Veritas Database FlashSnap is included with Veritas Database Edition Enterprise Edition.

Database FlashSnap lets you capture an online image of an actively changing database at a given instant, known as a snapshot. You can perform backups and off-host processing tasks on snapshots while providing continuous availability of your critical data, with minimal interruption to users. Database FlashSnap commands can be executed from either the command line or the GUI.

Veritas Database FlashSnap offers you a flexible way to efficiently manage multiple point-in-time copies of your data, and reduce resource contention on your business-critical servers. Database FlashSnap allows database administrators to create a consistent copy of a database without root privileges by creating a snapshot. A snapshot copy of the database is referred to as a database snapshot.

You can use a database snapshot on the same host as the production database or on a secondary host sharing the same storage. A database snapshot can be used for off-host processing applications, such as backup, data warehousing, and decision-support queries. When the snapshot is no longer needed, the database administrator can import the original snapshot back to the primary host and resynchronize the snapshot to the original database volumes.

Database FlashSnap also allows you to resynchronize your original database volumes from the data in the snapshot if the original volumes become corrupted. This is referred to as reverse resynchronization.

Database FlashSnap can significantly reduce the time it takes to back up your database, increase the availability of your production database, and still maintain your production database's performance.

To use Database FlashSnap, you must first configure the volumes used by the database.