SnapCenter 4 Exchange snapvault integration NOT working

[Hans088]

I've started with the migration from SnapManager for Exchange to SnapCenter 4. After some minor issues with VSS providers the backups now run successfully, but I have some troubles setting up the retentions and snapvault update. If I create the policies in the web GUI I do not have any options for setting up Replication, Snapvault updates or snapmirror labels. When I try to add them with powershell (e.g. Set-SmPolicy -PolicyName "Some Policy" -PolicyType Backup -PluginPolicyType SCE -SceBackupType FullBackupAndLogBackup -UpdateSnapVaultAfterbackup -SnapVaultLabel Daily) I then lose the schedules and retention settings in the policy. Next step was to create the entire policy with powershell with this command: 

PS C:\> Add-SmPolicy -PolicyName "Some Policy" -PolicyType Backup -PluginPolicyType SCE -Description "Some Description" -SceBackupType FullBackupAndLogBackup -BackupCopiesOnServer -UtmType CountBase -UtmCounts 2 -UtmDays 0 -UpdateSnapVaultAfterbackup -MirrorVaultUpdateRetryCount 3 -SnapVaultLabel Daily -ScheduleType Daily -RetentionSettings @{"BackupType"="DATA";"ScheduleType"="Daily";"RetentionCount"="0";"RetentionDays"="14"}

If I attach this policy to a resource group the backup runs fine, but I get an error on the 'Registering Backup and Applying Retention' step: "Nullable object must have a value" and again there is no snapmirror-label and therefore no snapvault update. Also I cannot find a good formatting in powershell to apply multiple RetentionSettings (for example for LOG backuptype) in the hashtable. 

Does anyone have any experience in successfully setting up a backup with snapvault update? 

EDIT: I managed to solve the hashtable problem and the 'nullable object' issue, but the snapvault integration still is not functioning at all, even though the relationships are working and the source and backup SVM are registered with snapcenter. If I manually assign a snapmirror-label on the snapshots created by SnapCenter the snapvault volumes are updated but NOT visible in SnapCenter (and thus not available for restore). 

For reference the command to create a policy with multiple retention settings: 

PS C:\> Add-SmPolicy -PolicyName "Some Policy" -PolicyType Backup -PluginPolicyType SCE -Description "Some Description" -SceBackupType FullBackupAndLogBackup -BackupCopiesOnServer -UtmType CountBase -UtmCounts 2 -UtmDays 0 -UpdateSnapVaultAfterbackup -MirrorVaultUpdateRetryCount 3 -SnapVaultLabel Daily -ScheduleType Daily -RetentionSettings @{"BackupType"="DATA";"ScheduleType"="Weekly";"RetentionDays"="14";"RetentionCount"="0"},@{"BackupType"="DATA";"ScheduleType"="None";"RetentionDays"="0";"RetentionCount"="7"},@{"BackupType"="LOG";"ScheduleType"="None";"RetentionDays"="0";"RetentionCount"="2"}

[AshishGupta · Accepted solution]

@Hans088SnapVault update is not supported with the current release of the SnapCenter Exchange plug-in.

Refer Release Notes for the current limitations of the Exchange plug-in:

https://library.netapp.com/ecm/ecm_get_file/ECMLP2840873 (refer page 20)

This is plannned for the next release of Exchange plug-in (SnapCenter 4.1) targeted for Aug'18 release.

[Hans088]

@AshishGupta Thanks a lot for the clarification, somehow I missed this critical piece of information. Cheers! A bit disappointing that the rest of the documentation is not clear about this, and that there are several options in the GUI/Powershell commands (e.g. -UpdateSnapVaultAfterbackup, -SnapVaultLabel etc) that are just useless and not doing anything at the moment. 

[AshishGupta]

I have passed the feedback to the documentation team. We will get this corrected in the next update of documentation refresh in a month's time (tentative) for SnapCenter 4.0P1 release.