General Operational Issues
Operational procedures, automated or otherwise, need to be established to employ the point-in-time copy technology. Deciding when the snapshots will occur, the frequency in which they will occur, and the method of notifying the secondary application when the snapshot is available are examples of operational issues that need to be addressed.
In most cases, a point-of-data consistency needs to be reached before a point-in-time can be established. This ensures that the snapshot image is logically consistent (that is, you have not captured any incomplete transactions).
To Create a Point-in-Time Copy
Ensure that the master data has reached a point of consistency (that is, all of the data has been flushed to the disk).
Create a point-in-time copy of the data.
Export the snapshot to a second server.
Run the test application against the point-in-time copy.
Rejoin and resynchronize the point-in-time copy with the master data, if necessary.