I use the solution for backup and testing purposes. We take a Snapshot of our virtual machine doing something. If something goes wrong, we revert it.

My company uses NetApp Snapshot to protect our files and virtual machines. Our company also uses NetApp Snapshot to protect SAP HANA, and then we use NetApp Snapshot to create an SAP HANA database every hour.

We primarily use the solution to protect data in the cloud and data in the data center.

Because snapshots are immutable, if something such as ransomware comes along and corrupts our production data, I can roll the volumes back to the last snapshot. More commonly, somebody deletes or corrupts a file inadvertently. In some cases we can roll back to the last snapshot, however, that usually isn't a viable option because other data in the volume would be lost. That said, the system gives me the ability to mount up a Snapshot, go get the data that they were looking for and move it back to where they need it.

We use it as an added data protection product. We take scheduled snapshots for troubleshooting purposes. We can set them up hourly, daily, weekly, or last week. Also, if we need to do some sort of restore, we can use FlexClone using the snapshot.

In our daily operations, we just use it as a scheduled backup option we offer new customers.

The main use cases for NetApp Snapshot are data recovery and disaster scenarios.

NetApp Snapshot has a lot of use cases depending on the user's resourcefulness. What it does is replace an image of the volume or whatever you want to create. Once you create it, then you can do whatever you like with it.

My customers use it for backups, replication, and cleaning.

Most of my clients do not use the cloud version because they are in the banking industry.

I use NetApp Snapshot for the mirroring or clone capabilities. For example, snapshots of different applications.

Our primary use of SnapMirror and Snapshot is for site to site replication. 

The primary use of the solution is mainly for backup and recovery. We also use it for repurposing the workloads.

Storage-based snapshots without an operational or management overhead, which is usually the case with any backup software.

One thing about Snapshot is that it can be used for so many things. Say, for example, I want to take a backup of my database at a scheduled time, I can take a snapshot of that on whatever schedule I want. The snapshot takes just a few seconds to record. During the capture and while taking the snapshot, the database is frozen for me for only a few seconds that the snapshot takes. I can now mount that particular snapshot — or any snapshot — and then begin to do a clone of this database. This means I do not have to take the database offline to do a backup.  

That is just one example of what this product can do. Many companies find it very, very useful to use this feature for their backup purposes. I do understand that quite a number of enterprise-class backup solutions like NetBackup and other backup solutions in this category now have integrated snapshots into their solutions as well following NetApp's lead. It just shows that other companies are aware of the fact that it is a very good feature as a way of dealing with backups.  

In another case, some of my customers do backups every hour and some backup every two hours, depending on their requirements. The reason for that is they want to protect themselves in case there is any corruption or anything happens to their data. If so, they can roll back to the most current and the most useful version of their database.  

Snapshot also comes in very handy with their cloning feature. Say, for example, you want to create a new product and you want to make sure that you test the product on your live database, but you obviously do not want your development to have any impact on your live database. This is an instance where it is useful to do what NetApp calls a clone.  

You create the clone and a current snapshot is embedded in the clone. So now you can take a copy of that volume of whatever you wanted to clone, and then you can begin to use this for the development of your new product. The footprint is very small in the sense that it is already data that you modified and that takes up very little space. You cannot modify any of the live data and you cannot add any new data. The actual memory space that you are using by working with the clone is almost zero but it is the same data captured at the moment where the snapshot was created.  

So those are a few very good advantages that the Snapshot product has. The ability to clone is unique. The cloning feature is called FlexClone.  

Our primary use is to take a snapshot of a current data state. We can use that, for example, if you make some changes — even minor changes database — you take snapshots of the data in a state that you believe the data is good. After that, you make a change to something in the data or maybe something happens where you lose some information or you make some other mistake — accidentally delete data — you can revert to the snapshot and your data will be restored to the point where the snapshot was taken.

The point is to create states so that it is impossible to lose big data. Sometimes people use Snapshot for other purposes — which is not correct — like for making backups. It is not a good idea. You can, technically, use it for that purpose, but I do not recommend it. Some of the information is saved on the same physical media when using Snapshot as a backup. The backup is on the same physical media as the original information, so if something were to happen to the physical media, you lose also backups.

I am using the on-prem deployment model of this solution. 

We have VMs deployed throughout the organization and we use this solution to take storage snapshots at the VM-level.

I am using the solution for backup purposes in a private cloud environment

We primarily use the solution for backup and disaster recovery.

In the current environment we keep Snapshots for only five days. So we go into the backup solution of using Veeam and VMware.