topic Re: Release snapshot for excluded volume in SVM-DR relationship in ONTAP Discussions

Release snapshot for excluded volume in SVM-DR relationship

MagicSteven — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 15:30:00 GMT

So it goes like this:

I have a SVM-DR snapmirror relationship.
This relationship contained a volume which had too high daily delta to be replicated within 24hous.
So I've excluded the volume from replication, alowing us to redesign things and stuff, before we reintroduce the volume to the relationship.

The problem now is that I want to remove the snapmirror snapshot from the volume, which I can't since it is snapmirror-locked.
Trying to release the relationship for this single volume fails since this is a SVM-DR relationship:

Error: command failed: Relationship with destination "xxx" is not a valid relationship for this operation because it is a constituent relationship of a vserver SnapMirror relationship.

So... how can I unlock the snapmirror snapshot on the source volume?

Only way I can imagin is to break and release the relationship, delete the snapshot and re-create the relationship with the volume pre-excluded.
But I'm a coward and don't want to try this, since a fresh initialize would take weeks to complete.

Does anybody have an idea?

Re: Release snapshot for excluded volume in SVM-DR relationship

Trubida — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 17:25:41 GMT

Try the following:

1) Logon to the source system through the command line

2) Issue the command "set diag"

3) Issue the command “snapshot show -vserver vservername -volume volumename”

4) Issue the command "snapshot delete -vserver vservername -volume volumename -snapshot snapshotnamefromstep3here -ignore-owners true”

5) Responded with a y to question "Warning: This Snapshot copy is currently used as a reference Snapshot copy by one or more SnapMirror relationships. Deleting the Snapshot copy can cause future SnapMirror operations to fail. Are you sure you want to delete

6) Logon to the destination cluster and run command "snapmirror resync -destination-path -destinationvserver:"

a) This should only sync changes from the last snapshot

Re: Release snapshot for excluded volume in SVM-DR relationship

MagicSteven — Sun, 05 Feb 2017 09:57:48 GMT

Thanks that's it.

I can't believe I didn't try that... I tried one time to set the owner of the snapshot to null/empty string, but I didn't think to just delete the snapshot

Appreciate the help! Thanks again!