The answer is absolutely. Not only can you use snapmirror as backup, you can run your VMs from the snapmirror filer in a disaster. You can also have snapmirror's in multiple locations. And if needed, you can backup to tape from the destination filer which completely offloads backups.

We have been using snapmirror on 950 VMs to 2 locations over NFS since August 2006. Here's Why VMware over Netapp NFS

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