Multitier data protection

Snapshot

Snapshot is a point-in-time copy of the base volume. RMC integrates with various applications to take application-consistent snapshots at any given point-in-time. RMC can take application-consistent snapshots of VMware vSphere VMs, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange, Oracle, and SAP HANA databases residing on 3PAR volumes. Only Microsoft SQL Server is supported with HPE Nimble Storage at present. RMC can also take crash-consistent snapshots for any application or file system data on both HPE 3PAR, HPE Primera and HPE Nimble Storage. Additionally, RMC REST APIs can be used with scripted solutions combined with application quiescing scripts to create crash-consistent snapshots to ensure application-consistent snapshots for any application not mentioned above, across both HPE 3PAR, HPE Primera and HPE Nimble Storage.

Remote Snapshot

HPE 3PAR, HPE Primera Remote Copy feature helps you safeguard against disasters by keeping copies of data on a separate HPE 3PAR, HPE Primera storage system, which can be placed at a remote location. HPE 3PAR, HPE Primera Remote Copy Software provides RMC the capability to recover data from any protected site to a recovery site. Using the Remote Recovery Configuration feature, you can create and manage Synchronous, Periodic, or Synchronous Long-Distance Remote Recovery Sets at HPE 3PAR Remote Copy group level.

If there is disaster or failure of a storage system, HPE 3PAR Remote Copy solution enables you to recover data at either sites.

Express Protect

Express Protect provides a second-tier of data protection with backup from HPE storage systems to HPE StoreOnce. Backups to HPE StoreOnce are block-level copies of volumes, de-duplicated to save space, and can be used to recover back to the original or a different HPE 3PAR, HPE Primera or HPE Nimble Storage, even if the original base volume is lost.

Catalyst Copy

Catalyst Copy is a copy of an Express Protect on another HPE StoreOnce system. You can also create a Copy for an existing Catalyst Copy.

Cloud Copy

Cloud Copy is a copy of an Express Protect on a Cloud Bank Store or Cloud Volume Backup. RMC also integrates with StoreOnce CloudBank Storage technology which allows you to automate and schedule creating a copy on the HPE Cloud or public cloud such as Amazon S3 or Microsoft Azure. Reads and writes to and from the object storage repository are designed with efficiency to ensure that you incur fewer charges from the cloud service provider by moving only as less data as is required without having to rehydrate the deduplicated data.

With Cloud Volume Backup as a storage device type, you can protect the on-premise data to HPE cloud using RMC. The Catalyst Store managed by HPE StoreOnce is called as Backup Store, runs inside the HPE Cloud. The backup target, StoreOnce is called as Backup Pool. A secure tunnel is created after the backup store and backup target device are registered with RMC. For the systems registered with RMC, the data flows through the secure tunnel on the Ethernet to HPE Cloud.

Clones

Cloning enables you to create a HPE 3PAR, HPE Primera Read-Write snapshot or a Nimble Zero Copy Clone, which facilitates creating copies of your VM or database for test/dev or other secondary data use cases without occupying any additional storage space or affecting the performance of your production copy.

Peer Copy Snapshots

The Peer Copy feature in RMC facilitates asynchronous periodic replication between two or more homogeneous or heterogeneous storage systems. Peer Copy is a complementary technology to HPE 3PAR, HPE Primera Remote Copy replication for creating a copy of the data on a secondary storage system. This feature supports data replication across HPE 3PAR, HPE Primera, and HPE Nimble Storage systems.

Peer Copy allows for one-to-many, many-to-one, and multihop topologies, managed from within the RMC GUI. You can replicate data between HPE 3PAR, HPE Primera and HPE Nimble Storage systems in the following scenarios:

• Asynchronous replication of a single volume to multiple storage systems: Assume that a volume has to be replicated to four different storage systems. In this case, you have to create four different Volume Sets from four storage systems as the target and from a single storage system as the source.

• Simultaneous volume replication from multiple storage systems to a single system: In this case, volumes from multiple HPE 3PAR, HPE Primera systems are replicated to a single HPE 3PAR, HPE Primera.

• Multihop: Assume that a volume in HPE 3PAR, HPE Primera (A) has to be replicated to a volume in HPE 3PAR, HPE Primera (B). This same volume has to be replicated again to HPE 3PAR, HPE Primera (C). In this case, RMC creates two different Volume Sets. One for replication between the systems A and B, and one for replication between the systems B and C.

  NOTE:

  • To maintain data consistency, ensure that the target volumes in a peer copy relationship are not used for any other purposes.

  • From RMC 6.2.0 onwards, peer copy target volume is write-reserved for RMC appliance using SCSI persistent reservation. This prohibits you to write directly on target volume while it is in peer copy relationship in RMC. The reservation is cleared as part of split operation and volumes that become writable to other hosts.

MS SQL server transaction log backups

Transaction Log backup operation is used to back up the database Transaction Logs that contain all the committed and uncommitted transactions. After a database failure, you can run the transaction log restore along with a full snapshot or backup restore to recover data to any point-in-time or point-of-failure.

A full database backup must exist each time you initiate a manual or schedule a transaction-log backup.

When you initiate a manual or scheduled transaction log backup using RMC-S, the database log is truncated. RMC-S supports transaction log backups for databases configured with full recovery model on MS SQL server.