iSCSI Feature Packs

[BR684670]

Hi,

Can anyone give additional information of the Snapshot and Direct Backup feature packs for the iSCSI Feature Pack.

We are at present awaiting delivery of a DL380G4 NAS and intend to use iSCSI for MS Exchange DB's/Logs and provision for future storage to move away from DAS to NAS.

What does the Snapshot pack allow that VSS doesn't for example? Is direct backup a feature that allows Direct to Disk Back Up - If so how does it integrate with Back Up utilites??

I can find plenty if install and set-up information but nothing that gives an overview of the facilities and strategy for use of the feature pack add-ons etc??

Kind Regards,

Simon

Any help really appreciated

[CA1314253]

Hi Simon,

iSCSI Snapshots allows you to create, manage, mount, etc. persistent point-in-time images of your iSCSI LUNs created with iSCSI Feature Pack. Together with host-based snapshot agents, the package ensures that your application server (we currently support Exchange, SQL, Oracle, and VSS on Windows) state remains consistent (i.e. quiessent) when a snapshot is called. VSS alone generally works at the file level, and when used at the volume level, does not guarantee persistence.

iSCSI Direct Backup is kind of like iSCSI Snapshot's little brother: it too creates snapshots and uses the snapshot agents to ensure host quiessence, but its snapshots are non-persistent, not user manageable, and are generally mounted temporarily to a 3rd party backup app. The advantage of it over host-based backup? Everything happens on the Storage Server without burdening the host (except for the snapshot agent, which is very low burden) and only a single backup license is required for the Storage Server rather than one for each host server.

Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any more questions.

Regards,
Dirk Kunselman
HP Product Marketing Manager
dirk.kunselman@hp.com
970-898-7912