Veritas FlashSnap Point-In-Time Copy Solutions 5.0 AdministratorÆs Guide, HP-UX 11i v3, First Edition, May 2008

8 Point-in-time copy solutions
Applications of point-in-time copy solutions
■ File system-level solutions use the Storage Checkpoint feature of Veritas File
System. Storage Checkpoints are suitable for implementing solutions where
storage space is critical for:
■ File systems that contain a small number of mostly large files.
■ Application workloads that change a relatively small proportion of file
system data blocks (for example, web server content and some
databases).
■ Applications where multiple writable copies of a file system are
required for testing or versioning.
The Storage Checkpoints feature is described in “Storage Checkpoints” on
page 12.
Applications of point-in-time copy solutions
The following typical activities are suitable for point-in-time copy solutions
implemented using Veritas FlashSnap:
■ Data backup—Many enterprises require 24 x 7 data availability. They cannot
afford the downtime involved in backing up critical data offline. By taking
snapshots of your data, and backing up from these snapshots, your
business-critical applications can continue to run without extended
downtime or impacted performance.
■ Decision support analysis and reporting—Operations such as decision
support analysis and business reporting may not require access to real-time
information. You can direct such operations to use a replica database that
you have created from snapshots, rather than allow them to compete for
access to the primary database. When required, you can quickly
resynchronize the database copy with the data in the primary database.
■ Testing and training—Development or service groups can use snapshots as
test data for new applications. Snapshot data provides developers, system
testers and QA groups with a realistic basis for testing the robustness,
integrity and performance of new applications.
■ Database error recovery—Logic errors caused by an administrator or an
application program can compromise the integrity of a database. You can
recover a database more quickly by restoring the database files by using
Storage Checkpoints or a snapshot copy than by full restoration from tape
or other backup media.