For example, suppose you have a database consisting of 10 storage units in a consistency group, and you need to back up the entire database. Instead of backing up each storage unit, you can back up the entire database by simply adding snapshot data protection to the consistency group. Backing up the storage units as a consistency group instead of individually also provides a consistent backup of all the units, while backing up units individually could potentially create inconsistencies.

Beginning with ONTAP 9.16.1, you can use System Manager to create hierarchical consistency groups on your ASA r2 system. In an hierarchical structure, one or more consistency groups are configured as children under a parent consistency group.

Hierarchical consistency groups allow you to apply individual snapshot policies to each child consistency group and to replicate the snapshots of all the child consistency groups to a remote cluster as a single unit by replicating the parent. This simplifies data protection and management for complex data structures. For example, suppose you create a parent consistency group called SVM1_app which contains two child consistency groups: SVM1app_data for application data and SVM1app_logs for application logs. Snapshots of SVM1app_data are taken every 15 minutes and snapshots of SVM1app_logs are taken every hour. The parent consistency group, SVM1_app, has a SnapMirror policy that replicates the snapshots of both SVM1app_data and SVM1app_logs to a remote cluster every 24 hours. The parent consistency group SVM1_app is managed as a single unit and the child consistency groups are managed as separate units.