links for how to resize the database. thanks, Alan! i see that's going to take some careful work so that definitely comes later. here's the df -r he recommended:
fs03> df -r Filesystem kbytes used avail reserved Mounted on /vol/vol0/ 10485760 292748 10193012 0 /vol/vol0/ /vol/vol0/.snapshot 2621440 74476 2546964 0 /vol/vol0/.snapshot /vol/vol1/ 901775360 561929340 339846020 108745792 /vol/vol1/ /vol/vol1/.snapshot 0 2366728 0 0 /vol/vol1/.snapshot
indeed, snapshot is gobbled up.
...lori