Recovery Manager for SQL - backup solution needed

[cookie]

Okay wondered if anyone on here had similar problems and had come up with a solution.

RMSQL is painful, it basically manages either a snapshot or a remote copy. Remote copies not done in synchronous mode are deleted at the local site (give me strength).

So what do I expect from a tool.

I expect to be able to do snapshots and manage them at either site.
Is this possible ? 'not really'

I need to be able to do point in time restores. This means I can only snapshot once in a day (snapshot will break the log chain !) RMS SQL has no awareness of Transaction logs, so I need to initiate a copy them to our Remote location after log backup job completion.

Im trying to achieve this:
I would like to be able to hold 3 days local and remotely (and not be in synchronous mode as I don't have the links to move the data at speed during the day.)
I need to be able to mount the latest consistent snapshot and DBCC the database at our Remote site
I need to be able to mount the latest consistent snapshot and send it to backup tape.
I need to be able to do a point in time restore at either site for x days.
I need to be able to initiate the job from SQL agent, most dba's run jobs to look after indexes and stats. not been able to link this with the backup job is a pain in the rear.

Above all snapshot is required as I cant afford to wait for the 2tb + databases to run manual backup jobs.

Has anyone come up with any solutions to this?

[Cleanur]

RM SQL also has a CLI interface, so maybe you should to consider a bit of scripting to meet you own individual requirements. Also worth remembering anything MS doesn't directly support RM won't either.

There's a doc here covering some of the standard use cases if anyone's interested.
http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetPDF.asp ... 317ENW.pdf

[hdtvguy]

We have been rather disappointed in the Recovery Manger products and handle things ourselves. We fully virtualized our SQL servers and thus relay on native replication. Our next step is to write more powershell scripts to quiesce the VM and thus SQL then trigger the replication. We have a few snags because we don't replicate the pagefile or TempDB drives at same intervals and the snaps do not work. For now we just use array replication with crash consistent snaps. We use SRM and thus our DR is fairly automated.