Scheduling clones in PowerShell

[borismekler]

I need to clone a set of databases from one SQL instance to another, and refresh them every 6 hours. Right now I'm doing it with SnapManager for SQL, but I'm trying to migrate it to SnapCenter. It looks like GUI will only let me schedule one database at a time, which is not optimal when I have eight of them sharing a LUN. With PowerShell, I almost have it - it clones all the DBs I need, but only once - I need to add the 'refresh every 6 hours' part. What I have right now is:

Add-SmCloneJob -CloneJobName SQL_clone_to_reports -PluginCode SMSQL -CloneToInstance 'SQL2\REPORT' -CloneToHost sql2.domain.local -Resources @{'Host'='sql1.domain.local';'Type'='SQL Database';'Names'='SQL1\PROD\DB1,SQL1\PROD\DB2,SQL1\PROD\DB3,SQL1\PROD\DB4,SQL1\PROD\DB5,SQL1\PROD\DB6,SQL1\PROD\DB7,SQL1\PROD\DB8'} -AutoAssignMountPoint

However, when I try to add '-schedules' to the command, I just get syntax errors. What's the proper format to have it run at 3:30 AM, 9:30 AM, 3:30 PM and 9:30 PM?

Thank you.

[donny_lang · Accepted solution]

From page 15 of the SnapCenter Cmdlet Reference Guide (emphasis mine):

Schedules - Specifies in a hastable the schedule for the
clone job, including the policy name and the
schedule type. For example, -Schedules
@{"PolicyName"="BackupPolicy";"ScheduleType"="OneTime"}
You can specify multiple schedules in a comma separated list.

Here's the link to the guide, just for reference:  https://library.netapp.com/ecm/ecm_get_file/ECMLP2840881

Donny

[borismekler]

I found my problem - I was trying to set the start date in my system default format of DD/MM/YYYY, while SnapCenter expects the American format of MM/DD/YYYY. Adding the following seems to have done the trick:

-Schedules @{'PolicyName'='03:30';'ScheduleType'='Daily';'StartTime'='07/27/2019 03:30 AM'},@{'PolicyName'='09:30';'ScheduleType'='Daily';'StartTime'='07/26/2019 09:30 AM'},@{'PolicyName'='15:30';'ScheduleType'='Daily';'StartTime'='07/26/2019 03:30 PM'},@{'PolicyName'='21:30';'ScheduleType'='Daily';'StartTime'='07/26/2019 09:30 PM'}

One last thing that I can't quite figure out is where can I see the properties for this job? Aside from the resulting clones, it doesn't seem to show up anywhere in the GUI, and running  "Get-SmCloneJob -PluginCode SMSQL -Resource @{'Host'='sql1.domain.local';'Type'='SQL Database';'Names'='SQL1\PROD\DB1'}" returns just CloneJobName and ResourceName. Am I missing something somewhere, or am I supposed to keep track of this separately from SnapCenter?

[donny_lang]

If you run:

Get-SmCloneJob | Get-Member

It'll show you all of the properties associated with the cmdlet. You may be able to get additional detail by selecting a property that isn't displayed by default. You can do that by running:

Get-SmCloneJob | Select-Object -Property <property name> 

or by capturing the command output in a variable and then using the "$variable.PropertyName" syntax to output the value of a single property.