topic Re: snapshot retention mirror-snapvault cascade cdot in ONTAP Discussions

snapshot retention mirror-snapvault cascade cdot

Jonathan — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 05:24:05 GMT

I have an 8020 with a volume containing some cifs shares.

The volume is mirrored using snapmirror to an offsite 2240

This part is working fine

What I want to do now is create a snapvault also on the 2240 using the mirror as a source. This works in so much as the relationship exists and the data has been copied from the mirror in to the vault. The problem is trying to get the snapvault policy to work so that the snapshots are retained on the vault. The snapvault relationship doesn't see any of the snapshot labels on the snapshots. The docs are very sparse they mention some magical sm_created snapshot label. I've tried adding a policy for the label (even though I can't see any evidence of it existing on my system) but it doesn't work. On the snapvault destination I only ever have two snapshots both of which have a label of "-"

Re: snapshot retention mirror-snapvault cascade cdot

deepuj — Tue, 25 Nov 2014 06:37:58 GMT

Hi,

Did you follow this steps ? https://library.netapp.com/ecmdocs/ECMP1196819/html/GUID-FF990C24-515E-4D33-ACA2-77E5BB4E6F10.html

Thanks

Re: snapshot retention mirror-snapvault cascade cdot

ricardo_almeida — Tue, 13 Jan 2015 10:55:26 GMT

Hi Jonathan

I have the same problem and like you, I found the documentation very dificult to follow at some times.

Did you find a way to solve this?

I was expecting to have the personalized labeled snapshots (snapmirror label) to propragate and keep up to the last level of protection in a mirror+vault cascade.

It seems that the snapmirror labels, except "sm_created" are not getting used at all and if so, it's not worth configured them in the snapvault policy.

thank you

Ricardo

Re: snapshot retention mirror-snapvault cascade cdot

chris_hague — Mon, 09 Feb 2015 15:44:54 GMT

Hi Guys,

Did you work out how to apply a schedule to a mirror-vault cascade?

Having recently started using CDOT i was hoping i could have the same retention as I used to have on 7 mode.

ie. source snaps kept for 168 hours.

in dest Daily snapvault kept for 31 days

in dest Weekly snapvault kept for 52 weeks

I'm pulling my hair out trying to work this out from the following article which doesnt seem to make any sense!

https://library.netapp.com/ecm/ecm_download_file/ECMP1196819

Anyone help?

Re: snapshot retention mirror-snapvault cascade cdot

Whisperer — Thu, 07 May 2015 07:30:15 GMT

Same issue for me. I've been running a 4 tier cascade: source>mirror>mirror>vault [cdot 8.2.2P2]

Labels are set on my snapshots, and xdp snapmirrors worked fine to the vault until I hit 251 snapshots.

I then realized I needed to add sm_created as a rule to the xdp policy on the vault as this is a know issue.

Setting the sm_created rule to 120 then cleaned out all but 120 snapshots.

However, the vault now contains just 120 snapshots based on the replication schedule to the vault from the mirror, so being 3*daily (8hrs), I now have 40d of history.

The issue is we need variable retention, ie. 31d, 12w, 12m. I can find nothing in the doco to se tthis up.

Having set the sm_created rule, it seems the retention is flat based on the replication schedule from the the source mirror copy.

(I have reviewed all avalilable NEtapp support doco, including the links shown above).