It looks like we're getting funding for our DR project. The bare bones are using snapmirror to replicate an Oracle DB offsite alone with a few dozen front end/infrastructure VMs. Two of the items we've been quoted by our vendor are SnapDrive & SnapRestore. I can understand snaprestore but why would I need snapdrive at the DR site? I don't even use it at our primary site, the Oracle system is very static, we do not have the hardware capacity to run a cloned instance and I'm comfortable with scripting a snapshot. I tried reading NetApp's SnapDrive document http://media.netapp.com/documents/snapdrive.pdf and it looks like it will do every buzzword under the sun but I have no idea what it really gets me other than the ability to see/control snapshots from the server - which I don't want. In addition it breaks the KISS idea which is important, especially since this system will be in another geographical location and not have as many eyes on it as a live system would.
Am I missing something?
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SnapDrive makes connecting servers to the SAN a doddle (this can be a PITA in Windows-land, I don't have much experiance on other platforms with SD) and I believe it also provides API's leveraged by some other SnapManager products to take snapshots.
It also makes resizing LUN's, disconnecting and reconnecting LUN's and snapshots really easy.
Cheers, Raj.
On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 11:48 AM, Page, Jeremy jeremy.page@gilbarco.comwrote:
It looks like we’re getting funding for our DR project. The bare bones are using snapmirror to replicate an Oracle DB offsite alone with a few dozen front end/infrastructure VMs. Two of the items we’ve been quoted by our vendor are SnapDrive & SnapRestore. I can understand snaprestore but why would I need snapdrive at the DR site? I don’t even use it at our primary site, the Oracle system is very static, we do not have the hardware capacity to run a cloned instance and I’m comfortable with scripting a snapshot. I tried reading NetApp’s SnapDrive documenthttp://media.netapp.com/documents/snapdrive.pdfand it looks like it will do every buzzword under the sun but I have no idea what it really gets me other than the ability to see/control snapshots from the server – which I don’t want. In addition it breaks the KISS idea which is important, especially since this system will be in another geographical location and not have as many eyes on it as a live system would.
Am I missing something?
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Am I missing something?
No, sounds like you have it about right. Also, unless you have snapmanager for Oracle you're going to want/need to script putting you DB in hotbackup mode anyway, to get a consistent snapshot of it for mirroring off-site. Depending on your platform, OS and drivers you use you may also be out of luck with getting snapdrive to even work. I've been unable to get it to work on our Solaris infrastructure because the FCP drivers we use aren't supported by Netapp and don't work with snapdrive. It just segfaults. So even if you want to use it make sure your stuff is supported by it. But in the end I've found that I made some scripts which do the job more than adequately for us.
Just an addendum from field experience. SD on Windows platform is really a great add-on (creation, provisioning, resizing, snapshots, mount as r/w snaps and others such backup/mirror controls on software controlled by Snapmanager and more) On Linux/Unix worlds I found it always almost complex to set up and to put it on work trying to obtain the same as in Windows.
SMO? I think that both on Windows (where i.e. SMO with RAC instances is not supported and working!!!) and on Linux/Unix platform is absolutely unuseful: you can get the same and easily with a couple of scripts! On Solaris SD and SMO have been a real nightmare :)
Bye,
Da: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] Per conto di Romeo Theriault Inviato: venerdì 9 aprile 2010 07:38 A: Page, Jeremy Cc: toasters@mathworks.com Oggetto: Re: What exactly does SnapDrive buy me?
Am I missing something?
No, sounds like you have it about right. Also, unless you have snapmanager for Oracle you're going to want/need to script putting you DB in hotbackup mode anyway, to get a consistent snapshot of it for mirroring off-site. Depending on your platform, OS and drivers you use you may also be out of luck with getting snapdrive to even work. I've been unable to get it to work on our Solaris infrastructure because the FCP drivers we use aren't supported by Netapp and don't work with snapdrive. It just segfaults. So even if you want to use it make sure your stuff is supported by it. But in the end I've found that I made some scripts which do the job more than adequately for us.
-- Romeo Theriault System Administrator Information Technology Services
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Milazzo Giacomo -
Page, Jeremy -
Raj Patel -
Romeo Theriault