Data consistency for data-driven organizations

Because their data is growing so rapidly, most businesses depend on data to solve customer problems, potential opportunities, and other important business decisions. A data protection and recovery strategy that requires minimal effort is the highest priority for most organizations, and NetApp aims to simplify the management of complex application workloads efficiently.

Imagine that you’re hosting a typical e-commerce website that requires multiple databases for its customer order system. The databases, hosted on multiple servers, are used to store product inventories and to handle customer transactions. In addition, there is a file server that is used to store invoices, receipts, product images, and feedbacks. The environment is configured in such a way that in case of a ransomware attack or disaster, the complete data stack must be recovered together for the customer order system to function.

Consider what would happen if each database and file server were recovered to a different point in time. You would have inconsistent database records of files that don’t exist, or file exists but no database records. Therefore, these sets of applications must be protected and restored to the same point in time for the customer order system to function. This restoration is possible only by having a synchronized NetApp® Snapshot™ image of the entire application suite at the same point in time. In NetApp terms, this is called a consistency group where you can group multiple data volumes for Snapshot copies to ensure write-order fidelity.

New in NetApp ONTAP® 9.10.1 is the on-box support for multivolume consistency groups. This feature offers the flexibility to create a simple consistency group with multiple data volumes of the same application. Sometimes you may even want to manage the applications in multiple chunks where you can create a parent consistency group with multiple child consistency groups for a mixed set of applications.

The sweet spot for this feature is large scale customers who have 1000s of datasets and individual databases. This feature provides the ability to schedule your on-box backups without the need for any external backup software. If your data just needs to be protected either locally or locally and at a remote site, this is an efficient way to accomplish that protection instead of using a backup product to manage all 1000 databases. However, there are scenarios where you may still need to look at backup software like NetApp SnapCenter® to manage complex databases that require advanced protection, copy data management, and various dynamic recovery methods.

Let’s end with a simple question. “Would you rather manage 50 databases as databases, or would you rather manage the 500 data volumes that make up the databases?“

Check out the NetApp consistency group documentation for more information. To set up a conversation with a NetApp specialist, submit a request.