What is the primary function of SnapMirror in a NetApp environment?

SnapMirror primarily serves the function of data replication within a NetApp environment. It is designed to replicate data between NetApp storage systems, facilitating data availability and disaster recovery. By maintaining a mirror image of the data, SnapMirror ensures that in the case of a primary data center failure, operations can quickly failover to the secondary data center, minimizing downtime and data loss.

This functionality allows organizations to maintain up-to-date copies of their critical data at a remote location, enhancing both data protection and business continuity strategies. SnapMirror can be configured to perform replication in various ways, whether in synchronous or asynchronous modes, based on the organization's requirements for data protection and latency.

While other options like backup and restore operations, storage optimization, and performance tuning are relevant aspects of data management, they are not the primary roles of SnapMirror. Backup operations typically involve snapshot technologies and separate backup solutions, storage optimization relates to efficiencies in space usage, and performance tuning is more about enhancing the efficiency of storage systems rather than replicating data.