One good resource would be the EMC Symmetrix TimeFinder Product Guide which you can search for on the EMC Support site.  This breaks down the difference between Clones, Snaps and BCVs.  To answer your point-in-time question, the data contained in the BCV, Clone or Snap is dependent on the time which they're activated, i.e. "point-in-time".  Let's say I have a BCV of my production Source LUN.  If, at 7PM, I split the BCV and mount it on my backup server, the contents of the BCV are the point-in-time of 7PM.  At 9PM, the BCV still contains - guess what! - the view of the Source LUN.  If I wish, I can re-sync the BCV with the current state of the Source LUN and get them back in sync for the next night's backup.  The same is true for Clones and Snaps - they are dependent on when I choose to activate them for use. In the case of Clones, especially when doing a full copy of the data, it will take some time until the target Clone LUN is fully copied.  If I have a 1TB LUN and I start a full establish to a clone LUN, if the copy takes 10 minutes, the data in the clone LUN will be the view of the LUN from 10 minutes ago.  Let us know if that helps! Karl
Hi,  I think i know basics of these replciation technologies -  BCV - local mirror - its full copy of the source device (can be detached and used as back up) - dependent (can be used only after split/detach)  Snapshot - local - point in time - to restore (cannot be detached as these are just pointers - delta replicas - virtual replicas) (point-in-time??? - what does it mean?)  CLone - looks like it can be used as both BCV and Snapshot and superior technique (independent - can be used as seperate storage any time) - ((point in time - what does it mean?)  SRDF - clone, but on remote array  In all the cases there will be a source and target. and i am guessing inoder to delete the target device, first the relationship needs to be broken.  And also documentation says snapshots and clones are point in time whereas bcv is synchrnoized copy ( i know what a sync copy is), but i didnt get what a point in time means? Once the relationship is broken, deleting target devices is same as deleing normal devices.  And there are probably different ways to delete replication relationship (probably same??).  If any one get add details, that will be helpful especially regarding the basic differences and removing the relationship  Btw, my main focus is on BCV, but looks like all these replication techiniques somehwhat similar (at least the basics like having source, target, association etc...)  ----  Looks like this one is very good source for BCV vs Clone.  But it doesnt focus on snaps, srdf and deleting the relationships between source and target...  [URL]   Thank you:) Regards,  Message was edited by: Dreamer  Message was edited by: Dreamer
BCV vs Clone vs Snapshot vs SRDF, and deleting asssociation between source and 
target, to delete the target?