Azure NetApp Files Snapmirror: A Comprehensive Data Protection Solution

Azure NetApp Files Snapmirror is a game-changer for data protection. It allows for near-instant replication of data between on-premises and cloud environments, reducing the risk of data loss and ensuring business continuity.

This solution is built on top of the industry-standard SnapMirror technology, which has been widely adopted by enterprises for its reliability and scalability. With Azure NetApp Files Snapmirror, you can replicate your data to the cloud in a matter of minutes, not hours or days.

Replication can be scheduled or performed on-demand, giving you complete control over your data protection strategy. This flexibility is especially useful for organizations with changing data storage needs or those that require rapid disaster recovery.

Additional reading: Azure Netapp Files

Azure NetApp Files supports cross-region replication for disaster-recovery (DR) purposes and cross-zone replication for business continuity. This technology uses SnapMirror technology to minimize the amount of data required for replication, saving data transfer costs and shortening replication time.

SnapMirror originated as a disaster recovery (DR) technology, and today it can still serve that purpose while leveraging all of the added benefits of cloud. By leveraging SnapMirror to efficiently replicate the primary data copy to Cloud Volumes ONTAP on any of their preferred cloud destinations, customers can remove the need for expensive secondary data centers.

The result is an asynchronous 1:1 replica of the source volume, including all snapshots. This behavior follows a full and incremental-forever replication mechanism. This technology minimizes the amount of data required for replication, therefore saving data transfer costs.

With SnapMirror, customers can achieve a smaller Recovery Point Objective (RPO), because more snapshots can be created and transferred more frequently with minimal data transfers. This is because only changed blocks are sent over the network in a compressed, efficient format.

Here's a comparison of the benefits of using SnapMirror for disaster recovery:

Snapshots are used to create fast, space-efficient backups of Azure NetApp Files volumes, efficiently and quickly, and they provide a means to restore data files or complete volumes very effectively.

To keep snapshots for a longer period of time, or to keep more snapshots than the maximum number of online snapshots, you can vault snapshots from Azure NetApp Files volumes into ZRS-enabled Azure storage.

Online snapshots serve as the first line of defense and cover most data recovery operations, but the Azure NetApp Files backup functionality is used to extend the data-protection period to a year or longer by sending the snapshots over to cost-efficient Azure storage.

The Azure NetApp Files backup functionality keeps snapshots for extended amounts of time (up to a year or even longer) and stores them on Azure storage, which has a cost advantage over the Azure NetApp Files capacity pool cost.

You can configure a backup policy in the Azure NetApp Files subscription (located under the Data Protection section) to specify the number of Daily, Weekly, and Monthly backups you want to keep, which is all you need to do to expand your data protection with cost-efficient long-term storage.

Restoring files or directories from online snapshots is secure and simple, and you can directly access snapshots to recover from accidental deletion, corruption, or modification of your data, as long as the Snapshot Path visibility is not set to hidden.

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Snapshots are a fast and space-efficient way to back up Azure NetApp Files volumes, but they can only be kept for a short period of time.

To keep snapshots for longer, you can vault them into ZRS-enabled Azure storage, which has a cost advantage over Azure NetApp Files capacity pool cost.

The Azure NetApp Files backup functionality keeps snapshots for extended amounts of time, up to a year or even longer.

To enable snapshot vaulting, configure a backup policy in the Azure NetApp Files subscription and specify the number of Daily, Weekly, and Monthly backups you want to keep.

Snapshot data is transferred from the Azure NetApp Files volume to Azure NetApp Files backup storage, hosted on Azure storage.

Most use cases require keeping online snapshots on the Azure NetApp Files volume for a relatively short amount of time, usually several months.

Consecutive backups use the snapshot mechanism to update the backup repository with only block-incremental updates, which is more efficient than copying all data blocks.

The first transfer is the baseline, which copies all consumed data blocks in the source Azure NetApp Files volume and snapshots.

Vaulted snapshots can be directly restored without the need to stack the baseline with incremental updates.

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Restoring Volume Backups from Snapshots is a crucial aspect of data recovery. You can search for backups at the volume level or the NetApp account level, and names used for snapshots are preserved when the snapshots are backed up.

The first snapshot taken when the backup feature is enabled is called a baseline snapshot, which includes all data on the protected volume and the snapshots. Consecutive vaulted snapshots are block-incremental updates.

Restoring a selected vaulted snapshot to a new volume is a straightforward process, and the following diagram illustrates the operation. You can directly restore a vaulted snapshot without the need to stack the baseline with incremental updates.

The snapshot used to create the new volume is also present on the new volume, and after the process is completed, the volume is independent and disassociated from the original volume.

In Month 1, a baseline replication happens immediately, replicating 500 GiB of data, resulting in a charge of $60.

The source volume is from the Azure NetApp Files Premium service level, with a volume quota size of 1000 GiB and a volume consumed size of 500 GiB. The destination volume is from the Azure NetApp Files Standard service level.

For the remaining 29 days, only changed blocks are replicated, resulting in 0.5 GiB of data being replicated every hour. This adds up to 360 GiB of data being replicated across incremental replications for the month.

Here's a breakdown of the charges for Month 1:

The total cross-region replication charge for Month 1 is $103.2.

You can restore Azure NetApp Files snapshots to separate, independent volumes (clones) near-instantaneously, regardless of the volume size and capacity consumed.

This operation creates a new volume that's almost immediately available for access, while the actual volume and snapshot data blocks are being copied over in the background.

Restoring a snapshot to a new volume is a great way to create a fast volume for data recovery or volume cloning for test and development.

The new volume will show the full active capacity of the original snapshot, and the snapshot used to create the new volume will also be present on the new volume.

You can also restore a snapshot to a disaster-recovery (DR) volume, even when cross-region replication remains active or in progress.

This capability enables non-disruptive creation of test and development environments in a DR region, putting the data to use, whereas the replicated volumes would otherwise be used only for DR purposes.

In some cases, creating a new volume might not be needed or appropriate, and reverting a volume to an earlier snapshot is a faster and more space-efficient option.

Reverting a volume is near-instantaneous and takes only a few seconds to complete, even for the largest volumes.

You can also access and restore individual files or directories from online snapshots using a client, which is a secure and simple way to recover from accidental deletion, corruption, or modification of your data.

This method is especially useful when the Snapshot Path visibility is not set to hidden, allowing you to directly access snapshots and restore data by copying files and directories out of a snapshot of choice.

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If the Snapshot Path visibility is set to hidden, you can open a support ticket to have a backup admin or system admin restore your files from a snapshot.

You can also restore volume backups from vaulted snapshots, which can be searched for at the volume level or the NetApp account level.

Vaulted snapshots include the prefix “daily”, “weekly” or “monthly”, along with the timestamp of the snapshot creation time and date.

Azure NetApp Files is a cloud-based storage solution that allows you to store and manage your data in the Azure cloud. It provides a scalable and secure way to store your data, and can be easily integrated with your existing on-premises storage systems.

With Azure NetApp Files, you can take advantage of the NetApp SnapMirror replication capability to replicate your data between different Azure regions. This can be especially useful for disaster recovery and business continuity purposes.

SnapMirror has been used by NetApp customers for years to replicate data efficiently between their on-premises storage appliances, and now it's available for cloud-based architectures. This can simplify complex deployments, such as complete Azure migrations.

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Migration and Redundancy is a crucial aspect of Azure NetApp Files SnapMirror. This technology has been used by NetApp customers for years to replicate data efficiently between their on-premises storage appliances, and now with Cloud Volumes ONTAP, this capability exists for cloud-based architectures.

SnapMirror is a robust part of NetApp's Cloud Volumes ONTAP and ONTAP storage systems, capable of using concurrent replication processing. This ensures that replicas are only sent data that has changed, speeding up the replication process.

Data can be synchronized from on-premises storage into the cloud, from the cloud to on-prem, or back and forth across Azure cloud regions or between different cloud providers. This is made possible by SnapMirror's incremental data transfers at the block-level.

SnapMirror allows users to take advantage of a wide range of replication topologies, including cascade and fan-out replication architectures. This provides the ability for a secondary destination to sync to a third system and for a volume to replicate to multiple secondaries.

Here are some key benefits of using SnapMirror for Azure storage replication:

You only pay for the data you replicate with Azure NetApp Files cross-region replication, with no setup charge or minimum usage fee.

The cost is based on the replication frequency and the region of the destination volume you choose during the initial replication configuration.

There's a regular Azure NetApp Files storage capacity charge for the replication destination volume, also known as the data protection volume.

The cross-region replication amount billed in a month is based on the amount of data replicated during that month, measured in GiB.

This amount represents the sum of data replicated across two regions during all regular replications and during all resync replications.

Setting up Azure NetApp Files SnapMirror is a straightforward process. Users can create new SnapMirror relationships by using the Cloud Manager, NetApp's UI for controlling and managing Cloud Volumes ONTAP.

To trigger the relationship creation process, simply drag and drop the source system to the target destination in the graphical interface. This launches the wizard that will guide you through the setup.

The wizard prompts you to choose a source volume and a destination volume between which to create a new SnapMirror relationship. You can also specify options such as setting the maximum transfer rate and selecting a schedule for syncs.

In the last step, review the setup and confirm to proceed with creating the relationship. After creation, monitor the data transfer and replication statuses on the dashboard.

Once you've set up SnapMirror, you'll want to consider the next steps. Here are some tasks to keep in mind: