Veritas Storage Foundation Intelligent Storage Provisioning 5.0 Solutions Guide, HP-UX 11i v3, First Edition, May 2008

Chapter

Off-host processing

solutions

Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) allows point-in-time copies of a volume’s data,

or snapshots, to be processed by alternate hosts while an application continues

to access the data in the volume. Off-host processing reduces downtime and

allows you to implement the following activities:

Data backup As the requirement for 24 x 7 availability becomes essential

for many businesses, organizations cannot afford the

downtime involved in backing up critical data offline. By

taking a snapshot of the data, and backing up from this

snapshot, business-critical applications can continue to run

without extended down time or impacted performance.

Decision support analysis

and reporting

Because snapshots hold a point-in-time copy of a

production database, a replica of the database can be set up

using the snapshots. Operations such as decision support

analysis and business reporting do not require access to up-

to-the-minute information. This means that they can use a

database copy that is running on a host other than the

primary. When required, the database copy can quickly be

synchronized 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.