Why does Protection Manager need Provisioning Manager?

[oda]

Customer has Protection Manager and is trying to setup a Replication using Protection Manager on an ASIS enabled volume, but isn't working. Technical support advised that we need Provisioning Manager. Why is Provisioning Manager needed to setup this replication relationship? Is this documented somewhere? Are there any workarounds?

Thanks,

Steve

[lafrance]

Hi Steve,

Without more information I'm just guessing at what you are trying to do. But most likely you can't protect the deduped volume because Protection Manager can't provision a secondary volume with dedupe. You can, however, provision a volume yourself and manually enable dedupe on the volume. Then directly put the volume into the dataset secondary and PM will use it as the replication destination.

Hope this helps,

Dave

[oda]

Dave,

Thanks. I'm trying to get more information on the issue. Let me see if I have this straight.

If I want Protection manager to automatically create the destination with dedupe, I will have to enable Provisioning Manager.

If I have a volume that is deduped and want to use Protection Manager, I can do this without Provisiong Manager. The catch is I will have to manually create the destination volume and enable dedupe, then have Protection Manager use this volume. Once this relationship is established in Protection Manager, it will maintain the replication policy.

Reading more into your answer. Without Provisioning Manager, If I resize the primary, I will manually have to resize the secondary. If I do not, Protection Manager will fail in the update because the sizes are incompatible. If I have Provisioning Manager and resize the primary, will it automatically resize the secondary because of the relationship within Protection Manager?

Thanks,

Steve

[lafrance]

Steve,

I believe your assessment is correct on all grounds. When a volume is imported into PM, PM respects sizing and other settings on the volume. So if something changes to make that volume non-viable, PM will suggest a rebaseline. This design decision is currently being revisited.

I cc'd Pete Smoot to make sure I didn't misstate something.

Dave

[scottgelb]

In our experience, protection manager has caused more open cases and customer questions.  Anything to make the product easier would be great...especially supporting dedup replication without requiring provisioning manager (without the manual workaround).

[lafrance]

Scott,

My understanding is that the licensing scheme is changing so that this will no longer be an issue. That is, if a customer has Protection Manager, they will have Provisioning Manager. Please contact Cindy Cui (our PM) for details.

There has already been much internal rejoicing

Thanks,

Dave

[adaikkap]

Hi Steve,

     I just wanted to let you know that,resizing the secondary volume(destination volume backup or mirror) doesn't need provisioning manager license.

If they are provisioned by protection manger.In your case resizing of the secondary volume is required as this is a imported volume.(i.e. created by user and not by protection manager).Having provisioning manager license will also not help in your case.(i.e. when the secondary is created by user.)

Regards

adai

[oda]

Adai,

Does this mean that Protection Manager cannot resize any volume that it does not create?

What happens with changes? If the secondary volume is changed outside Protection Manager, will this action break Protection and cause existing replications to fail? Will this require a reinitialization?

It sounds like in general, its a bad idea to manually create dedupe volumes for Protection Manager. What happens if the customer uses a temporary license for Provisioning Manager. When the temp Provisioning license expires, will Protection Mgr be able to resize the volume if needed?

Thanks,

Steve

[adaikkap]

Hi Steve,

Does this mean that Protection Manager cannot resize any volume that it does not create?

yes.

What happens with changes? If the secondary volume is changed outside Protection Manager, will this action break Protection and cause existing replications to fail? Will this require a reinitialization?

Like what changes ? can you elaborate ?

It sounds like in general, it's a bad idea to manually create dedupe volumes for Protection Manager. What happens if the customer uses a temporary license for Provisioning Manager. When the temp Provisioning license expires, will Protection Mgr be able to resize the volume if needed?

Yes.

Regards

adai

[oda]

I see two scenarios. My concern is if changes are made outside of Protection Mgr, will Protection Mgr have issues.

1. I use Protection Mgr and Provision Mgr to create volumes, and Replication Policy, etc. Will anything break if someone goes into the NetApp controller CLI and adjusts the primary and secondary volume sizes?

2. If I create dedupe volumes for primary and secondary and try to have Protection Mgr without Provision Mgr maintain the replication, can i resize the primary and secondary without breaking Protection Manager and not cause any reinitialize?

Also, what functionality do I lose by not having Provisioning Manager with Protection Manager. If I create my own dedupe volumes and have Protection Mgr without Provision Mgr maintain the replication, what features of Protection Manager are not available?

[adaikkap]

1. I use Protection Mgr and Provision Mgr to create volumes, and Replication Policy, etc. Will anything break if someone goes into the NetApp controller CLI and adjusts the primary and secondary volume size?

The conformance run will deduct and make the necessary changes.

2. If I create dedupe volumes for primary and secondary and try to have Protection Mgr without Provision Mgr maintain the replication, can i resize the primary and secondary without breaking Protection Manager and not cause any reinitialize?

If the size of the primary is greater than your secondary, the next backup would fail and dataset would become non-conformant.

Needs a user confirmation to either rebaseline to any existing resource pools in the dataset or

to make the dataset conformant you would have to resize you secondary volume appropriately.

Also, what functionality do I lose by not having Provisioning Manager with Protection Manager. If I create my own dedupe volumes and have Protection Mgr without Provision Mgr maintain the replication, what features of Protection Manager are not available?

Since the volumes are created outside protection manager protection manger would not be able to resize the secondary based on primary's growth or shrinkage .AFAIK nothing else you would loose in terms of functionality.

Regards

adai

[smoot]

Hi Steve --

Just to be clear, generally Protection Manager is perfectly fine with you adjusting the sizes of volumes.  If it winds up that the secondary volume is too small, we will detect that and mark the dataset as out of conformance.  If there are other secondary volumes available, we will offer to rebaseline to a new volume, but we won't do that without your approval.  If there are no other secondary volumes around, then we won't offer to fix anything.

There are other settings you might change which will cause us to not like a secondary volume.  For instance, if you change the language settings or inode count of the source volume, that might cause us to decide the secondary volume isn't any good any more.

As of 3.8, Protection Manager should co-exist with dedupe that you might set up yourself just fine.  The only thing you lose is the ability to have dedupe configured and scheduled via our GUI.

-- Pete

1. I use Protection Mgr and Provision Mgr to create volumes, and Replication Policy, etc. Will anything break if someone goes into the NetApp controller CLI and adjusts the primary and secondary volume sizes?
2. If I create dedupe volumes for primary and secondary and try to have Protection Mgr without Provision Mgr maintain the replication, can i resize the primary and secondary without breaking Protection Manager and not cause any reinitialize?
Also, what functionality do I lose by not having Provisioning Manager with Protection Manager. If I create my own dedupe volumes and have Protection Mgr without Provision Mgr maintain the replication, what features of Protection Manager are not available?

[oda]

I need more clarification because I'm getting conflicting answers from the NetApp PS consultant implementing solution. I think part of the problem is the definition of working. This is an issue because if Provisioning Manager is necessary, it will be a large financial impact to either the customer or NetApp (it extends beyond just the licensing of Provisioning Manager)

The expectation is in order for Protection Manager to fully support Dedupe volumes, Provisioning manager is necessary.

If Provisioning Manager is not licensed, any volume sizing changes will have to be manually performed, but if done correctly it will not cause anything to break and all volumes will continue to be protected. If voumes sizes Do Not change and destination does not run out of space, Protection Manager will maintain all replicaition relationships without issues.

The PSC is stating...

"Provisioning  Manager is necessary to enable dedupe within a backup policy if the customer  intends to use resource pools."

Is this a true statement as defined by the expecations above?

Also, this statement is made that this is an unsupported configuration. This sounds more like there are a lot more potential issues and problems the user may run into, but it should work to expectations listed above, any comments?

Furthermore,  even if you use pre-provisioned volumes for your secondary (physical resources)  that have de-dupe enabled PM is not aware of the dedupe and cannot properly  manage a de-dupe operation. This is UNSUPPORTED, per engineering. Not only does  this create significant management overhead, but the customer will not realize  the full potential of the dedupe capabilities on the  Secondary.

Lastly, will NetApp address any customer Tech Support issues they run into if they call in without requiring them to install Provisioning Manager?

Thanks,

Steve

[marlon]

Hi Steve,

The second statement is true for versions of DFM/ProtectionManger prior to 3.8. If you are running

DFM 3.7 and have dedupe enabled on a SnapVault secondary managed by ProtMgr, you are using

an unsupported configuration. The issue is that priori to 3.8, ProtMgr did not know how to handle

some of the internal workings of dedupe.

With 3.8, ProtMgr is aware and can work with dedupe. There are two basic options for combining

3.8 and dedupe. If you have Provision Manager license then you can control dedupe (where to use

it, whether to use a schedule, on demand, or SV transfer activiated) via ProtMgr/ProvMgr policies.

If you do not have the Provision Manager license, then you can still use dedupe, you just have to

set it up outside of DFM.

Because the first state says "within a backup policy" I would say it is a true statement for 3.8.

However, you can still use dedupe without Provision Manager. It just takes some steps outside

of DFM to enable and schedule dedupe.

-Marlon