NetApp SnapDrive
Simplify Storage Virtualization and Management

Overview:

Take Control of Data Growth and Costs

With SnapDrive data management software from NetApp, you can reduce the cost and complexity of managing storage for your company, enable flexible and efficient utilization of storage resources, and improve data and application availability. SnapDrive software offers a rich set of capabilities to virtualize and enhance storage management for your Microsoft Windows, Linux, and UNIX environments. SnapDrive tightly integrates with your native file system and provides a layer of abstraction between application data and the physical storage associated with that data.

Increase Storage Utilization

By complementing native disk and volume management with virtualization capabilities, SnapDrive allows you to create virtual disks from pools of storage that can be distributed among several storage appliances. Storage managed by SnapDrive appears logically so that it looks like it comes from a locally attached storage subsystem, when in reality the capacity comes from a centrally managed pool of networked storage with enhanced attributes. This server-based virtualization optimizes your storage utilization and helps you to respond quickly to rapidly changing storage needs.

Add Storage Seamlessly

Your business doesn't have to stop every time your IT organization needs to add more storage. With SnapDrive, you can add, delete, map, unmap, and mirror virtual disks online. You can expand capacity with limited or no impact on application and system performance, and you can manage your volumes dynamically.

Manage your storage environment easily

SnapDrive is designed to make management simple and intuitive in the Windows environment by allowing administration through the Microsoft Management Console or a command line. Interactive wizards and easy-touse interfaces guide administrators through all management tasks and create schedules of operations automatically. SnapDrive comes with an intuitive command line for script-based automation in the UNIX environment.

Boost Storage Efficiency

Using storage space more efficiently is a practical way to control your storage environment and reduce storage expenditures. You can use the space reclamation capabilities of SnapDrive to increase storage efficiency by conserving and reusing disk space already allocated to the Windows environment. You can thin provision your block-based storage for long periods of time without having storage space allocation increase slowly to 100% utilization. Another step you can take to increase storage efficiency is to use Snapshot copies, which allow you to protect your data with no performance impact and minimal consumption of storage space.

Virtualize Applications, Simplify Management

SnapDrive extends the capabilities of NetApp SnapManager software to virtual infrastructures. This means that you gain common data management tools for virtualized and physical servers and can accelerate the deployment of existing Windows applications on virtual servers. With SnapDrive, you can manage data in virtual machines and take full advantage of the applicationspecific data management capabilities of SnapManager products.

Support Cloud Architecture

One of the key advantages of cloud architecture is agility-the ability to rapidly change and scale. SnapDrive supports agility by enabling rapid, automated storage provisioning, protection, and operational processes. SnapDrive integrates with the host OS and automates critical storage tasks- up to the mounting of the file system- and integrates with the NetApp data protection ecosystem to automate the entire protection process. The compatibility of SnapDrive with Data ONTAP features also supports the operational efficiency that is a hallmark of cloud architectures.

Speed Backup and Restore

Your employee productivity, customer satisfaction, and company reputation hinge on the ability of your IT infrastructure to guard against data loss and to enable rapid recovery from unforeseen events. SnapDrive integrates Snapshot technology to give you near- instantaneous, point-in-time images of application and user data. These images require minimal disk space and cause minimal or no disruption to service. SnapDrive also gives you access to Snapshot copies by mounting them as virtual disks. You can use these virtual disks for routine administrative tasks such as online backup, testing of new applications, and population of data marts with limited or no downtime to your business-critical information. You can restore data in seconds when you use NetApp SnapRestore data recovery software with SnapDrive to protect your company's productivity, customer service delivery, and reputation.

Support Clustered Data ONTAP

NetApp Data ONTAP 8 offers two operating modes: clustered Data ONTAP and Data ONTAP operating in 7-mode. Clustered ONTAP enhances NetApp's storage efficiency by introducing massive scalability through Infinite Volumes and non-disruptive operations, while 7-Mode operation extends the value of the Data ONTAP 7G operating system onto a 64-bit platform. SnapDrive supports provisioning of storage to host in Clustered ONTAP as well as in 7-Mode. It abstracts most of the Clustered ONTAP intricacies and presents a simple interface to perform provisioning, backup, and cloning operations. In fact, from an interface perspective, the administrator sees no difference between these two modes of operation.

Improve Availability

SnapDrive, configured along with NetApp SnapMirror software, enables seamless online replication to provide global data availability and protection against unforeseen events or application failures. Your entire storage environment, including virtual disks and Snapshot copies, can be mirrored to one or more storage appliances. Continual updating of mirrors means that your data is current and available. This online replication technology performs intelligent resynchronization of any data that you modify during application testing or when recovering from a broken mirror.

Increase Reliability

Information uptime is of paramount importance for your mission-critical applications. SnapDrive offers the greatest possible level of reliability for these applications by seamlessly integrating with the operating systemspecific cluster manager. SnapDrive simplifies management of cluster resources, virtual disks, and Snapshot copies in your Microsoft Windows environment, making failover completely transparent. SnapDrive also lets you use a virtual disk as a quorum device.