White Papers

21
Overlapping Datastore Schedules
It is very important to have an understanding of what VSM is doing in the
background during these schedules otherwise you may end up with
overlapping datastore schedules and not accomplishing the data protection
scheme you are trying to achieve. Every object that is Smart Copied is first put
into VMware snapshot mode and then the underlying datastore volume on the
PS Series SAN is snapped.
If you have a VM that is part of a folder that is being Smart Copied every 2
hours, and elsewhere in the cluster you have another VM that is part of another
folder that is being Smart Copied every 6 hours, however, this VM also resides
on the same datastore volume as the first VM, the PS Series SAN will be creating
multiple snapshots of the same volume but the consistency of the first VM will
only happen during the Smart Copy it is a part of. While the second Smart Copy
is snapshotting the same datastore volume, VSM is not placing the first VM in
VMware snapshot mode. Therefore, the Smart Copy of the second folder is not
usable as a consistent restore point for the VM in the first folder. The solution is
to either place both folders of VMs in a higher level folder, or move the folder of