topic Re: Provisioning for SnapMirror failed: no suitable candidate in ONTAP Discussions

Provisioning for SnapMirror failed: no suitable candidate

mheimberg — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 07:08:42 GMT

Recently I wanted to setup a backup strategy with Protection Manager for a CIFS-volume at a customers site.

So we went through the resource pools, schedules, policies and finally created a dataset and attached it to the newly created policy.

So far everything was fine, the wizard showed no problems.

But when clicking on "finish" we got the error, that none of the aggregates "is a suitable candidate for this provisioning operation"

Why does this error not show up during the verification in the wizard? What would a "suitable candidate" be?

Following some more details:

Primary System: FAS3160 HA, Ontap 7.3.3

Secondary System: FAS3160 Single Controller, Ontap 7.3.3

Tertiary System: FAS3160 HA, Ontap 8.0

Policy is kind of "Mirror, then backup", aka Primary -> SnapMirror -> Secondary -> SnapVault -> Tertiary

Resource Pool: all 5 aggregates of secondary system, in each aggregate there are already snapmirror-destination volumes

There is no provisioning policy (as an introduction to Protman we wanted to keep it simple...)

The error is concerning the first relation (SnapMirror).

Re: Provisioning for SnapMirror failed: no suitable candidate

smoot — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:38:46 GMT

Let me make sure I understand.

This dataset is only using a "Mirror" policy, not the "Mirror then Backup" policy you eventually want to use, right?

And the two conformance results screenshots are for the same dataset, right?

It's unusual that the first result, the preview, would not find an error but the second one would have a problem. I think there may be more data below the bottom of the screen. I think those messages indicate we hit a problem with that storage system (e.g. we don't have working credentials) and rather than repeating that message, we give a more generic message for all the other aggregates. Anyway, make sure to scroll through all the results and I suspect you'll find a more specific message buried in there somewhere.

If making multiple screenshots is a pain, you can do this from the CLI and just cut and paste the text. I find it easiest to create an empty dataset with all the right policies and resource pools. Then from the CLI, add your primary member:

$ dfpm dataset add -D t3_rc_user ch1s1032:/cifds_rz_user

$ dfpm dataset add t3_rc_user ch1s1032:/cifds_rz_user

The first command is a dry run, which should be exactly the same as your first screen shot. The second command actually adds the volume which should be the same as the second screenshot.

Re: Provisioning for SnapMirror failed: no suitable candidate

mheimberg — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 19:51:12 GMT

Oops - my mistake: actually we started with a policy "Mirror, then backup". To make things easier for troubleshooting I then created a second dataset and a policy "Mirror" only - but the effect was the same.

Me too I have not seen so far that the preview saying "OK" and then there is still an error.

Regarding working credentials we ran through the connection analyze wizard and everything was green in the end.

But I will have a look it at again and check also the rest of the error message.

And thanks for the CLI inputs.

regards

Mark

Re: Provisioning for SnapMirror failed: no suitable candidate

mheimberg — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 13:43:17 GMT

We double-checked the credentials by diagnose in DFM as well as in NMC - everything shows green with one exception in DFM: XML (how can I fix that?); but I think when login and ndmp credentials are ok, Protection Manager should work.

Next I created a new volume, new Dataset, attached my policy and chose the resources manually: and still I get "aggregat is not suitable for this provisioning operation" - and there stands nothing more....

Any other idea, what I could check? Or should I rather open a case for support?

thx

Mark

Re: Provisioning for SnapMirror failed: no suitable candidate

smoot — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 14:47:23 GMT

So, "dfm host diag" shows the XML connectivity fails? That's bad, that means we cannot execute API calls against the filer. What error message do you get for that?

If this is not working, we won't be able to provision anything so I suspect that's at the root of your problems.

I'm surprised the host diag wizard didn't have troubles with this but it might be a corner case we don't look for.

-- Pete

Re: Provisioning for SnapMirror failed: no suitable candidate

mheimberg — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 08:18:52 GMT

Dear Pete

I have found that 2 out of 6 hosts are using http as an administration transport protocol

(dfm host get)

But in the DFM options all the setting are set to https.

By means of

dfm host set <id> hostAdminTransport=https

I was able to change the setting and now "Diagnose Connectivity" is all green.

Could you tell me if there is an equivalent in the WebGUI to set hostAdminTransport?

Thanks

Mark

Re: Provisioning for SnapMirror failed: no suitable candidate

mheimberg — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 08:33:10 GMT

After setting hostAdminTransport to https Protection Manager immediately started creating volumes and relations.

Thanks for the help.

Mark

Re: Provisioning for SnapMirror failed: no suitable candidate

adaikkap — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 08:43:04 GMT

This will be the link for the webui to do the same.(Change it as per your setup for those inside the angle braces)

http://<dfmserver-name-or-IP>:8080/dfm/edit/host?object=<filerid>&group=0

The navigation is:

Control Center->Storage Controller Details page->Edit settings

Attached is the screen shot for thesame.

Regards

adai