This page provides information about application-consistent snapshots.
About application-consistent snapshots
Application-consistent snapshots are snapshots taken after the operating system and application write the current state of the data to storage. Application-consistent snapshots provide a clear recovery point for the application; you can use them to create consistent clones of the application.
Application-consistent snapshots versus crash-consistent snapshots
Crash-consistent snapshots are outdated snapshots of your data due to client caching. Crash-consistent snapshots can help you recover data and work well for a majority of applications. However, some data in storage might be outdated at the time of recovery because it's kept in operating system and application caches for some time before it's written to storage.
Create an application-consistent snapshot
We recommend that you synchronize snapshot creation with dedicated recovery points of your application. To use NetApp Volumes snapshots to create application-consistent snapshots, complete the following actions:
Flush all unwritten data from the application caches to storage. Many applications, such as databases, provide built-in mechanisms for this procedure. Consult your application documentation for more information.
Alternatively, you can stop the application briefly.
Take a snapshot of the volume. Snapshots take a few seconds to generate.
Return your application to its normal state of operation.
This procedure lets you create consistent snapshots of large application datasets within a few seconds.