Snapshots - Overview

Snapshots Reinvented!

The IBM XIV Storage System has taken the concept of snapshots one step further, offering a completely innovative approach to snapshot creation and management. The system provides clear advantages over alternative approaches currently available in the industry, enabling a new approach for using snapshots.

Perhaps the most important breakthrough in the XIV system's snapshot implementation is its ability to support high performance with differential snapshots while enabling an unlimited number of snapshots, on any volume or system size. This unprecedented achievement opens a wealth of new snapshot use cases, such as using snapshots for logical backup of production systems, testing, etc.

The system’s snapshot offering empowers IT teams with first-time-ever features and greatly simplifies commonly known snapshot usage paradigms, including:

• Much simpler hot backup
• Multi-generation logical backup on production volumes using snapshots
• Easier and more simple software testing environment
• Easier and more simple data mining operations

Read the IBM XIV snapshot white paper for more details.