SnapCenter 1.1 - Unable to see NetApp volumes formatted as Windows ReFS filesystem

[RickStratton]

Environment is SnapCenter 1.1 server using SnapCenter Plug-ins Package 1.1 for Windows on a Windows 2012 R2 host running MS SQL Server 2014. The SQL instance has several databases. All of the databases reside on Windows volumes/disks that are NetApp LUNs.

Some of the Windows volumes are formatted NTFS while some of the other volumes are formated Windows Resilient File System (ReFS).

For the SQL databases that are on NTFS-formatted volumes, when you navigate to Inventory / <host> / Database / <SQL Server Instance>, and you select/highlight a database and click on the 'Details' button, SnapCenter properly shows the associated NetApp LUNs (in the Storage Name section),

For the SQL databases that are  on ReFS-formatted file systems, SnapCenter does not list any NetApp LUN names in the 'Storage Name' section.

So, I am curious if the SnapCenter Plug-ins Package 1.1 for Windows supports Windows volumes formatted with the ReFS file system format, when trying to do SQL database backups.

[spinks]

Rick,

I checked with enginnering on this as I was not sure.

The short answer is ReFS is not supported at this time in SnapCenter.

The thinking is that ReFS is typically used with storage spaces which alignes closer to DAS and JBOD than external storage arrays.

If you have a different use case for using ReFS please share with us and we can try and get support in a later release.

Your feedback and input is appreciated.

Sorry this isn't working for you today.

John

[RickStratton]

John, Thank you for the quick response. I asked our DBAs why they chose ReFS over NTFS and they indicated that it was a Microsoft recommendation to overcome an issue they were having with a very large databse (VLDB) ... back then, it was 3.5TB ... The issues they were having were around performing database consistency checks (DBCCs) on the database. It is my understanding that the DBCCs would get a storage timeout and thus the DBCC would fail. I have asked my DBA's to forward me ther pertinent Microsoft information, as right now, I only have this rudimentary understanding of their original problem and the supposed Microsoft recommendation.

Today, what we are trying to use SnapCenter for, is to do backup management of a 13TB MS SQL database, as well as use it for CLONE features, so that we can create 1 or 2 FlexClones off of the source database snapshots.

We are also working with our DBA's to see if we can rebuild the volumes using NTFS, and hopefully not have the DBCC issues they were having before.

Once I gather more details around the Microsoft recommendation to go from NTFS to ReFS, I'll post a reply to this conversation.

[sanderbreur]

Hi,

does the same reason counts for Snapdrive? Can't find anything about it, no support for ReFS in SnapDrive 7.1.3 or 7.1.4 it looks like.

Thanks in advance....

Regards,

Sander Breur