When IntelliSnap is used, a hardware snapshot is created on the storage array as soon as the VMware snapshot is completed, and then the VMware snapshot is removed immediately. This approach minimizes the size of the redo log and shortens the reconciliation process, to reduce the impact on the virtual machine being backed up and lessen the storage requirement for the temporary file. The secondary backup copy is then performed from the hardware snapshot, outside the production environment.
Large, critical, and high transaction virtual machines can be excluded from streaming backups and protected using IntelliSnap snapshots. Snapshots support application consistent backups for applications such as Oracle, SQL Server, SharePoint, and Exchange. Hardware snapshots provide multiple persistent recovery points a day for critical VMs, including full VM recovery as well as granular file and folder level recovery, while minimizing the load on production VMs and infrastructure.
In the event of corruption of a full datastore where the underlying storage volume is intact, IntelliSnap enables a full volume revert at the hardware level, enabling all the VMs in the datastore to be recovered at the same time, leading to lower down time.
Multiple readers can be configured to perform simultaneous quiescing of multiple VMs for faster creation or deletion of software snapshots, reducing the overall IntelliSnap job time.
The redo log time for large VMs is minimized, to enable larger datastores and VMs to be protected.
A snapshot (Snap Copy) can be used by an ESX proxy as the source for secondary VADP backups, offloading the backup load for the largest VMs to minimize the impact on production systems.
Benefits
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Low impact on productions systems
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Multiple recovery points per day
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Fast recovery copy
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Reduces the backup workload by using a proxy server to create the daily backup copy.
Considerations
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An ESX proxy is needed to mount a hardware snapshot for Backup Copy operations.
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Additional storage required for snapshot reserve.
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Possible impact on other production systems using same storage.
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Array overhead during snapshot mount operations.