Need Help Understanding What Happens When I Delete Duplicate Qtrees

[gibsonc390]

I am new with NetApp and trying to understand a little more about my qtrees before I screw my filer up. I have duplicate qtrees with the same name. What happens when i delete one of them? Will I lose data if i delete the qtree?

A little guidance will go a long way. Thanks in advance !

[shaunjurr]

Hi,

You probably need to read the system documentation to help you understand what a qtree is. Basically, at the very least, you will delete the few bytes that the qtree needs within the system.  At the most you will remove all of the data residing under the qtree in the filesystem.

Some more information (examples if not excerpts) would be helpful in giving a more complete picture of what you are proposing and additionally, to get you correct answers.

[aborzenkov]

Please explain what do you mean under "duplicated qtrees". The best is to show command output that displays them.

If these qtrees are in different volumes, they are totally independent and are not duplicates.

[gibsonc390]

This is the output of qtree status -v. I would like to delete one of the group and one of the personal qtrees. What would be the impact on the data?

dr-na-2040b-01> qtree status -v
Volume   Tree     Style Oplocks  Status    Owning vfiler
-------- -------- ----- -------- --------- -------------
vol0              ntfs  enabled  normal    vfiler0
hc_sv_3140b_netapp_share_backup                         ntfs  enabled  normal    vfiler0
hc_sv_3140b_personal_cifs_backup                         ntfs  enabled  normal    vfiler0
hc_sv_3140b_personal_cifs_backup Group              ntfs  enabled  snapvaulted  vfiler0
hc_sv_3140b_personal_cifs_backup Personal           ntfs  enabled  snapvaulted  vfiler0
hc_sv_3140b_personal_cifs_backup Personal_00      ntfs  disabled snapvaulted  vfiler0
hc_sv_3140b_personal_cifs_backup hc_sv_3140b_netapp_share_hc-na-3140b-01_Cifs01 ntfs  enabled  snapvaulted  vfiler0
hc_sv_3140b_groups_cifs_backup                              ntfs  enabled  normal    vfiler0
hc_sv_3140b_groups_cifs_backup Group                   ntfs  disabled snapvaulted  vfiler0

[shaunjurr]

Either there is something wrong with the formatting of the information that you pasted, or you don't have any qtrees.

Could you please somehow either fix the formatting or explicitly tell us the name of the volume or volumes?

Deleting a qtree just removes the qtree and the data that in that qtree.  Those blocks well be held in snapshots until they "rotate out" if you use scheduled snapshots.

I can't really tell what is going on.  Having multiple snapvault destinations on one volume can't be good idea either, but like I said, the formatting is a mess.

[aborzenkov]

So under “duplicated” you mean “having the same name”? It is still not clear what do you mean under “group and personal qtrees”.

Every qtree is just a directory inside a volume. Deleting removes this directory together with files. It is up to you to know whether data inside two qtrees is the same and one copy can be removed.

BTW there is no way to remove qtree on NetApp. You need to mount volume (CIFS or NFS) and use standard host command to delete directory.

[shaunjurr]

Dude, on an ONTap  7.3.2 or new version system (iirc) try: priv set advanced; qtree

You will see that it has been possible to delete qtrees from within OnTap for about 2 years now...

😉

[gibsonc390]

Ok judging from the response it looks like these (output) are just volumes and not qtrees. I can delete a qtree after using advanced priviledges.