Systems and methods for using snapshots to establish operable portions of computing entities on secondary sites for use on the secondary sites before the computing entity is fully transferred to the secondary site. Embodiments commence upon initiating replication of an entity from an originating site to a secondary site. While replication of the entire entity from the originating site to the secondary site is being carried out, the originating site transfers entity metadata to the secondary site. A non-replication user process queries the metadata to determine completion status and/or other characteristics of subcomponents of the entity. After determining the completion status of subcomponents of the entity, the non-replication user process operates on subcomponent data of the entity even before the data of the entity has been completely copied to the secondary site. The subcomponents may comprise certain tables of a database or certain rows of a table of a database.