#Net app snap manager software

SnapDrive is client-side software that is installed on the host itself, and it provides tools that allow the client to provision and manage its own storage. How is that going to work? Well, with software that is installed on the client, and there are a few different options as well. The ONTAP system itself is by default going to control snapshots for our NAS volumes, but for our SAN volumes, we want that to be controlled from the client site. It’s not a problem to pause writes to the actual volume just momentarily while the snapshot is being taken. Now, if you’re worrying also about their writes being paused when we take our snapshot, that doesn’t cause any issues, because when we do take a snapshot, it happens nearly instantaneously. To make sure that that doesn’t happen, we want snapshots to be controlled from the client-side for our SAN protocols. It’s also possible that you would get an inconsistent copy of data on the LUN. Therefore, it’s possible that when the ONTAP system was taking a snapshot on the ONTAP side, the client was trying to write at the same time. The client has gotten low-level, block-level access to the LUN. With the SAN protocols, it’s the client itself that formats the LUN. So, whenever it’s timed to take a new snapshot, it can easily pause that volume so it can take a clean, consistent snapshot.

With your NAS protocols, the ONTAP system itself has got complete control of the file system on the volume. The reason for that is because of the different ways that NAS and SAN protocols work. You can turn that off if you want to, but by default, the system will automatically take snapshots of your NAS volumes.įor your SAN volumes, however, the ONTAP cluster does not take scheduled snapshots by default. Whenever you create a new NAS volume, by default it’s going to have a policy on there which is going to have it taking snapshots on an automatic schedule. The ONTAP cluster, meaning the ONTAP operating system itself, takes scheduled snapshots of NAS volumes by default.

The most common way for snapshots to occur is due to automated scheduled snapshots.