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Table 1: VSM GUI
Table 2 is a description of each of the toolbar shortcut icons.
Icon
Function
Provision new Datastore(s)
Create a Smart Copy
Create a Smart Clone
Create a Smart Copy Replica
Create a scheduled task
Create a VDI desktop pool
Manage ACL Policies
Configure VSM Appliance
Set user preferences
Access online help
Table 2: Toolbar Shortcut Icons
PROTECTION WITH SMART COPIES
As discussed earlier, a Smart Copy is a hypervisor or application aware VMware
snapshot combined with a PS Series SAN snapshot. When VMware puts the VM
into snapshot mode it quiesces the IO to the virtual machine VMDK files and if
possible quiesces the application inside the VM. The level of application
consistency is based upon the Operating System of the VM, the VMware Tools,
and the application. There are multiple options including the ability to save
memory state to disk but once these VMs are quiesced, any new changes to the
VM are stored in a separate VMDK. Once the VM is quiesced, VSM coordinates
with the SAN to determine which PS Series volume(s) to snapshot. These
datastore volumes have a PS series snapshot created on them and then VSM
coordinates with vCenter to release the VM snapshot. The benefit to this is you
obtain the same consistency without leaving the virtual machine in snapshot
mode for an extended period of time which could possibly lead to longer
consolidation times for the snapshot and space consumption on the datastore.