NetApp SnapManager for SAP
Enable high availability, comprehensive data protection, and flexible development and testing

Overview:

NetApp SnapManager for SAP data management software automates such complex tasks as backup, restore, and cloning. Data-driven enterprises require 24-hour availability and effective business-critical SAP resource management. You need an agile, cost-effective SAP infrastructure, plus increased data reliability and protection. NetApp SnapManager for SAP, certified and integrated SAP data management software, automates resource management with the inclusion of our Data ONTAP modules.

SnapManager streamlines complex, manual, time-consuming SAP data management processes. It enhances backup and data protection with space-efficient technology, and it reduces costs.

NetApp SnapManager promotes accelerated, consistent backup and restore functions, providing nondisruptive recoveries that won't impact system performance. Recover failed SAP modules to saved Snapshot copies in minutes, with no data movement required. Create system copies for QA, development, and testing, with minimal additional storage space.

Snap Manager empowers administrators to perform their own SAP data management, eliminating resource management bottlenecks while boosting data security, reliability, and integrity through strict policy enforcement and automation.

Key Benefits

• Comprehensive Policy-Driven Data Protection
  Manage local secondary backups and disaster recovery, all from a single interface.
• Maximum Data Availability
  Achieve space-efficient backups and full restores in minutes, significantly reducing recovery time objectives.
• Accelerated Application Development and Testing
  Create SAP system copies in minutes on either primary or secondary storage for development, testing, quality assurance (QA), reporting, and more.
• Increased Productivity
  Get full integration with SAP BR*Tools and Oracle Databases, which lets you completely automate SAP data management for efficient operation.
• Improved Application Availability at Reduced Costs
  Achieve maximum performance and reduce costs with rapid, space-efficient backup; highly efficient clone-based SAP system copies; and disaster recovery

Optimizing SAP availability and data protection

Your data-driven enterprise requires business-critical SAP systems to be operational around the clock to facilitate online transactions, analytics, and myriad other business processes. However, the rise in the amount of information assets puts more demand on your SAP infrastructure, making it increasingly difficult to assure availability and protection of your valuable data. At the same time, you need a more efficient and economical way to make rapid SAP system copies for application development and testing, data mining, QA, and other critical requirements.

To succeed, you need tools that deliver:

• Rapid backup, restore, and recovery processes that enable high data availability
• Comprehensive data protection that addresses all your business needs
• Fast, space-efficient SAP system copies for application development and testing

Automate critical SAP data management

NetApp SnapManager for SAP integration and certification with SAP BR*Tools delivers the full benefits of innovative NetApp technologies for SAP data management. SnapManager leverages Snapshot™, SnapRestore, and FlexClone technologies to enable your administrators to automate complex and time-consuming processes such as backup, restore, recovery, and cloning. As a result, your IT personnel are free to focus more effort on value-added tasks, and they no longer have to worry about the underlying SAP data layout when performing routine data management tasks. SnapManager for SAP takes care of the details.

Enhanced Data Availability

Fast, space-efficient backups

With SnapManager for SAP, you get fast and reliable disk-based backup and restore. SnapManager builds on the capabilities of NetApp Snapshot technology to deliver extremely rapid and space-efficient backups that don't impact performance. Since backups can be done in a matter of minutes, you can perform them throughout the day, creating recovery points that reduce the total amount of data to be restored. With the graphical scheduler built into SnapManager for SAP, you can quickly create or modify schedules to execute SnapManager backups on a recurring basis automatically.

SnapManager for SAP automatically works with the SAP BR*BACKUP tool to identify the backup dataset and put the appropriate database in hot backup mode while it creates a Snapshot copy for consistency. This enables immediate or deferred verification of any backup. Because backups are quick and nondisruptive, they can take place at regular intervals throughout the day, providing a higher level of SAP data protection and enabling recoveries, when necessary, to occur quickly and with minimal disruption to ongoing operations.

Rapid restores and database recovery

One of the biggest challenges for any SAP administrator is a database failure that brings down the production system and necessitates a full database restore and recovery. With SnapManager for SAP, you have the option of instantly reverting to a previously saved backup using a fast restore or volume-level SnapRestore operation. This avoids the time-consuming copies that are required with other disk- or tape-based backup solutions, allowing you to restore a database in seconds rather than hours.

SnapManager for SAP also takes the pain and uncertainty out of the database recovery process. When a recovery is necessary, SnapManager for SAP makes it easy for the database administrator to specify the level of granularity, from a full database to a subset of table spaces or data files.

Fully automated archive log management

SnapManager for SAP enables users to back up archive logs separately from data files by specifying different backup retention and protection policies for data file backups and archive log backups. It also provides the ability to prune archive logs after a backup and automates using the archive logs from backups during recovery.

Pre- and post-script backup and restore

SnapManager for SAP provides enhanced operational flexibility by allowing customers to automate the execution of scripts before or after a backup or restore operation. SnapManager for SAP also includes built-in post-backup scripts to update any existing SnapVault or SnapMirror relationships after a backup.

Comprehensive Data Protection

Policy-based automation

In traditional storage environments, database and basis administrators have to rely on storage administrators to perform storage-related tasks. NetApp's policy-based automation capabilities allow storage administrators to set policies and delegate authority for specific storage tasks. For example, SnapManager for SAP integration with NetApp Protection Manager allows storage administrators to set data protection workflow policies to simplify and standardize SAP backups. Integration with Protection Manager also enables administrators to restore secondary storage data directly to the original location or to a new location on the primary storage. These capabilities empower database and basis administrators to manage their own data, which not only eliminates data management bottlenecks but also enables security and data integrity through strict policy enforcement and automation.

Integration with NetApp SnapVault and SnapMirror

Through integration with Protection Manager, SnapManager for SAP lets you automate your use of NetApp SnapVault and SnapMirror technologies. NetApp SnapVault allows you to keep backups on secondary disk storage, at a local or remote location, for greater data protection. With SnapVault you can choose to keep a limited set of Snapshot copies on primary storage for immediate recovery while keeping Snapshot copies available on secondary storage. This allows you to restore and recover databases quickly from further back in time without resorting to tape.

NetApp SnapMirror provides the basis of a complete disaster recovery solution through reliable replication of your database volumes to a remote site. Efficient bandwidth utilization helps reduce your wide area networking costs, and you can mirror from primary storage to less expensive secondary storage if you want. These cost savings make it possible to provide disaster recovery for all of your applications.

Whether you choose SnapVault, SnapMirror, or both, SnapManager for SAP and Protection Manager make it easy to leverage policies to simplify and standardize the protection of your critical SAP data to secondary storage.

Accelerated SAP Development and Testing

One of the most vexing tasks that database and basis administrators face is creating SAP system copies for development, testing, and other purposes. This time-consuming process requires enough free storage to accommodate the number of new system copies. It also requires consistent database copies, which can waste time and affect production cycles.

SnapManager for SAP avoids these problems with a fast and highly space-efficient cloning process that uses an intuitive wizard-based tool that streamlines system copy creation. Using the FlexClone capability of the NetApp Data ONTAP 7G, 8.0, or 8.1 operating system, clones created with SnapManager for SAP share existing storage with the original dataset. This might be the production database itself (in the case of smaller SAP systems) or a SnapMirror updated master copy of the production database, which could also be the disaster recovery system database.

This extreme space efficiency means that you can create many more SAP system copies quickly, whenever they are needed, with minimal additional storage space and very little administrator time.

Clone on primary or secondary storage

With SnapManager for SAP, you can create clones on your primary storage and clone from SnapVault or SnapMirror targets on your secondary storage. Cloning directly to secondary storage completely eliminates any impact on your production system.

Precloning and postcloning scripts

Masking sensitive customer data stored in dataset copies is often a necessity. SnapManager for SAP allows you to automate the execution of scripts before or after a clone is made for easy integration with SAP data masking or other third-party data masking applications.