topic data migration with flexclone question in Network and Storage Protocols

data migration with flexclone question

JACKIEXIE19 — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 06:46:54 GMT

I want to find out when the cut-off point occur when using flexclone to migrate data from one vol to another.

Say I have a cifs volume cifsvol1, it contains 6 folders. I want to move two folders folder1 and folder2 out from this volume to another volume cifsvol2. All these folders are continuous accessed by different application.

My plan is

1) create a flexclone cifsvol2 from source volume cifsvol1,

2) remove folders folder3-6 from cifsvol2 so it only contains folder1 and folder2,

3) create new cifs shares for folder1 and 2 from cifsvol2,

4) split off clone vol

5) stop applications that are accessing folder1 and folder2, and remount them on the new cifs shares from cifsvol2

6) on the original volume cifsvol1, remove the cifs share for folder1-2, then delete them from volume cifsvol1

my question is, since flexclone creation is based on a snapshot, there most likely will be new updates from application write to folder1 and folder2 after clone volume is created, will these new writes be lost when performing step 5 above? how can I keep apps data intact? should I stop application before creating clone vol?

data migration with flexclone question

aborzenkov — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 03:10:27 GMT

Yes, you have to stop applications before creating clone. Actually, I'd remove shares before creating clones as well to make sure noone can access these folders. After clone is created, recreate shares again pointing to new volume.

data migration with flexclone question

pascalduk — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 05:37:59 GMT

It is easier and faster to terminate cifs for a specific volume then to remove and recreate all the shares

https://kb.netapp.com/support/index?page=content&id=1011064

data migration with flexclone question

aborzenkov — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 05:46:46 GMT

Oh, I dd not know you can do it. It is not really documented. Thank you!

(Of course it depends on whether other shares are allowed to go offline, even briefly).

data migration with flexclone question

JACKIEXIE19 — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 11:20:57 GMT

Thanks for the clarification, yes, we cannot afford to offline the entire cifs volume, so I think I will go for abrzenkov's suggestion.

Because this process requires downtime, that is from the time shutting down application, split off the clone volume, then remounting to the new cifs shares, I know creating flexclone should only take seconds, but it may take a bit of time to split off, I am wondering if there is way to work out how long it will take for splitting a 40G clone volume?

Re: data migration with flexclone question

aborzenkov — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 11:24:32 GMT

Clone split is background process. So you need downtime only until clone is created.

1. Shutdown applications

2. Remove shares

3. Clone volume

4. Recreate shares pointing to new volumes

5. Start applications

Now you have time to clean up new cloned volume and initiate clone split. Data continues to be available while splitting is in progress.

data migration with flexclone question

JACKIEXIE19 — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 12:39:06 GMT

Thanks aborzenkov, it's clear now. I will post the outcome once it's done.