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Enterprise applications

Epic storage efficiency configuration

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A snapshot is a point-in-time copy of a volume that is read-only.

A snapshot puts a logical lock on all the blocks in the active file system. NetApp ONTAP Snapshot copies are near instant, and they do not use any additional storage.

Write Anwhere File Layout, or WAFL, is a write-only file system; it does not perform additional IO, such as copying the data in a snapshot-protected block before being overwritten. No data is ever moved; therefore, snapshots have no effect on storage capacity or performance. Snapshots provide tremendous savings in storage while augmenting the backup solution.

FlexClone

A NetApp ONTAP FlexClone volume is a clone of an existing volume or a snapshot of an existing volume. It is otherwise an ONTAP volume like any other, and can itself be cloned, protected with snapshots, and configured with a QoS policy.

As with snapshots, a FlexClone volume does not require any additional space at creation time. Only changes to the clone require additional capacity.

Epic requires 10 to 30 copies of the production databases for various operational requirements such as streaming backups, integrity checks, and staging upgrade environments. The need for a solution built on FlexClone volumes has increased with the move to more frequent upgrades.

Note A fully automated Epic backup solution and Epic refresh solution are provided by NetApp as part of the solution using Ansible and native NetApp tools.