HP 3PAR Application Software Suite for Microsoft Exchange - Manual (Page 93)

8.3 Virtual Copies
3PAR Recovery Manager 4.1.0 For Microsoft Exchange 2010 User’s Guide
8.3 Virtual Copies
A virtual copy is a copy of another virtual volume (EDB or LOG) created using copy-on-write
techniques. Unlike a physical copy, which is a duplicate of the entire virtual volume, a virtual
copy, or snapshot, only records the changes to the original virtual volume. Therefore, minimal
storage space is used. This allows an earlier state of the original virtual volume to be recreated
by starting with its current state and rolling back all the changes that have been made since
the virtual copy was created. The system allows you to make up to 500 virtual copies of each
virtual volume, assuming that sufficient storage space was allocated when the base virtual
volume was created.
8.3.1 Advantages of Using Recovery Manager
Traditionally, databases are backed up to tape. Backing up to tape is a time consuming task,
especially if the database is growing rapidly. Recovery Manager offers the following
advantages over traditional tape backup:
■ Creating virtual copies of databases using Recovery Manager requires only seconds and can
be accomplished via the click of the mouse through the Recovery Manager GUI, or by even
scheduling virtual copies via Windows’ automatic scheduled task application. For details on
using the GUI and scheduling tasks in Windows, see Creating a Virtual Copy on page 6.6
and RMExch create on page 7.8, respectively.
■ With Recovery Manager’s optional policy settings, you can maintain a specified number of
the latest virtual copies to stay online. These online virtual copies can then be mounted to
the staging Exchange server for point-in-time recovery, thus eliminating the need to restore
from tape, which can take hours.
■ After the virtual copy has been mounted to the backup server, you can then perform a
backup to tape of the virtual copy using Recovery Manager.
■ Easy recovery through filecopy and volume promote restores.
NOTE: Backup to tape can be performed in one easy command with a quick
backup. See RMExch backup on page 7.5.