topic Re: Deleting a qtree without it entering snapshots in ONTAP Discussions

Deleting a qtree without it entering snapshots

jamyles — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 13:45:15 GMT

I recently had a qtree that was quite large and deserved to be its own volume (3 TB, 25 million files), so I migrated it. That all worked fine but when I did a 'qtree delete' to clean up the original volume I realized this would all be going straight into snapshots (and then into vault snapshots, in my case) so I'd be carrying that extra 3 TB for a long time.

Is there any way to avoid this? I realize it goes against the philosophy of snapshots but also realize there could be something I'm not thinking of. Thanks!

Re: Deleting a qtree without it entering snapshots

aborzenkov — Thu, 03 May 2018 14:09:22 GMT

It is not "going into snapshot". If it is already in snapshot, there is nothing you can do except deleting snapshot(s). If it is not in any snapshot (i.e. qtree was created after most recent snapshot had been taken) then deleting it will not cause it magically be moved into existing snapshot.

Re: Deleting a qtree without it entering snapshots

jamyles — Thu, 03 May 2018 15:06:51 GMT

Ah, I could have given more details. Yes, the qtree had been around for a while, so there is a large snapshot on that volume now. I'll look at it more closely to see if deleting that snapshot makes sense.