RE: snapinfo -- exchange on netapp - toasters

5 Apr 2006


      Hi Glenn,
Echoing my private reply from last week to the Toasters list for
everyone's benefit, plus adding some detail that I did not include in
that reply....
There are formulas in the administrator's guide that can be used for
proper sizing of the LUN and storage appliance volume. There are
separate formulas for the SnapInfo LUN when it is on its own separate
LUN or on the same LUN as the Exchange transaction logs. For example,
here is the formula for calculating the LUN size for SnapInfo when it
resides on its own, separate LUN:
SnapInfo LUN size = ((number of transaction logs generated per day * 5
MB) * (number of backups to keep online))
In addition to that, it is a "best practice" to use the backup retention
features that are built into SnapManager. There is the option to delete
backups in excess of a specified amount as part of the backup job. A new
feature introduced in today's SnapManager 3.2 release is age based
backup retention.
I have no idea why your SnapInfo LUN ran out of space but please allow
me to make a couple of suggestions so that this can be prevented from
happening again.
1) Make sure that your SnapInfo LUN (and the storage appliance volume
that it resides on) are properly sized according to the administrator's
guide or better yet get your configuration analyzed by your NetApp
technical sales representative and have them run it through the Exchange
sizer.
2) Take advantage of the backup retention features (age based retention
is new in 3.2)
3) Consider archiving the older backup sets. There are several ways that
this can be accomplished and they are documented in the administrator's
guide along with some sample scripts. You can also archive the
SnapManager backups to another NetApp storage appliance. This is
described in detail in NetApp Knowledge Base article 3990.
Hope this helps. Please let us know if you have any further questions or
concerns.
Regards,
Paul Benn
SnapManager Development Team
Network Appliance
________________________________
From: Glenn Dekhayser [mailto:gdekhayser@voyantinc.com] 
    Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 12:19 PM
    To: Sto RageC ; Willeke, Jochen
    Cc: toasters@mathworks.com
    Subject: RE: snapinfo -- exchange on netapp
    
    
    Be VERY careful here.  If your SnapInfo Lun isn't big enough,
SME backups WILL fail (experience talking here).  It needs to be big
enough to house (potentially) the entire transaction log, plus some.  
     
    Glenn (the other one again).
________________________________
From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com
[mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Sto Rage(c) 
    Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 1:15 PM
    To: Willeke, Jochen
    Cc: toasters@mathworks.com
    Subject: Re: snapinfo -- exchange on netapp
    
    
    Hi Jochen,
      Snapinfo-lun is needed for SnapManager for Exchange(SME). This
is where SME stores its information for recovery. Its basically used
when running "up to the minute recovery", where it copied all the
transcaction logs before it truncated them while creating the snapshot
backups. So when you do an "up to the minute" recovery from older
snapshots, it uses this location to bring in the older transaction logs
to be replayed. 
    
     Why do you want to configure 2 separate aggregates? did you
mean volumes? I'd rather have a very large aggregate with as many disks
I can get hold of instead of 2 smaller aggregates. It definetly improves
performance. 
    The way we have it setup in our environemnt is 1 large aggregate
with 3 volumes per exchange host..
    - 1 vol for the storage group with luns for each store
    - 1 vol for log lun
    - 1 vol for snap info lun
    We also have other CIFS shares on volumes/qtrees within the same
aggregate. 
    
    Hope this helps
    -G
    
    
    On 3/29/06, Willeke, Jochen Jochen.Willeke@wincor-nixdorf.com
wrote:
Hi everybody,
    	
    	we are setting up an exchange 2003 system on a filer.
Right now i am 
    	about to size the system. I often read that i need to
have a
    	snapinfo-lun. But i do not understand where i need this
lun for.
    	Exchange does not need it, does it?
    	
    	What i want to configure are two aggregates. One
containig qtrees with 
    	luns for the databasefiles and one aggregate with qtrees
and luns for
    	the logfiles. And if really needed i would put the
snapinfo-lun into the
    	logfile aggregate.
    	
    	Perhaps somebody has already set up an exchange server
on netapp storage 
    	and can help me.
    	
    	Thanks a lot in advance
    	
    	Jochen