AltaVault Prepopulation

[Oguz_Peynirci]

Hello all,

I am trying to do some tests on Altavault 4.2. But i have some problems with "Prepopulation" job. 

When i try it from the WEB GUI, job completes for just the identifier file. Not the actual file.

When i try it from the CLI, i couldn't get back the actual file either.

How can i restore deleted file via this feature? Or can i restore like that?

Do you have any ideas or suggestions about this scenarios?

[chriswong]

Hi,

It is unclear what your problem is given the description provided. Have you use the GUI to select the files and the 'Fetch percent locally cached for selected files' option first, to see if the file is indeed not 100% local (and would need to be prepopulated)? AltaVault will not prepopulate data that is already present in cache. 

Please clarify with screenshots of the problem which you can attach to your posts. Take pictures of each step (fetch % local cache, then the operation, the job status tab during operation, and the result).

I would also like to know the AltaVault version as well (4.2.0? 4.2.1? 4.2.2?), and what cloud you're using.

Regards,

Christopher

[Oguz_Peynirci]

Hello Christopher,

We are using AltaVault 4.2.2 with NetApp StorageGrid WebScale for cloud. 

Actually we might be misunderstood "Prepopulation" concept. We try prepopulation with SMB shared file. After SMB share is configured, we upload some files to that share. In the WEB GUI, we select that file for "Fetch percent locally cached for selected files". We see that that file is %100 cached. Then we delete that file, we think that, when we prepopulate that file, should we see that file in the SMB share? We assume that "Prepopulation" is some kind of restore task for cached files. Is that true or we misunderstood that consept?

Kind regards,

Oguz.

[chriswong · Accepted solution]

Hi Oguz,

AltaVault acts like any NAS share with regards to file management. If you delete the file from an AltaVault SMB share, it will remove that file from cache AND the cloud. Think of the cache as a subset of the cloud data, representing a copy of the most recent files locally. The cloud represents your entire dataset. When the delete request occurs, we remove it from cache, and remove it from cloud. You no longer have the ability to recover the file from AltaVault because you've instructed it to delete it.

What you really want to do is forceably remove the cache contents, but maintain the cloud contents, so you can try to do a recovery of the data from cloud. To do this, you should do a DR or DR-test operation, as outlined in the Disaster Recovery chapter of the deployment guide (4.2), or administration guide (4.3). Refer to the AltaVault documentation for details on how to perform either of these operations. Note that if you're using the same appliance (rather than a secondary DR appliance), you do not need to do an export and import of the configuration - you would do the actions for DR or DR-test directly on the originating appliance (enable, configure terminal, no service enable, etc...)

Regards,

Christopher

[GarethK]

Hi Chris

I am currently testing AltaVault 4.3.1 Disaster Recovery.

On a newly setup AltaVault I can import the configuration using the exported config from production AlatVault and prepopulate selected data from cloud store back to the AltaVault to create the local cache.  However, how does one recover the data from the AltaVault where the original setup used snapmirror shares?  The prepop does not create the snapmirror shares and in order to recover the data using ONTAP 9.1 CLI one needs to specify the share name.

Snapmirror restore -source-path <IP_address>:/share/<share_name> -destination-path <Vserver_name>:<volume_name> -source-snapshot <Snapshot_name>

The snapmirror restore command works 100% in production but not in DR as the share does not exist after prepop?  Are there additional steps to follow?

Thanks

Gareth

[chriswong]

Hi,

Please copy your text and post to a new topic, and I'll respond there. This thread addresses a different question which has already been answered. Thanks.

Regards,

Christopher