With Thin Image (HTI), you can perform cost-effective replication by storing the differential data between primary volumes (P-VOLs) and secondary volumes (S-VOLs) of virtual volumes (V-VOLs). You can also copy data of an entire volume, instead of copying just the differential data, to a volume. By copying the entire volume, you can expect a higher performance than by just storing the differential data.
The high-speed, nondisruptive snapshot technology of
Thin Image rapidly creates up to 1,024 point in-time copies of mission-critical information within the storage system or virtualized storage pool without impacting host service or performance levels. Because snapshots store only the changed data, the volume of storage capacity required for each snapshot copy is substantially smaller than the source volume, providing significant savings over full-volume cloning methods. Cascaded snapshot configuration and cloning enables creation of snapshot trees and full-copy clones from snapshots using
Thin Image.
Thin Image stores snapshots in
a
Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform family (VSP family) storage system. If the data of the storage system fails, you can restore it using the stored snapshot of the data. Pairs created by using
Thin Image are called
Thin Image pairs in this document.
Thin Image typically consists of several components, including pairs, groups, and software applications. Thin Image requires Dynamic Provisioning, which is used to access data for open-system servers such as UNIX and PC servers in a pool volume through a virtual volume.
You can create Thin Image (HTI) pairs using pair volumes for other replication software applications, such as ShadowImage and TrueCopy. You can also create Thin Image pairs using volumes to which you define attributes using Data Retention Utility or RAID Manager.
