Data Recovery for NetApp Storage Systems

Building on a tradition of developing data recovery tools to support the latest and most advanced data storage technologies, Ontrack Data Recovery engineers pioneered a new toolset to recover data from NetApp storage systems. This advancement gives Ontrack Data Recovery customers the ability to recover purged snapshots from NetApp storage systems; a type of recovery that, until now, was not possible.

NetApp systems store data using a custom operating system named Data ONTAP and a file system named WAFL (Write Anywhere File Layer).

A noteworthy feature of the NetApp system is "snapshot" technology, which allows the user to go 'back in time" to recover deleted or overwritten files without having to restore a backup. Organizations using snapshots create a retention policy, determining how long they want to keep the snapshot. Once snapshots are purged, the related ability to recover deleted files without restoring a full backup is lost. It is in these cases that the latest recovery tool from Ontrack Data Recovery can help.

Ontrack Data Recovery engineers can now locate purged snapshots and essentially "turn back the clock" to before the purging occurred to recover data from the snapshots. In the past, engineers could recover data from failed drives within a NetApp system but could not recover purged snapshots. This latest innovation allows for complete NetApp data recovery capabilities with data returned on a new storage device.

NetApp recovery scenarios include:

1. Deleted or overwritten files that are no longer in an active snapshot
2. Deleted or recreated volumes
3. WAFL file system corruption
4. Hard drive failures
5. Raid failures

Data recovery for NetApp systems can be performed through Ontrack Data Recovery in-lab, remote and on-site services. For a more detailed look at data recovery for NetApp systems, see this recent technical article.