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.

Scott Lowe has written an article that discusses the pros & cons of FlexClone & A-SIS when used in conjunction with a VMware environment.

If you are just getting to grips with these technolgies (like me) it is a very useful starting point to understand how the two technologies may work with VMware.

I was investigating it when used with VMware VDI so there are a few very useful tips indeed.

Nick Triantos has posted another brilliant post over at his Storage Nuts & Bolts blog about VMware Site Recovery Manager and the adapter that NetApp have created to plug into SRM.

The article talks about what is supported in the SRA (Site Recovery Adapter) including:

• SnapMirror integration with SRM
• Support for Sync, Async & Semi Sync
• Dissimilar H/W configuration support
• FC & iSCSI Support
• FlexClone support for DR testing

He also ponders on what VMware might want to consider for future releases including:

• Multiple live sites to a single DR site
• Failback as well as Failover
• NFS Support

If you can it is well worth bookmarking his site, or even better using the RSS feed to get the new posts immediately.

Following on from an earlier post NetApp have released an updated best practices guide for the Open Systems SnapVault.

A 24 page beauty that will get you heading in the right direction with this new development.

Download the pdf here.

NetApp are trying to make sure that they are riding the top of the wave that is being created by SRM. To this end they have started releaseing some technical documents around SRM in NetApp environments.

You can read the first Technical Report here. Running at 42 pages it is pretty in-depth.