VxVM can take an image of a volume at a given point in time. This image is called a volume snapshot.

You can also take a snapshot of a volume set.

Volume snapshots allow you to make backup copies of your volumes online with minimal interruption to users. You can then use the backup copies to restore data that has been lost due to disk failure, software errors or human mistakes, or to create replica volumes for the purposes of report generation, application development, or testing.

Volume snapshots can also be used to implement off-host online backup.

A volume snapshot captures the data that exists in a volume at a given point in time. As such, VxVM does not have any knowledge of data that is cached in memory by the overlying file system, or by applications such as databases that have files open in the file system. Snapshots are always crash consistent, that is, the snapshot can be put to use by letting the application perform its recovery. This is similar to how the application recovery occurs after a server crash. If the fsgen volume usage type is set on a volume that contains a mounted Veritas File System (VxFS), VxVM coordinates with VxFS to flush data that is in the cache to the volume. For other file system types, depending on the capabilities of the file system, there may potentially be inconsistencies between data in memory and in the snapshot.

For databases, a suitable mechanism must additionally be used to ensure the integrity of tablespace data when the volume snapshot is taken. The facility to temporarily suspend file system I/O is provided by most modern database software. For ordinary files in a file system, which may be open to a wide variety of different applications, there may be no way to ensure the complete integrity of the file data other than by shutting down the applications and temporarily unmounting the file system. In many cases, it may only be important to ensure the integrity of file data that is not in active use at the time that you take the snapshot.

There are two alternative methods of creating volume snapshots.

Snapshot creation using the vxsnap command is the preferred mechanism for implementing point-in-time copy solutions in VxVM. Support for traditional third-mirror snapshots that are created using the vxassist command may be removed in a future release.

To recover from the failure of instant snapshot commands, see the Veritas Volume Manager Troubleshooting Guide.