Import of external SM relationship in Protection Manager

[muhammad_i_pasha]

Hi,

As I understand, in dfm 4.0 you need to create a dataset with source in it and apply protection policy to dataset before you can run import wizard on external relationship. Problem I am facing is when you apply policy to dataset and chose destination it comes up with an error message and complains about size of destination. I suspect it’s because destination is restricted (SM destination) and PA not able to calculate size of it.

Do we need to break the SM relationship before importing or is there something I am missing?

Thanks.

[bwood]

What I have typically done... create the dataset without any source or destination resource (just give it a name and click next all the way thru the wizard).  Then apply the protection policy.  Then import the existing relationship.  You should not need to break SM.

Thanks,

Chris

[muhammad_i_pasha]

Thank you for this. After import do you have to manually delete the SM relationship and schedule from destination filer or protection manager takes care of this?

[bwood]

I don't know for sure, because I think this behavior has changed recently... but I think it will leave the entry in the snapmirror.conf file.  In that case would need to manually remove it from the file (or comment it out).  However, I'd like for someone else to confirm this for you.

Thanks,

Chris

[christop]

I am in the process of importing ~40 VSM relationships into Protection Manager 3.8.1 for monitoring only.  I created an empty dataset and a policy with no schedule.

For some reason many of the relationships are not importing and being removed from the "External Relationships" tab.

Is the reason for this logged somewhere?  I checked the dfpm.log and  didn't see anything.

I am also seeing the datasets are reporting an protection status of "Baseline Failure:  All baseline transfers failed because the dataset in non-conformant".  However, the dataset itself is reporting to be conformant and the transfers are working.  What causes this error and how can I clear it?

[rshiva]

Hi Chris,

If you want to just monitor these relationships, then we don't have to import them to the dataset. You can just leave them at the "external relationship" page. You can monitor the lag of these relationships from the external relationship page. You can also set alerts for these relationships by using SnapMirror: Nearly out of date and SnapMirror: Out of date events. If you import them to a dataset, these realationships will not appear in the external relationship page and Protection Manager will be managing these relationships. Please check the attachment.

Thanks and regards

Shiva Raja

[adaikkap]

Pls note, the snapmirror nearly out of date  and out of date threshold have a value of 1.5 days and 2.0 days by default.

Regards

adai

[adaikkap]

I am in the process of importing ~40 VSM relationships into Protection Manager 3.8.1 for monitoring only.  I created an empty dataset and a policy with no schedule. 
For some reason many of the relationships are not importing and being removed from the "External Relationships" tab.

Didn't the conformance say anything ? Can you use the dfpm import cli with -D(dry run and post the output?)

Is the reason for this logged somewhere?  I checked the dfpm.log and  didn't see anything.

You may have to check in the conformance.log and dfmserver.log.

I am also seeing the datasets are reporting an protection status of "Baseline Failure:  All baseline transfers failed because the dataset in non-conformant".  However, the dataset itself is reporting to be conformant and the transfers are working.  What causes this error and how can I clear it?

Its a known issue, when a external relationship is imported to a dataset, and until a scheduled or on-demand backup is run, the protection status is shown as baseline failure.

To get rid of this just run one on-demand or one scheduled backup from PM.

Regards

adai

[adaikkap]

After import you dont have to do anything.

If the SM relationship had a snapmirror.conf entry you might have to remove them if you dont want both the protection policy and the snapmirror.conf to run the schedules.

Based on your needs you can disable either of them which you dont wish.

After importing a relationship PM doesn't remove the snapmirror.conf entry or snapvault snap sched for a Snapmirorr or Snapvault relationships.

Its up to the user to decide if he wants to go with filer scheduling or protection manger scheduling.

Also if you go with filer scheudling PM backup wont be registered.

Regards

adai

[adaikkap]

Hi Pasha,

     When you add your primary to your dataset and add the policy, PM will always try to create a destination volume based on the attached Resource Pool or if a volume was assigned on the destination will try to use it, after its conformance checks.

The procedure/method to import a external relationship is create an empty dataset with the policy attached and import or use an existing dataset with the policy attached.

Regards

adai

[muhammad_i_pasha]

Hi Adai,

As you mentioned I created an empty dataset, created a policy with no backups and applied a policy to dataset. Then perform import but import didn't import backup schedules for SM or SV.

[adaikkap]

Hi

I only said, when you import the SnapMirror and SnapVault schedules(the filer ones) are not deleted.

I never said schedules are imported into policy.

Regards

adai

[muhammad_i_pasha]

Sorry, a bit confused. So when you import filer configured SMs or SVs relationships, doesn't it import schedules into policy? or you have to manually put schedules in the policy?

Would be helpfull if you could list the steps required to import external relationships. Also didn't find any useful documentation around this on Now site. Thanks

[adaikkap]

Hi

Below are the steps.

1. Create a dataset.

2. Add the policy with or without schedules (based on your requirement)

a. Now you will have a empty dataset with policy attached

3. Go to the external relationships page (assuming that the relationships are already discovered.)

4. Select the relationships and use the import wizard to do the same.

5. After import is done.

6. If dfm version is 3.8 or later snapmirror.conf is not removed for VSM and QSM relationships.

7. For Snapvault relationship irrespective of dfm versions snpavault snapsched is not removed from the filer.

Remove them using the filer cli command snapvault snap unsched

The import wizard help of the NMC give details about the same.

During import the secondary(destination volume) is checked for the following in order to be suitable.

For Snapvaut/QSM relationships

Destination volume has to 1.32X the source size.

For VSM

The source and destiontion volume languages are same.

And the below set applies to all types of relationships.

The volume must not have exceed the volume nearly or full threshold of ops-mgr.

The containing aggr of the volume is not exceeded the over commitment threshold or aggr full/nearly full threshold.of ops-mgr.

The volume does not exceed the inode full and nearly full threshold.

Regards

adai

[christop]

I upgraded to Ops Mgr 4.0 and I'm using the "External Relationships" tab to monitor snapmirror relationships as Shiva suggested.

I wanted to modify the snapmirror lag error and warning thresholds, but I'm not seeing the options in 'dfm options list'.

The online man pages show that the options are:

snapmirrorLagErrorThreshold: value (as a length of time) above which the snapmirror lag will generate an error event.

snapmirrorLagWarningThreshold:value (as a length of time) above which the snapmirror lag will generate a warning event.

However, they do not show up on my 'dfm options list' command:

[root@trulvop0001 ~]# dfm option list|grep snap
snapmirrorMonInterval                 30 minutes
snapshotDiscoveryEventsEnabled        No
snapshotMonInterval                   30 minutes
snapvaultMonInterval                  30 minutes

[root@trulvop0001 ~]# dfm option list snapmirrorLagErrorThreshold
Error: There is no snapmirrorLagErrorThreshold option.

[root@trulvop0001 ~]# dfm option list snapmirrorLagWarningThreshold
Error: There is no snapmirrorLagWarningThreshold option.

Where can I adjust these thresholds?

[adaikkap]

Chris,

       The snapmirror lag and error  thresholds have to be changed in the dfdrm policy and not the dfm options.

Here is the steps to do it.

Go to Ops-Mgr WebUI Disaster Recovery Tab and select the view as Volume SnapMirror Relationsip and click on the Replication policy Column as show in the pic replication.

This will open up the Edit policy page where you will find the options for lag warning and error threshold.

By default they are 1.5 days and 2 days respectively.

Attached are the screenshot for the same.

Regards

adai

[adaikkap]

The same can also be done using the dfdrm cli as below.

List the mirror relationship using the dfdrm mirror list command.

[root@lnx ~]# dfdrm mirror list filerdst:/dst_bulkget_vol9
ID:                 1258
Source:             filersrc:/src_bulkget_vol9
Destination:        filerdst:/dst_bulkget_vol9
Connection:         None
Replication Policy: Discovered Async 4
Failover Policy:    None
State:              SnapMirrored
Status:             Idle
Lag:                1.21 weeks
Refreshed:
[root@lnx ~]#

Use the dfdrm policy list cli to list the policy.

[root@lnx ~]# dfdrm policy list "Discovered Async 4"
ID:          4
Policy Name: Discovered Async 4
Policy Type: Asynchronus Replication
[root@lnx ~]#

[root@lnx ~]# dfdrm policy modify help

NAME
    modify -- modify a disaster recovery policy

SYNOPSIS
    dfdrm policy modify [ -N <new-name> ] [ -k <throttle> ] [ -r <restart> ]
                 [ -c <schedule> ] [ -w <lag-warning-threshold> ]
                 [ -e <lag-error-threshold> ] [ -o <outstanding> ]
                 [ -V <visibility> ] [ -C <checksum> ] [ -W <winsize> ]
                 [ -p <script> ] <name>

[root@lnx ~]#

Use the [ -w <lag-warning-threshold> ]   [ -e <lag-error-threshold> ] to change the lag warning and error.

Regards

adai

[christop]

Thank you Adai.  This is very helpful.

I have 76 VSM relationships that were discovered and assigned to 59 replication policies.

Does this mean I need to assign a lag warning/error threshold manually for each and every policy?

What would be the impact of assigning all of the relationships to a single replication policy?

[adaikkap]

Does this mean I need to assign a lag warning/error threshold manually for each and every policy?

Yes.

What would be the impact of assigning all of the relationships to a single replication policy

The replication policy are nothing but the one which specifies the following.

The network to use for replication and schedule at which this relationship has to be updated.

So changing it depends on your RPO and RTO and also having all of them at the same time may put load on the filers.

Regards

adai

[muhammad_i_pasha]

Thank you for v useful info.

So, to import a relationship you create a dataset, apply a policy to dataset with a desired schedule in it and then run import wizard. Import doesn't delete SM or SV schedules from Filer. All import wizard does is it fills empty dataset resources.

Based on this, is it worth running import wizard to external relationships or you are probably better off creating new relationships in PM? Are there any other benefits of importing relationships which I am missing?

[adaikkap]

So, to import a relationship you create a dataset, apply a policy to dataset with a desired schedule in it and then run import wizard. Import doesn't delete SM or SV schedules from Filer. All import wizard does is it fills empty dataset resources.

Yes. You are perfect, after import may consider disabling the SM and SV schedules from the filer. Or you can have policy without schedules in PM

As having both filer schedules and policy schedules of PM will lead to taking more snapshots(one by PM schedules and other by SM/SV schedules).

So you may hit the limit of 255 snapshots per volume very soon if you snapshot retention is high.

>Based on this, is it worth running import wizard to external relationships or you are probably better off creating new relationships in PM?

Importing is better as you would save the time of rebase line, network bandwidth, and filers resources.

>Are there any other benefits of importing relationships which I am missing?

No.

So after import you may decide on which scheduling to go with,PM schedule or filer schedule. Don’t go with both.

Remove one of them which every you don’t like.

Regards

adai