Hi Dave,
I am trying to get an answer for Q1.
Q2 - With regard to the WFA Acquistion rate, is there anyway to have a WFA Workflow trigger/force an 'acquire now' against a data source?
There is no existing command or way of doing this in WFA. But, before i figure out a way to do it, why is it required. When you force an 'acquire now' before executing a workflow, you have the most recent view of the objects of a filer (assuming ocum has acquired recently as well). Now, in case you create something as part of your workflow, 'reservations' will be set for the newly created objects. So, you do not have to acquire it from OCUM. WFA simulates the effect of having acquired from ocum. You can still have the most recent view of the filer
Q3 - Do reservations and/or '[x] enable element existence validation' work to keep track of newly/recently created shares? ... is there any hope that a SELECT shareName FROM cm_storage.cifs_share might return shares from OCUM as well as reserved/new-existence shares? ( what I'm asking for is the ability to accurately present the shares on a vserver even if I JUST created the share seconds ago in another workflow)
Yes you are right here. Element Existence validation does consider reserved entities.
To give you an example, suppose as a part of your workflow, you want to create a volume followed by the share. The newly created volume will be "RESERVED" in WFA cache. So when you try to run the create share command, your filter will consider that "RESERVATION" and you will be able to create the share. You don't have to do an acquire now between these two commands.
I hope i have answered some of your questions.
Will try and get an answer for Q1 soon.
-Anil