Point-In-Time Copy Scenarios

Point-in-time copies of volumes allow you to capture an image of a database or file system at a selected instant for use in applications such as backups, decision support, reporting, and development testing.

Point-in-time copy solutions may additionally be configured to use off-host processing to remove much of the performance overhead on a production system.

The following chapters describe how you can use FlashSnap to implement regular online backup of database and cluster file system volumes, to set up a replica of a production database for decision support:

• Online Database Backup
• Off-Host Cluster File System Backup
• Decision Support

Three types of point-in-time copy solution are considered in this document:

• Primary host solutions where the copy is processed on the same system as the active data. See Implementing Point-In Time Copy Solutions on a Primary Host for more information.
• Off-host solutions where the copy is processed on a different system from the active data. If implemented correctly, such solutions have almost no impact on the performance of the primary production system. See Implementing Off-Host Point-In-Time Copy Solutions for more information.
• Using Storage Checkpoints to quickly roll back a database instance to an earlier point in time. See Database Recovery for more information.