NetWorker 19.7 Snapshot Management Integration Guide

Snapshot operations

NetWorker Snapshot Management supports the application host, which is a NetWorker client that writes production data to volumes on a supported storage array or storage appliance. These production volumes consist of one or more logical units (LUNs) of storage, which the array or appliance replicates to a mirror LUN or snapshot pool. The mirror LUN can be local or a LUN on a remote array or remote appliance.

NetWorker supports the following storage array and storage appliance configurations:

• ProtectPoint—VMAX3 or XtremIO to Data Domain vdisk snapshot operations.
• VMAX arrays—TimeFinder Clone, VDEV, BCV, VP Snap, SnapVX, and Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF) operations.
• VNX and VNXe Block arrays—SnapView Copy-on-write (COW/Snapshot), Mirror (clone), and VNX Snap operations.
• RecoverPoint appliances that are configured on supported VMAX, VNX Block, XtremIO, and VPLEX storage arrays—Continuous Local Replication (CLR) and Continuous Remote Replication (CRR).

NetWorker uses the replication and splitting or the cloning capabilities of the array to create point-in-time (PIT) copies of specified production data onto a storage array volume. These PIT copies are called snapshots. In the case of ProtectPoint, NetWorker copies the snapshot to the DD vdisk.

To manage the snapshots, NetWorker mounts the snapshot volume on a mount host, which can be the application host, a NetWorker storage node, or a remote NetWorker client host. NetWorker uses the mount host for clone operations that save the snapshot to conventional storage media such as disk or tape, and for restore operations from the snapshot or conventional storage media.

NetWorker policies manage the lifecycles of the snapshot backups, and the backup copies that are cloned to conventional storage volumes from snapshots.

Example NSM snapshot environments provides illustrations of typical snapshot environments and describes the snapshot, clone, and recovery processes.