EMC TimeFinder/Clone and Replication Manager for SQL backups

  • Hi,

    We are looking on EMC TimeFinder/Clone and Replication Manager as a replacement for SQL Server backups. It, promiss to replicate DB files directly on SAN/DMX allowing DB and point of time recovery for databases.

    Are anybody have experience on using this technology as a backup/restore solution.

    It sounds scary for DBA, but could be great solution if it will work for SQL Servers.

    Thanks

  • We been using it for the past 5 years. It works perfect. It is just like mirroring of your drives. Occasionnaly the process fails due to network issue etc but it works fine. We do have a backup job using veritas to backup to tape as well as a secondary backup set.

  • From what I understand, the Replication Manager has a VDI/VSS interface to allow for consistent hot backup of the SQL DBs. When a corruption occurs to the DB, the entire volumes (typically in GB/TB capacity) or logs rollback can be restored within minutes. Admin has the option to bring online the DB upon the completion of a restore. Quite easy to use and the wizard based GUI really helps the DBA get our jobs done.

  • Many weekends of 'fun' ....

    One caveat:

    At my previous job, with SS2K/nightly LiteSpeed Diffs/EMC TimeFinder, we found that it produced mismatched LSN for DIffs, which couldn't be used for DR and for Restore in other Environments using Full & Diff. However Restore of Full backup and Tran Logs would work, but you dont want to restore multi TB database on Friday with Tran Logs only. I went thru that 4 years ago and it was fun!

    in SS2005, I believe that issue with Diff backup was resolved.

     

  • DBA and LAN personel were involved in that, while LAN got adequate training, we, DBA` were not.

    We were using that for replacing of Log Shipping, but the problem was: if LS would fail in the middle of the night - I know how to fix it. With SnapClones -you dont want to mess with that when it was configured by LAN guys. Bottom line. Get good training.

    But for backups I would use LiteSpeed.

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