Snapshots of replicated datas possible?

Hello,

we are investigating the opportunities of using open-e dss as unified storage system at our company. Togehter with this step we want to redesign our backup and restor scenarios for network shares. We want to do the following:

1. We want to use an DSS as a primary storage for delivering block volumes via iscsi to an virtual iron environment and shares via cifs and nfs for direct user access.

2. For failover purposes an site recovery we want to use a seconday storage for replicating the primary storage volumes regardless wether they are block volumes or shares. So in case of total crash of the primary system we can use the secondary system. Less performance is acceptable.

3. For our backup and restore strategy we want to use the secondary system for snapshoting the replicated data of the primary system with two snaps a day for a lifetime of 14 days. We also want to use the snapshot to do create an tape backup.

As far I know, the basics in points 1 and 2 are no problems at all. I want to know if anybody here knows someone or has done a setup of DSS and Virtual Iron as a failover ISCSI ethernet setup. Regarding to the importance of point 3 i want to know, wether it is possible to create snapshots of the replicated data on the secondary storage. If this is possible i think there is a good chance to use open-e DSS as storage solution in our company. Any other hints are appreciated to.

Thanks in advance

Knut Eichholz
IT-Administrator