SQL snap shot & clone

[phillbl1]

Hi,

I am looking at buying a 3par but I have a sticking point around creating clones.

we have 2 SQL servers and its become critical that we are able to create clones from snap shots.

I have looked at 3par and netapp and on both these systems it looks pretty easy to create a snap shot using minimal disk space.

the area where netapp seems to go beyond the 3par is when trying to create clones of SQL snapshots.  within netapp snap manger you seem to be able to create a snap shot and then create clones and inject them into an instance of SQL on a seperate server (for our system it needs to be seperate).  I am not talking about cloning machines or volumes here but the the actual SQL database itself.  the whole process need to be seemless without any intervention (e.g. cant create a clone of the server).

we want to use 3par but this might hold us up.  from reading the netapp function used to be scripted and they have now just put that into a gui that generates the SQL script for you in the newer versikon of snap clone.

from this I would assume that it would be possible to use a script to allow 3par to be able to do this?  has anyone else come across this or know of anyone that also requires this feature and was able to do this?

thanks

phill

[phillbl1]

guess 3par in inferior to netapp......  spend the money on them then

[KurtG]

Have you looked into the 3Par Recovery Manager for SQL? (There is one for Oracle also but I'm guessing you are  running MS SQL).

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/storage-software/product-detail.html?oid=5100124#!tab=

The Netapp solution is (the last time a I looked) not a out-of-the-box ready product so don't underestimate houers needed to integrate. Netapp has good selling points and it seems very easy solving business problems (management tends to buys such arguments). I can't see why it can not be solved on 3par but I have not configured this myself.

You don't say anything about loads on the system but as far as I know Netapp wafl snapshot does still makes performance suffer on the system. That might hit you big-time... ;-) 

KurtG

[phillbl1]

hi,

thanks for the reply,  netapp fully autoamted this now.  saw a demo at the end of last week and we also had a go at setting it up.  had an sql server and we created a snap shot.  using snap manager for sql we cloned the snapshot ande injected it to a 2nd sql server.  a schedule is created and thats it.  happens every night with no scripts for osql or diskpart.

as it clones the snap shot the disk space used is in the gigabytes.  

from the recovery manager for sql 3par it creates a clone but you can only restore it to the same server.  to do it to a different server you require a script from what i can see 

http://3parug.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=45

performace is not an issue, its the cloning we need.  we know the netapp will handle the load.  The only pronlem with what the guy is doing above is the the clone.  he is doing a clone of the volume so for us this would mean cloning a 1.5TB drive and needing another 1.5TB of free space.  if you clone the snap shot space required in minimal but this is the part we are not sure about.