You need to backup Exchange, MS SQL, and VMware virtual machines with application consistency. Which tool accomplishes this task?

SnapCenter is NetApp's centralized software suite for data protection and clone management. It is specifically engineered to provide application-consistent backups for enterprise applications. It achieves this through application-specific plug-ins that coordinate with applications like Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, and VMware vSphere (via its vCenter plug-in) to quiesce them before triggering a hardware-based NetApp Snapshot copy. This ensures that data, including in-memory transactions, is flushed to disk, resulting in a consistent and recoverable backup.

A. OnCommand System Manager: This is an element management tool for configuring and managing a single ONTAP cluster; it does not provide application-integration for consistent backups.

B. VMware vSphere Web client: This is VMware's management interface. While it can initiate VM snapshots, it is not a NetApp tool and does not manage backups for physical SQL or Exchange servers.

D. OnCommand Unified Manager: Now known as Active IQ Unified Manager, this is a monitoring, alerting, and reporting tool for managing the health and capacity of multiple ONTAP systems.

1. NetApp Technical Report 4597, "SnapCenter Software Best Practices," Page 6, Section: Introduction.

"NetApp SnapCenter software is the next-generation data protection solution for NetApp customers. It provides a centralized management interface for all your application- and database-consistent data protection needs." This section explicitly states SnapCenter's role in application-consistent data protection.

2. NetApp SnapCenter 5.0 Documentation, "SnapCenter concepts," Section: What SnapCenter can do.

"SnapCenter is a unified, scalable platform for data protection... You can use SnapCenter to back up, restore, and clone... Microsoft SQL Server databases, Microsoft Exchange Server databases... [and] VMware vSphere virtual machines and datastores." This confirms its support for the specific applications listed in the question.

3. NetApp ONTAP 9 Documentation, "System Manager basics," Section: What is System Manager?

"System Manager is a graphical management interface that enables you to manage storage systems and storage objects (such as disks, volumes, and aggregates) and to perform common management tasks related to storage and data serving from a web browser." This reference confirms System Manager's role as a storage management tool, not an application backup tool.