Using the IBM XIV Storage System's snapshot capability gives IT teams powerful first-time-ever snapshot features and helps simplify common tasks involving snapshots.

Specifically, the XIV system's snapshot offering supports the following features:

• Differential and full copies (snapshots) supported
• Up to 16,000 instant snapshots
• Taking a snapshot of a volume, taking a full copy of a volume, or restoring a volume from a snapshot are all instant operations, completed in a sub-second
• Snapshots of production volumes can be taken with virtually no performance overhead
• Snapshots can be set to be writable and still be differential (only consume storage per changes)
• Volumes can be restored from writable snapshots
• Snapshots of writable snapshots can be taken ("snap-on-snap")
• Multiple snapshots of multiple volumes can be taken at the same point in time, ensuring data consistency
• Users have full flexibility in mapping snapshots to hosts, copying snapshots to volumes, duplicating snapshots, and more

The current market offering is based on either differential snapshots or full copies, each capability having its advantages and disadvantages. The XIV system’s implementation provides a superior solution to both options, as shown in the table below.

	IBM XIV®	Other vendors
		Full copy	Differential
Space efficiency	Efficient	Efficient	Full copy
Creation time	Instant sub-second snapshot creation	Process that can take a minutes	Lengthy and complex process (up to days) until copy is available
Number of snapshots	Thousands of snapshots allowable per volume	A few snapshots at most	A few copies at most
Performance overhead	No performance degradation	Significant performance overhead	Some performance overhead
Scalability	Performance, creation time and restore time are independent of volume size or number of snapshots	All depend on volume size	Full copy can take up to days for big volumes
Snapshot of a writable snapshot	"Snap-on-snap" for writable snapshots	Not supported	Not supported