Intellisnap backup

Hello ​@Harsha V 

Documentation states the following: 
https://documentation.commvault.com/2024e/essential/snapshots.html

The IntelliSnap technology can be deployed as a lightweight, standalone solution for automating snapshot management and application-aware recovery across multiple storage arrays and physical or virtual servers, unifying the management of hardware snapshots through a single console to improve efficiency and unleash the true potential of snapshots. This maximizes the value of your existing snapshot investment by simplifying management, speeding recovery and making snapshots searchable. You can automatically create long-term snapshot backups and archives from snapshots using commodity disk, cloud or tape, without the need for traditional backup, potentially eliminating legacy backup solutions.

What this all translates to is a system that will allow your storage level snapshots to be compatible with the application to ensure that it is recoverable and consistent. 

The problem that IntelliSnap is attempting to solve is slow backup and restore operations at scale due to large amount of hop’s and environmental latency. For example if you are attempting to protect 1TB of Windows File System data that will need to perform the following hops: 

Prod Storage array » Host » MA » Backup Storage. 

Each one of those hops having to go into and out of a switch and network environment. That amount of handshakes and limits on streams will result in over all slower backups and restores. 

With IntelliSnap we put the application in question into a safe state for backup and tell the storage array to take a storage level snapshot. This takes just a few seconds, minutes are most depending on the array and such. Now we have a copy of the data on the storage array that is separate from the application and in a state we know is consistent. 

The final step is for us to perform a backup copy of that data off the primary storage and onto the backup storage. This will happen with a direct connection instead of all the other hops spoken about before. 

In short the process is as follows: 

1- Put application in backup state

2- Take snap copy ( this will be the backup job in CV job history ) 

3- Perform a backup copy job of the data  (this will show up in the history of the agent if you enable “show copy jobs” in the settings) 

Once the backup copy is complete then the primary storge will have its own snapshot retention settings and get rid of them as needed. 

This is a 10 year old video but helps understand the fundamentals. Please note at its core it is still correct: 

Kind regards
Albert Williams