Dell MD3620F, MD3600f owner manual Configuration Premium Feature- Snapshot Virtual Disks, 143

10

Configuration: Premium Feature— Snapshot Virtual Disks

NOTE: If you ordered this feature, you received a Premium Feature Activation card shipped in the same box as your Dell PowerVault MD storage array. Follow the directions on the card to obtain a key file and to enable the feature.

NOTE: The snapshot feature allows up to eight snapshots per LUN and 128 per array to be present at the same time.

A snapshot virtual disk is a point-in-time image of a virtual disk in a storage array. It is not an actual virtual disk containing a copy of the original data; It is a reference to the data that was contained on a virtual disk at a specific time. A snapshot virtual disk is the logical equivalent of a complete physical copy. However, you can create a snapshot virtual disk much faster than a physical copy, using less disk space.

The virtual disk on which the snapshot is based, called the source virtual disk, must be a standard virtual disk in your storage array. Typically, you create a snapshot so that an application, such as a backup application, can access the snapshot and read the data while the source virtual disk remains online and accessible.

NOTE: No I/O requests are permitted on the source virtual disk while the virtual disk snapshot is being created.

Asnapshot repository virtual disk containing metadata and copy-on-write data is automatically created when a snapshot virtual disk is created. The only data stored in the snapshot repository virtual disk is that which has changed since the time of the snapshot.

Configuration: Premium Feature—Snapshot Virtual Disks

143