Hi Toasters,

It has been a while since my last post to the list but I wanted to echo my private reply from last week to the Toasters list for everyone's benefit.

The SnapInfo directory can reside on its own (separate) LUN or on the same LUN with the Exchange transaction logs. What SnapManager uses this directory for is to store metadata corresponding to each backup set. In addition to that, SnapManager copies the transaction logs to the SnapInfo directory as part of its backup process. This way, you can, for example, use an old backup and still restore up to the minute of failure. What SnapManager does is restore the older database from snapshot and then replay all of the logs that it has stored plus any live logs that were generated after the backup. There would need to be a contiguous set of logs available, of course.

With respect to your LUN and volume layout, I would encourage you to work with your NetApp technical sales representative to have them run your configuration through the "Exchange Sizer" that they have available. All variables from your particular environment will be collected and then fed into the sizer. This will ensure proper data layout and performance of Exchange as well as the NetApp storage appliance. The NetApp technical sales representatives have been trained on collecting the correct Exchange specific and NetApp specific data to put into the sizer. There are some sizing formulas and guidelines in the Administrator's guide but the sizer takes more than disk space into account when sizing a system.

Please pardon my delayed response to the list but there was a reason for that. SnapManager 3.2 was posted to the NOW site today and in this release there are some new features relative to this discussion on sizing. These new features (a subset of all the new features in 3.2) are:

* Fractional space reservation policies * Copy-less transaction log archiving * Option to not backup logs that have already been truncated by Exchange

Here is a link to the new version for those of you with NOW access: http://now.netapp.com/NOW/download/software/snapmanager_e2k/3.2/

Regards,

Paul Benn SnapManager Development Team Network Appliance

-----Original Message----- From: Willeke, Jochen [mailto:Jochen.Willeke@wincor-nixdorf.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 8:01 AM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: snapinfo -- exchange on netapp

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