Snaps and Backups as Independent Copies of File System Data

For IntelliSnap, Commvault lets snapshots to run independently of regular backups. This provides flexibility in managing recovery points and ensures business continuity without relying solely on backup copies.

This feature is automatically enabled for new clients and subclients with IntelliSnap enabled.

Supported workloads

Applies to File System and new subclients with IntelliSnap enabled.

Key features

• Run snapshot jobs on demand or using a schedule.

• Snapshots and backups are independent operations.

• Full and incremental backups run a snapshot job first, and then complete the respective backup using the same snapshot.

• Configure plan-level snapshot schedules to run snapshot jobs only.

• Browse and restore operations work reliably across snapshot and backup.

Comparison: Legacy Duality vs Independent Snapshots

How snapshot and backup jobs work

• Snapshot backup type

  • Applies to File system and subclients with IntelliSnap enabled.

  • Always runs as a Full job.

  • Snapshots are registered with snap copies, and retention follows snap copy policies.

  • Snapshots will be queued when another Snapshot job is running as part of backup job.

  • If there is Snapshot job running from Snapshot schedule then the backup job from backup will wait and use it after completion.

  • By default, snapshot will use Primary snap copy.

  • Browse and restore operations work seamlessly across snapshot and backup copies.

• Backup job operation with snapshots

  • When a Full or Incremental job runs, Commvault first performs a snapshot job and creates a recovery point.

  • After the snapshot job completes, the backup job (full or incremental) then streams data using the same snapshot and recovery point.

• Synthetic full backups

  • Created from existing backup jobs on a primary copy.

  • It requires Full and Incremental to be run before triggering Synthetic Job

Snapshot plans

• When creating a new plan, the Configure Snapshot option is available to configure Snapshot only backups.

• For existing plans, a Snapshot Schedule can be added to configure Snapshot only backups.

• The snapshot schedule is applicable only to IntelliSnap-enabled subclients that use this feature.

• Snapshot options (including Enable Backup copy) do not apply when this feature is enabled.

Considerations

• Agents supports separate reference times for snapshots and backups.

• A job history differentiates snapshot and backup jobs. Independent job history ensures proper tracking of cycles.

• An additional snap is created as part of the backup schedule. By default the retention is 1 snapshot . Ensure retention settings are properly configured to include snapshots generated by backup jobs.

• Deferred catalog, inline catalog, and block-level backups do not support running independent snap schedule.

• There is no change in license/metering.

Replication

• When the Source for Backup is set to Replica copy, The New Backup Jobs does not run the Snapshot Job, instead it uses Latest available Snapshot from Replica copy for the Backup Job.

• If the Latest snapshot job is not yet copied to replica and shows as "To be copied" then software will use the next available snapshot job from Replica copy for the Backup.

• If the Latest snapshot job in the Replica copy is already used by previous Backup Job, then it will not reuse it, instead it fails the Backup Job. User needs to run the New Snapshot and Aux copy jobs to run next Backup Job.

• If there are no available snapshot jobs or valid jobs present in the replica copy, then also the Backup Job fails.

• User must schedule Snapshot, Aux copies and Backup jobs in such a way that when Backup Job runs the Replica copy should have an available Snapshot which is not used previously to avoid the Backup Job failures and missing SLA.