NetApp have finally released the latest and greatest version of their SnapManager for VI product.

An essential addition to any infrastructure running both VMware & NetApp it allows guaranteed crash consistent versions of Virtual Machines to be replicated to secondary sights.

New functionality and enhancements include:

  • Singe file restore (SFR)
  • A single wizard for creating manual and scheduled backup jobs
  • New backup job options:
    • The ability to include independent disks
    • The ability to exclude specified datastores
    • The ability to trigger prebackup or postbackup scripts per backup job (the scripts must be in the server/scripts folder on the SMVI server before you can select them in the SnapManager 2.0 for Virtual Infrastructure user interface)
  • An advanced find option to search for specific backup jobs:
    • Most recent backup (default)
    • Backups within a specified time period
    • Backups that include VMware snapshots
  • New restore granularity option (besides SFR):
    • VMDKs

So a lot going on here and certainly worth the wait.  You can grab a copy now from the NOW site.

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NetApp have released the eagerly anticipated Virtual Storage Console:

http://blogs.netapp.com/storage_nuts_n_bolts/2009/10/netapp-virtual-storage-console-vsc-for-esx-ready-for-download.html

It does a lot of useful things for a 1.0 release, but probably the most important are the remediation options for the following:
  • Storage adapter timeouts
  • Multipathing settings
  • NFS settings
  • Guest OS disk timeout values
  • Correct misaligned disk partitions
It is available for vSphere ESX & ESXi right now from the NOW site.  I will be providing more information on this useful utility very soon.

Enjoy!
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