Managed Snapshot Services (MSS)

iQstor Storage Management Software’s Managed Snapshot Services (MSS) provides quick and easy virtual duplication of your critical data and improves business continuity, software testing and critical application availability.

Instantaneous “point in time” copies of data enable a number of advanced data processing capabilities for small and mid-size IT enterprises with strict requirements for data availability while struggling with shrinking backup windows.

With the ease of a few mouse clicks, a storage administrator can:

• Instantly create a snapshot of any virtual disk
• Manage up to 126 snapshots for each virtual disk
• Write enable a snapshot
• Automate time based initiation
• Create policies to manage growth of snapshot copies
• Generate a point-in-time copy of a virtual disk
  
  

Business Continuity – Data Backup
Today’s applications must be available twenty-four hours a day seven days a week offering unlimited access to critical data with a limited window for backup operations. In an instant, a snapshot copy is available for your backup operation with no disruption to the user’s application ensuring data availability while maintaining a high degree of business continuance.

Software Testing – Production Data
In order to verify functionality, reliability and accuracy after modifications to production applications, rigorous testing is needed. To accomplish this standard practice without impacting production data, test databases are required. Creating an MSS snapshot copy of production data is the right solution. In an instant, a writeable version of the production database is available for testing, requiring very small disk space and no time spent creating physical copies of production data, which improves accuracy of application testing.

Operational Fallback – Time Initiated Versioning
Occasionally, accidental corruption of production data can happen. Restoring to a prior point in time is the typical method of recovery while the cause of data corruption is being determined and rectified. Insuring that accurate fallback to production data is immediately available can be problematic if traditional methods of reloading from prior day’s backup tape is the only method available. The better solution is MSS time initiated snapshots of production data. IT administrator needs only to re-assign the application to the latest clean file copy and re-start. Multiple users can create their own snapshot copies of databases as often as they like without requiring duplicate physical storage.